Freediving is a sport full of depth but with shallow coverage.
These last 2 days I spent several hours watching the CMAS Pool World Championship: with each new big comp comes the Diveye streaming and with it a very boring and unprofessional commentary. So I took matters in my own hands and started posting an alternative commentary for those, who like me, felt they were dying of boredom. It exploded in popularity because basically everyone I know (minus 2 people) feel the same as me and got thousands of laughing emojis in my chat and messages from people asking me not to stop and pointing out interesting things in and around the competition that were worth noting, and asking me to cover them.
Why do people think the commentary is bad?
Is it hard to make an interesting live coverage?
What do people want to hear?
Below are my opinions, but I know they are shared by most.
Far from being a CMAS problem, this also affects every AIDA WC and other streamed competitions such as Vertical Blue.
But last year at the end of the Depth WC a Google document was sent around to collect feedback from all athletes regarding the organisation of the comp and some questions about the streaming and commentary were posed. What I’m posting below is the feedback I sent then, plus some stuff I added after watching part of the current Pool WC.
The N.1 cause for lack of interest from a broader public is that the commentaries are always extremely boring. The only people who will ever watch the streaming are competitive freedivers (not even the amateurs in most cases). Little to no attention is put on the actual person behind a dive.
Take the commentary of a football match, or F1 race and look at the amount of excitement that gets generated by the commentators to the public (don’t they always scream and get all red faced and look like they’re gonna have a stroke anytime?). Then compare it to a freediving competition, and tell me you can’t see my point.
Google forms usually get sent to athletes to collect info before a comp, but mostly they just ask personal bests and which national record they hold. You need to be able to talk for a minimum of 5 full minutes x 4 dives per freediver, and unless you know every single athlete personally you will need to collect a lot of info so you have something to say to keep it interesting. I know some athletes who went out of their way to write a lot of facts about themselves at the bottom of the form they filled in, but none of this info was mentioned in the commentary.
Another sad thing that happens too often is having guests being interviewed about their own dives while someone else is doing their performance and not one single word gets said about them. As much as I like the idea of having interviews as it adds some variety and gives a voice to the athletes, the interviewer should have enough common sense to keep the conversation focused on the athlete who is diving in that moment, and only let the guests speak about themselves during a break or lull in the streaming.
It may sound harsh but it’s been many years of total commentary fails, I understand the first year or two but then we need to learn and do things better if we want the sport to become more popular. Instead we are at the same starting point of 6 years ago and that is a lot of visibility that got lost in the process.
I’m told that this year athletes that DNS are fined 300€ each because it’s bad for streaming and the visibility of the sport. I don’t disagree with the fine per se because DNS’ing is used a lot for psychological warfare during depth competitions, so I support it for reasons of fairness between athletes.
However, you are worried about no-shows looking bad in the streaming, but ignore the elephantin the room?
In my opinion there should be at least 2 or 3 commentators and they should all be experienced freedivers who know what’s going on (including in the heads of the athletes they are watching dive) and they should not only show more excitement, but especially show more knowledge of the sport and of each freediver’s background rather than repeating for each dive “now he’s freefalling”, “great flexibility”, “she got the tag” because everyone can already see that and it adds no interest to the dive or to the freediver’s character. And why not having some interesting and constructive discussion about technique that goes beyond a random comment over shoulder flexibility? Commentators who are also competitive athletes can bring their own experience to the table and start engaging in genuine conversations. And then throw in some guests, especially the big guns and those who made it to the podiums the previous days, but be able to stir the conversation in the direction you want.
It is obviously not easy to keep up something like this for 6 hours straight many days in a row, that’s why 1 person alone can’t do it, especially when it appears it was someone who got picked up from the street and put in that place last minute, like it happened way too many times before. And yes, you may need to add someone’s travel expenses and compensate them for their work, but that’s peanuts if you compare it to the astronomical budget you already spent to cover for the Diveye and copyrights.
I made fun of “the lady” but in all fairness I have a lot of sympathy for her, as I’m aware that organisers usually demand massive amounts of self-censoring: you can’t mention anything remotely controversial, not a word about doping, no criticism of any kind and total verbal and visual censorship on blackouts and rescues (basically all the things freedivers want to talk about).
And that’s why in the end it’s always just an infinite senseless sequel of positive comments about the wonderful streamlining, and shoulder flexibility, relaxation, the mind mastery, and textbook turns, especially when no effort to find out about someone’s background was previously made: when did they start freediving, do they come from another sport, how many years have they been competing, were they competing at the same event last year and how did they place, who are they in their life, do they freedive professionally or have a day job and how do they manage it all, what do their families think about what they do, what’s their plan for the rest of the season, do they also train depth, and where can we follow them on Instagram? (And maybe let them thank their sponsors sometimes, since it’s already so hard to get any kind of sponsorship).
These are some of the things that personally I would like to know when I’m watching someone, instead all I see is a person with a suit and a swim cap swimming down and up or left and right, and they all blend in. No one really stands out because without a voice and a personality we all look pretty much the same (especially in depth).
