The European Professional Archery Series (or the chicken and egg story)
by Steve Kendrick (Vice President of the IFAA) and Tony Goodwin (MD of Alternative Sporting Services)
W
e have been evolving the basic concept of a professional series for perhaps fifteen or more years now. Very simply, we don’t have any professional tournaments in Europe at all because there are no professional archers and we don’t have any professional archers because there are no tournaments for them to go to—a real “chicken and egg” situation. We had to break the circle! Hence, the creation of the Professional Archery Series (www. pro-archery.com) We have deliberately made the format of the series very simple but due to pre-conceived ideas and some misrepresentation many people are still confused. The format is almost a carbon copy of the PGA Golf series. They have 140 players split into groups of 4 around an eighteen hole course. As we are using the IFAA Field and Hunter rounds we 14 Archery Magazine June/July 2007
will have 112 archers shooting in groups of 4 around a course of 28 targets. As with the PGA format, there will be just one class. We will use the IFAA’s Professional Division for compound release shooters. Most tournaments want a thousand or more entries, largely because they need the money from the entries to pay for a big percentage of the prize fund. We will only have a maximum of 112 archers and the prize fund will be raised through advertising and sponsorship deals - just like the PGA. For this to work we have to create a platform for companies to advertise their products and services. More and more people are starting to watch non-mainstream sporting events on the internet, either live or streaming on-demand coverage. For this we have created Alternative2tv (www.alternative2tv.com) which is a dedicated video web site.
Since it was launched in late January, many thousands of archers have watched the various videos on this website and as each programme is preceded by an advertising video this has generated massive interest. We strongly believe that this sort of advertising really works and reaches the targeted audience better than any other form of advertising. The video coverage of Pro Archery events will be very different to anything seen elsewhere in the sport as they will be produced as TV-style programmes - not just a pretty picture of archers shooting arrows. If you have watched coverage of the PGA Tour you will understand the sort of programmes that we intend to produce. We have already produced examples. If you visit Alternative2tv and watch either the EFAA Nationals or the European 5 Nations - Esch - 2006 Report, you will start to see where we are going. These examples have been
produced during an eighteen month learning curve. By the first Pro Archery event we will be ready. So we come to our first event. This will be the 2007 Cartel Classic, to be held at Mullenborn, Germany on June 23rd and 24th. We have a 12,000 EURO prize fund (around $15,000 U.S.) with a first place prize guaranteed at 3,000 EURO. It’s not huge, but it’s pretty good for the first event. In 2008 we will have two tournaments and in 2009 we are planning for three, and continuing on each year until we have a full series. So far we have Cartel Archery sponsoring the prize fund for the first event and we have Alternative Services bank rolling the huge initial setup costs for the project. We have received many very positive reactions and as expected, a small number of negative ones too, but we have no doubt that if we succeed the prize to the sport and the industry as a whole will be huge. On the back of a real professional layer within the sport, membership of the IFAA could quadruple in a few years, lots more competitive archers and lots more customers for the archery shops and manufacturers. For the 2007 Cartel Classic
we are planning extensive freeto-view video coverage over the two days of the event. The coverage will be produced as a live on-demand presentation and will be made into 15 minute segments (just like real TV) with advertising breaks. Each segment will be set onto a timeline so the viewer can break in and out of the coverage at any time. There will also be a separate live updating scoreboard running alongside the video, so you will be able to track how each archer is doing in real time. In addition to video and scoring, the Pro Archery web site also features a rapidly expanding database of professional archers displaying their profiles and their personal sponsors. If you are a competing archer, we are expecting around twenty to thirty thousand viewers during the Cartel Classic so you can get real exposure for yourself and your sponsors. We have prepared the stage. There is still a huge amount left to do, Advertisers are the lifeblood for this venture and we need their support for this year and future years. We have an ever growing entry list for the Cartel Classic. If you are interested in being involved at the start of the Professional Archery Series, make sure you get your entry in as soon as possible. Archery Magazine June/July 2007 15