How a start-up swimming league seeks to revolutionize the sport
Almost nothing about the International Swimming League is typical for the sport.
Neon blue, pink and purple lights flash around an otherwise dark natatorium, backlit by a giant screen behind the blocks that announces the next event, complements swimmer introductions or adds an electric ambiance. It looks more like an EDM concert than a swim meet, especially considering there's a DJ on deck. It's clearly a show - the opposite of all-day competitions that can have ample down time with several minutes between events.
Swimmer introductions are delivered with a flair more comparable to WWE, and the athletes enter the pool deck together as teammates racing for points first, rather than individuals hoping to set a personal-best time. Three dozen races are packed into two-hour sessions on back-to-back days – a typical meet can hit double-digit hours across several days – and when swimmers aren't in the water, they're engaging with fans.
Between events, some of the best swimmers on the planet lead the crowd through cheers, take photos and toss autographed swim caps up to the stands. The smaller the venue, the more intimate the interaction between the two groups is.
At the match at the University of Maryland, fans of the "home" team, the DC Trident, brought prop tridents to the pool, as the athletes had been doing all season, team general manager and four-time Olympic medalist Kaitlin Sandeno recalled. She loved that the tridents were catching on.
The ISL's seven-match inaugural season opened in October and ends with the league final Friday and Saturday at a popup pool at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The opening season was designed to show how swimming can be a flashy and entertaining spectator sport, with the help of some serious star power. And although it's still a young start-up, those involved hope the ISL can help grow swimming's fan base beyond Olympic years and create a permanent audience – while also offering swimmers a paycheck.
"The lights, the smoke, the big TVs – it's a lot of fun for me because that's the part of swimming I love, not just the racing but the whole theatrics of it. I absolutely love it," said Lilly King, a 22-year-old breaststroker who won two gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics and caught the world's attention when she trash talked and wagged her finger at a rival swimmer. She'll compete for the Cali Condors in Vegas.
"It was really unlike anything I had participated in before," said Natalie Coughlin, a member of the DC Trident whose 12 Olympic medals tie the record for most won by an American woman across all sports.
The rosters of the eight teams feature more than 100 Olympians with swimmers who combined for 41 gold medals at the Rio Games, including Americans Katie Ledecky, Nathan Adrian and Caeleb Dressel. The first season featured approximately 75 percent of reigning Olympic and world champions, according to the league.
(Three swimmers, including Hungary's Katinka Hosszú, did sue FINA, swimming's global governing body, after it tried to prevent swimmers from joining the new league. FINA threatened their Olympic eligibility if they participated in unsanctioned events, like ISL matches, and the suit argued the governing body had an illegal monopoly on international competition. Ultimately, FINA relented and allowed swimmers to compete in independent events without punishment.)
The team-oriented ISL is unlike the more traditional atmospheres of the Toyota U.S. Open earlier this month, world championships or even the Olympics. And that's the point.
Competing in an ISL event feels like a college dual meet, "just ramped up a little bit with the lights show and a DJ and really, really fast swimming," said Dressel, a 23-year-old sprinter who won eight medals (six gold) and broke Michael Phelps' 10-year-old 100-meter butterfly world record at the world championships in July. Based on how the league was pitched, the Cali Condors swimmer said the first season was exactly what he expected.
"I've been to a lot of swim meets in my life, and I can honestly say I've never been to one like this before," Sandeno said. "It was just fast-paced, go-go-go action, excitement, entertainment …
"The production value of this is just next-level. It's artistic but still competitive, and it's just electrifying. I think the timeline of a two-hour swim meet shows you the pace of it is explosive. It's one exciting race after the other, and there's no real lull, which you come across a lot in your typical swim meets."
The man behind the dream
Swimming is consistently one of the most popular Olympic sports, but just as that popularity peaks for a few weeks every four years, it plummets again for the other three years and 11 months. ISL founder Konstantin Grigorishin hopes to change that.
The Ukranian energy mogul, who had a net worth of $1.1 billion in 2015, according to Forbes, is bankrolling the league and has lofty and perhaps unrealistic goals for it. He said building the sport's international audience is about giving swimmers a new platform through which to compete and earn a living and merging it with music and art as a form of entertainment. Expanding the audience could help swimmers make "real money," he said.
"They can generate much more money than even they can imagine now," Grigorishin said.
"They can generate more money than current, very successful American leagues potentially. But it's a wait, not a very long wait, but they'll have to spend some effort and time. But eventually, they can generate more money than the NBA or NFL. Maybe it's really weird to hear this. You think that I'm mad, but we will see."
