Flyball in the public eye: Good or bad?

There’s been a lot of talk recently on the marketing of flyball.  Let’s put aside the U-FLI vs. NAFA for a moment and talk about (as Lisa at Prop-a-Ganda put it)” Big F” Flyball.

All of us have had that moment when someone asks us about flyball. Most people I’ve spoken with have seen agility, disc or dock diving, but flyball? not so much.

The general tone of the various blogs, logs, boards and lists is that we need to get flyball more in the public eye.  There are a couple of main ways to increase expose of flyball to the general public:  TV and other media appearances and event sponsorship.

Why aren’t we on TV?  After all, flyball is fun, fast paced and easy to watch. We regularly compete about 20 minutes from my hometown and my mom has, over the years, brought almost my entire extended family to watch flyball.  They always have a good time.

And what about sponsorships?  In California, there are a few kibble companies that regularly donate to raffles and provide samples.  Hyper Flight has many of its tournaments sponsored by Dinovite.  And after the success of the CanAm, NAFA management is actively courting corporate sponsors for next year’s event.  The sheer number of people and dogs who play flyball and the amount of stuff we all use could be a great sponsorship opportunity for any number of companies. Vet Wrap?  Tuff Spun?  Wilson or Penn tennis balls?

But there’s a downside to being in the public eye.  Increased publicity comes with costs and the flyball community may not be willing to let strangers into our “living room”.

Performance Mixes.  Someone on an online forum once called borderjacks “engineering the world’s worst housepet”.  People have said to me that all borderstaffies must be “high-energy nuts”.  Yet they are darn cute!  Will increased television coverage and print sponsorship lead to more John Q. Publics getting dogs they may not be able to handle?  Is that something that the flyball world needs or wants?

Flyball families tend to be large. Everyone has heard the response, “you have HOW many dogs?” Many folks may hide or forget to mention the number of dogs we own because of county rules, icky neighbors or just plain shame in a world where most people think three is a lot of dogs. Will increased public events also increase the scrutiny of flyball families?

Bad training methods and backyard flyball. Every year, flyball gets faster.  Touch N Go broke the 15-second barrier in 2009 and more and more teams are crowding into the sub-16 division.  When my Google alerts pulls up a bad training video or a forum post about learning flyball from someone who doesn’t play, I’ll admit it makes me nervous.  There’s so much that goes into a great race with a super fast team.  I hope that flyball on TV would increase the number of people contacting clubs for lessons and classes but how many people will be making a box or buying the ones available on the internet and teaching themselves flyball?  I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it could go either way.

So should we push for more “Big F” flyball publicity?  Or should we leave individual teams or regions to decide whether they seek out sponsorships and public appearances?  Can we increase interest (and revenue) without opening the sport to public scrutiny?

Tracy

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