Hey guys, don't get here very much, been a couple years, but it was nice to see Microlink in the US. Congrats!
There are several ways to make offshore relevant again to the public. There are several big questions though:
Can we get the participants under one control? APBA and P1 and OSS are kind of linked together in the US under UIM. But then there is also OPA and SBI. They all fight with each other for the best venues and boats, so to make themselves seem better they purposefully hurt the others. And when I say purposeful, I mean by having different rules for what should be identical boat classes and mysterious DQ's or penalizations for those who raced other organizations on occasion. Heck, I've had the racers tell me before an event they will win but be penalized because they raced XYZ org, then watched it happen.
Only SBI has live streaming so events can be watched while they are happening. But they have no live in-boat video like all of the main car race circuits have. Live in-boat cameras to link to, combined with live helicopter video is the biggest key when combined with competitive classes. Go watch NASCAR or F1. NNRT and Freezeframe's old videos are better than anything we watch today.
I have the utmost respect for Bob Teague and his announcing is very good. But, they have no one watching the actual livestream broadcast to announce about what we are seeing. Makes it a bit irrelevant to those who are watching and do not race themselves. If you don't believe that, go re-watch the races on SBI's site.
And, with live helo and in-boat, that can be streamed to large screens in the pits and nearby bars, you could combine both long legs and short close to shore legs for fans, in the same event.
There's the start of my soapbox.
__________________
|