At last year’s annual convention it became apparent that USMS must either reduce the benefits it offers members or find ways to increase revenue. Most members of the House of Delegates would prefer to increase benefits rather than reduce them. I’d like to explore ideas to increase revenue so that we can continue to offer more benefits to our members.
Perhaps it is time to tap what I consider a huge potential market. I have often heard swimmers say that they compete so that they can see their name in print. Certainly with the growth of the internet there are more possibilities for publishing names.
Records are a largely untapped market. Another swimming organization has expanded the number of records available by narrowing age group ranges from 5 years to 1 year. Numerous other possibilities exist. Why stop at one year? Why not establish records based on day of birth instead of year of birth?
In the first half off the 20th century records were kept in what are now considered odd lengths such as 220 yards. We currently avoid odd-length pools. There are numerous 20 meter and 33 and 1/3 yard pools in the U.S. If we kept records for such pools, meets hosted in them would be very attractive as chances of setting records would be great. We could also consider records for shallow and deep pools
Lot’s of other possibilities exist. We could establish records based on occupation, height, or weight. Perhaps I can post the fastest 60 meter butterfly time in a 20 meter pool by an electrical engineer, over 6 feet tall, born in August of 1954.
Fastest times aren’t necessarily the only records that we should keep. How about fewest strokes used while swimming a legal breaststroke? Or lowest score in swimming golf (add the number of strokes to your time to establish a score)?
Once we determine whether we should establish “alternative” records, we will need to agree on an appropriate fee. Probably over 10,000 swimmers compete in at least one Masters meet each year. If we can establish enough records so that everyone can claim at least one, USMS could generate significant revenue.
One option would be to charge a fixed fee for a record application. If we charge $10 per application and have 10,000 records claimed each year, USMS would receive $100,000. I expect that that figure is conservative. We could easily establish 50,000 records each year.
Lot’s of other possibilities exist. Please add your ideas to this thread. What other types of records do you think are practical? How much do you think people would be willing to pay to see their name next to a record?
Swimmers can benefit from this proposal. We can spend a few weeks brainstorming ideas, then draft a proposal to submit to the USMS House of Delegates. In the spirit of brainstorming, don’t hesitate to post any ideas, no matter how outlandish.
Parents
Former Member
Gull80:
I think the problem is not as big as trying to get the population at large to start exercising or promoting swimming to the 1/3 of the population that excercises.
Let's look at some numbers. In New England there are 5,000 athletes that are members of USA Swimming. They probably represent no more than 1/3 of youngsters who participate in some form of "organized" swimming (HS, Y, JCC, Summer rec, etc). So we can conservatively posit that in NE there are 15,000 youth involved in swimming. Let's assume that are target market is anyone with any kind of organized swimming background. That means that we have at least two generations in our NE market or about 30,000 people (and we have not tried to account for the college market impact--that could be signficant in NE).
NEM has around 1,600 members (note: that NE Swimming does not include Maine so I've excluded the Maine part of the LMSC).
Our membership penetration is slightly better than 5%! Perhaps someone from Pacific Masters (with 10,000 members the absolute success story in terms of membership) and other LMSCs, could provide us with some numbers on their penetration of the target market (as defined above). Regardless of the numbers from other LMSC, I'm pretty sure that we have plenty of room to grow.
What would these organization look like with 10% penetration or even 20% penetration--suppose we looked at three generations rather than two. Aren't we looking at an organization with between 100,000 and 200,000 members. Wouldn't that present other opportunities?
Perhaps we should approach USA Swimming with a plan to grow our support together. A masters organization with 100,000+ members would provide a potential financial base for USA Swimming that would make the USOC totally irrelevant from a financial point of view. A close working relationship (merger?) might allow us to tap some money that we need to grow and develop some kind of alternative for swimmers of all ages that are not going to make the NAG 16 or higher levels of swimming and keep them in the sport for life.
Gull80:
I think the problem is not as big as trying to get the population at large to start exercising or promoting swimming to the 1/3 of the population that excercises.
Let's look at some numbers. In New England there are 5,000 athletes that are members of USA Swimming. They probably represent no more than 1/3 of youngsters who participate in some form of "organized" swimming (HS, Y, JCC, Summer rec, etc). So we can conservatively posit that in NE there are 15,000 youth involved in swimming. Let's assume that are target market is anyone with any kind of organized swimming background. That means that we have at least two generations in our NE market or about 30,000 people (and we have not tried to account for the college market impact--that could be signficant in NE).
NEM has around 1,600 members (note: that NE Swimming does not include Maine so I've excluded the Maine part of the LMSC).
Our membership penetration is slightly better than 5%! Perhaps someone from Pacific Masters (with 10,000 members the absolute success story in terms of membership) and other LMSCs, could provide us with some numbers on their penetration of the target market (as defined above). Regardless of the numbers from other LMSC, I'm pretty sure that we have plenty of room to grow.
What would these organization look like with 10% penetration or even 20% penetration--suppose we looked at three generations rather than two. Aren't we looking at an organization with between 100,000 and 200,000 members. Wouldn't that present other opportunities?
Perhaps we should approach USA Swimming with a plan to grow our support together. A masters organization with 100,000+ members would provide a potential financial base for USA Swimming that would make the USOC totally irrelevant from a financial point of view. A close working relationship (merger?) might allow us to tap some money that we need to grow and develop some kind of alternative for swimmers of all ages that are not going to make the NAG 16 or higher levels of swimming and keep them in the sport for life.
