Take it to the limit
Player overload on the treadmill of fear and greed
Naomi Osaka, Gaël Monfils, Jack Draper. Each retired from the Australian Open mid-match. No substitutes bench in tennis, so the ultimate anticlimax for spectators. Injuries are an occupational hazard, but across sport the sheer quantity of competitions is a threat to athletes’ health and by extension the quality of sports’ product.
The global tennis circuit stretches over the best part of eleven months each year. The ATP and WTA ranking systems incentivise players to compete - or perhaps more pertinently, punish them for not competing. Rankings determine qualification for the sport’s four Grand Slam tournaments as well as, for those near the top of the ladder, entry to the lucrative end-year finals. Ascending the rankings requires a better finish each year than in the equivalent competition 12 months before. Conversely, miss a tournament that you did well in last year and your points, and likely your ranking too, will slip.
This construct favours lesser tournaments, bolstering their fields with players not guaranteed to secure invitations to the Slams by virtue of past triumphs and their box office appeal. In a sport rife with stories of hardship at the very bottom of its professional pyramid, especially among those striving to break into the premier men’s and women’s tours, it is no surprise that players are as wary of sliding down the sport’s snake as climbing its ladder. Strap up that strain and play on regardless.
“You know, at the end of the day, it's been a very long tour for me, playing a lot of matches, spending a lot of hours. Of course, some days are tougher. Today was one where I think I was already very close from the limit, and I think I passed it, unfortunately.” Gaël Monfils
Last week’s Sport inc. celebrated the great diversity of sport available to us as both fans and participants, as well as its quantum. Our appetite to consume sport risks overwhelming its stars and its wannabes though.
Talk earlier this season of a strike by footballers aghast at the crowded fixture list flared but is now seemingly forgotten. Cricketers are abandoning conventional employment arrangements in favour of rotating through the calendar of franchise leagues. LIV, with its three day format, was in part a reaction to tournament overload on golf’s circuit. European rugby shuttles players to and from South Africa for the Champions Cup with often embarrassingly one-sided results. And as for the logistics of competing in a 24 race FI season…
As ever, money is the ultimate driver, both for event organisers responding to the appetites and wallets of broadcasters (and by extension viewers and advertisers) and athletes conscious of careers that are short with earnings potentials that are highly uncertain.
The competition treadmill evident in most leading sports is powered then by a combination of financial fear and greed. Slowing it requires either a player rebellion or an economic shock for event organisers that forces them to recognise that less could be more.
Sports’ annual calendars may appear chaotic but are usually the product of history and negotiation. Big events and competitions command key slots, smaller ones fill in the gaps. The former at worst tolerate the latter as providing a pathway for emerging talent; at best they give them legitimacy through rankings systems or, in team sports, promotion and relegation.
Thinning out a competition schedule, or providing protection for the most highly rated athletes, requires collaboration and compromise. The highest profile (and hence wealthiest) events have the power and with it the duty to take the lead in any negotiations. History, however, does not contain many encouraging precedents. Just witness the struggle to persuade top football clubs to provide support for those beneath them, or to challenge international bodies to reduce player overload.
Once again, with Super Bowl LIX only a fortnight away, the NFL demonstrates the power of a closed shop to drive value through a constricted quantity of competition. Yes, its franchise owners are making a virtue of necessity in marketing a high intensity contact sport that is only played seriously at the highest level in the US. But the relative rarity of its contests clearly bolsters their commercial allure. Still very tough for players to break into and then thrive (or simply survive) within the gilded tent, but there is much to applaud in the NFL’s clarity and simplicity.
Come together
This season’s new format for the Chsmpions League is a prime example of a sport’s ruler attempting to squeeze more from its product, and hence its athletes.
UEFA has trailed 29 January as climactic proof of this season’s new ‘Swiss Model’ section of its Champions League. 18 matches kicking-off simultaneously to decide which eight of the 36 teams progress directly to the knockout stage, the 16 who have to play off for that right, and the 12 to be immediately eliminated.
I’ve been sceptical about just how many of next Wednesday’s ties will truly matter. After last night’s penultimate contests, it appears about a dozen of the final night ties will have meaningful jeopardy. Many of these though will see only one of the two teams still battling for either a top 8 or top 24 finish. Hardly UEFA’s hoped-for orgy of excitement, but a decent bill of fare for TV viewers.
A quick canvass in the pub and via WhatApp suggests a divide between fans of the big clubs and the rest as to the success of UEFA’s initiative. As Celtic have made it through already, it’s little wonder that I’ve heard enthusiastic endorsements from north of the border. If Man City are eliminated but, say, Dinamo Zagreb progress, then UEFA might feel vindicated in an unexpected way - but not perhaps one that pleases its commercial partners.
Mashed
One group of sportspeople who could do with more competitive opportunities are England’s women cricketers. Their last Ashes series staged the single Test match in the multi-format series first. This time it comes last. After drubbings in the first four white ball matches, a dead-rubber 4-day Test is looming. Hardly what those championing more red ball contests will have been hoping for.
I’m not qualified to pass technical judgement on Australia’s battering of England. But Simon ‘The Analyst’ Hughes and Elizabeth Ammon of The Times are. You can read them here and here.
The Hundred has been hailed for the growth in popularity of women’s professional cricket in England. Hard to see that the tournament has done much to further England’s standing in the international game though. Ammon references £200,000 plus central contracts and fitness shortfalls; Hughes cites technical shortcomings.
Much for the ECB to ponder as it pumps money - a claimed £19 million a year by 2027 - into a new three tier structure for the women’s game.
Looking back to a Sport inc. in the summer of 2023, I find I wrote the below about the Ashes. I stand by the argument (although this winter it might simply spell more misery for England’s women I guess).
“The women’s format needs adjusting. Starting with the single Test gives its losing side a mountain to climb. Move it to between the T20s and ODIs. Better still, leave it at the start and put a second Test at the end, to balance point-winning opportunity.”