So… this is a thing I was talking about the other day, because these are both valid points that kind of make me sad when taken together. Because…
1. Quidditch is such the most real sport. And it’s some of the most strategic, athletic, quality entertainment I have ever seen.
2. That being said, as someone with little to no hand eye coordination and a pathological inability to engage in competitive team sports, I have found it very difficult to participate in the quidditch community.
It’s a new sport, and it’s growing, but it’s still so small that there doesn’t seem to be much room for spectators. What I think happened, and I could be wrong, is that a lot of the hardcore Harry Potter fans that the original poster alluded to showed up in the beginning, did not in fact like sports much, and ended up wandering off never to return. So no one followed up on trying to draw crowds, because if you couldn’t hook the fans, who were you going to hook? Well, people who are sports fans actually.
Because there are other fans, like me and the original poster apparently, who like Harry Potter and sports. In my experience though, because we are not large in numbers, there’s no infrastructure in place to facilitate fans. The IQA has made leaps and bounds in the last year when it comes to keeping the website updated and letting people know when events are happening. But if you’re not on a team or friends with people who are on a team, there is not yet a large enough fan network to really facilitate spectatorship. I watch a lot of quidditch online, I’ve been to a couple regional tournaments, and I made the trip out to Orlando last year for the cup, and while yes, I enjoyed the matches, I still always felt a bit… unwelcome?
It feels awkward to phrase it that way, because I have never met a quidditch player I did not like. Neither would I disparage the warmth and camaraderie that is apparent within the community. But the community is so tight that not being associated with a team turns the spectators into outsiders. I don’t think this is any fault of the teams or the players, but quidditch at its current size and popularity is not yet a spectator sport. And it should be. Because have you seen it?
Maybe the players don’t want or need to be watched. They clearly love what they do, and the IQA seems to be managing fine without tons of fans or ad revenue. Personally, however, I would love to see the sport turn into something I can go watch in the bleachers surrounded by fellow lovers of the game instead of a hoard of the players’ closest family, friends and teammates. Not that they can’t love the game too. It just always feels like I’m crashing a particularly skilled game of post Thanksgiving pick up football.
So in the name of not complaining without offering a solution: I think that if quidditch wants to attract spectators that aren’t going to sit on their phones and complain about being bored, it also needs to start marketing beyond the quidditch clubs that already exist. I recognize the challenges associated with this endeavor. Yes, Harry Potter fan sites advertise the World Cup, but I think most fans know about quidditch by now, and save for the ostracizing effect of the clique mentality would be into quidditch if they wanted to be. I’d like to see it expand beyond that.
Has anyone tried recruiting regular sports fans as spectators? I know I’ve seen players scooped from other sports, but what about scooping fans? You don’t have to love Harry Potter to love quidditch. Thanks to fandom stigma, the marketing is sure to be met with skeptical looks and raised eyebrows, hence the difficulty, but if some people were persistent enough to get non-fans to play quidditch, surely we could be persistent enough to get non-fans to watch it too.
This may have gotten a little long and rambly and become only vaguely related to whatever I was commenting on originally, but it’s just a humble suggestion in the hopes that maybe one day loving quidditch won’t feel as if it has to be from afar.
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
titsay
blakekathryn
2087
andulkaphoto
stormborns