The 2019 budget was $25 million with more than $4 million allocated for prize money – awarded equally for men and women – and profits also split 50-50 between the ISL and swimmers, according to the league. Grigorishin plans to invest more for the second season, as the league is expected to expand to 10 clubs with 27 matches between September 2020 and May 2021.
Currently, the four U.S. teams are the DC Trident, Cali Condors (San Francisco), LA Current and NY Breakers, while the four European teams are the London Roar, Energy Standard (Turkey), Aqua Centurions (Italy) and the Budapest-based Iron. Each team has a roster of up to 32 swimmers.
This season matches were held in Indianapolis, Naples, Texas, Budapest, Maryland and London. Four teams competed in each match (meaning each team appeared in three over the course of the season), and then two teams from each continent advance to this weekend's championship final.
The LA Current, Cali Condors, Energy Standard and London Roar are the four teams competing to be the ISL's first champions.
"The goal of this league is to be on TV and be able to create personalities where people can follow [swimmers] all the time, versus seeing them maybe once a year at world championships or once every four years if they're watching the Olympics," said Jason Lezak, a four-time Olympian with seven medals who serves as the general manager for the Cali Condors.
'Everybody is ISLing'
Adrian, a 31-year-old three-time Olympian with eight medals, and Dressel were among those who said they didn't need any convincing to participate in a start-up league because it complements their training schedule ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
King described joining as "a pretty easy decision" because the league offered a new chance to help grow the sport while racing against some of the best swimmers in the world less than a year out from the Olympics. Comparing times and placing against international competition is a "good benchmark" for Tokyo, she said.
And as more stars around the world joined the league for the inaugural season, it became a verb, as in "Everybody is ISLing," Sandeno said.
However, the league has a strict anti-doping policy and prohibits anyone previously disqualified for doping from being on a roster.
"It was a huge movement within the swim community as a whole," said Dressel, who is in the hunt for the ISL season MVP. "It's an exciting league. It's a new opportunity to exploit ourselves and maximize our potential, and it's really fun, which is a huge plus."
The extra cash part is critical, especially for the swimmers without monster sponsorship deals.
LA Current coach David Marsh, who was the women's head coach for the 2016 Olympics and coached at Auburn from 1990 to 2007, estimated it costs at least $30,000 annually for a swimmer train at an elite level "without compromise."
So in the ISL this year, swimmers signed two contracts: One with the league for prize money and one with their respective teams for salaries. Each team had a 2019 salary cap of $25,000 per team, which Sandeno anticipates will increase next season.
"[We] have a base salary, but what's really paying the bills is how you place," King said. "So if you're swimming well, it's definitely a supplement to our current income. The swimmers who don't have huge endorsement deals or a suit deal are probably going to have to be working another job to have some other means of being supported."
Swimmers earn points for themselves and their teams based on finish - with first place getting nine and relays earning double - and prize money is correlated with points. For the best of the best, there is additional $5,000 bonus for the one MVP in each match.
Take Dressel, a versatile sprinter and the only swimmer to win multiple match MVP awards so far. At the ISL's match at Maryland in November, he won all five of his individual events and helped his team win two relays and finish third in another. He earned 61.5 total points and $19,700 in prize money, plus the MVP bonus.
Dressel was also the MVP in Naples in October, and should he win his third match MVP award in Vegas, he'll earn a $10,000 bonus.
Is a start-up swimming league sustainable?
There’s clearly an audience for a professional swimming league like this, but, as expected for a start-up, it’s a particularly small one.
Although the ISL says it’s averaging 88 percent capacity this season, the crowds aren’t substantial compared with other professional sports. The matches in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and Dallas sold out with 1,000 fans each day, with tickets ranging from $20 to $60. The Naples match was near-capacity with 1,600 fans, and Budapest had more than 2,000 people in attendance each day, according to the league. Single-session tickets for the Las Vegas final start at $42.
And if fans aren’t watching in person, there are 10 international broadcasting partners offering live and tape-delayed matches. In North America, ESPN3 and CBC stream the matches.
As the league slowly grows, Lezak said he hopes it will become easier to attract sponsors (there were none this year). Plus, the 2020 season, set to begin in September, should be able to piggyback off the Olympics.
If the ISL takes off, Sandeno speculated about some swimmers possibly forgoing college if they could make a living immediately simply by competing.
“If it goes the way they’re planning, it could potentially completely restructure the sport,” King said.
“It’s definitely a risk, but it’s been well done and they have a vision for it and a plan for what’s going to happen in the future. So if you’re a gazillionaire and want to invest in Olympic athletes, I’m all down for that.”