Following this week's unveiling of the International Swimming League’s (ISL) final teams and athletes for its inaugural season, which gets underway this October, here’s everything you need to know about the upstart competition.

What’s the format?

Promising ‘a dynamic, fast-paced team competition format’, the ISL comprises eight franchises - four in the US, four in Europe - with each team representing a major city and featuring 24 swimmers - 12 men and 12 women. Swimmers from each team will compete for points in each race, which will be staged in sprint, relay and skin formats.

A total of seven meets will be held in season one, alternating between cities on both sides of the Atlantic and beginning in Indianapolis on 4th and 5th October. After subsequent events in Naples, Dallas, Budapest, Washington DC and London, a final showdown will take place on 20th and 21st December at a custom-built pool inside the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

Any records set in ISL competition will not stand, however. After initially threatening bans for ISL participants, the sport’s global governing body, Fina, has said ‘swimmers are free to participate in competitions or events staged by independent organisers’, but that no results will be recognised.

Who’s competing?

Around 200 swimmers have signed up to compete in what will be swimming’s first professional league. The multinational rosters for the debut campaign feature multiple Olympic and world champions, both past and present, as well as a mix of recent National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) graduates and rising stars from around the world.

Aqua Centurions

City: Rome

General manager: Alessandra Guerra

Selected athletes: Federica Pellegrini, László Cseh, Gabriele Detti

Cali Condors

City: San Francisco

General manager: Jason Lezak

Selected athletes: Lilly King, Kylie Masse, Ariarne Titmus

DC Trident

City: Washington DC

General manager: Kaitlin Sandeno

Selected athletes: Katie Ledecky, Natalie Coughlin, Anika Apostalon

Energy Standard

City: Paris

General manager: James Gibson

Selected athletes: Sarah Sjöström, Chad le Clos, Florent Manaudou, Penny Oleksiak

LA Current

City: Los Angeles

General manager: Lenny Krayzelburg

Selected athletes: Ryan Murphy, Tom Shields, Leah Smith

NY Breakers

City: New York City

General manager: Tina Andrew

Selected athletes: Lia Neal, Emily Overholt, Clyde Lewis, Michael Andrew

London Roar

City: London

General manager: Rob Woodhouse

Selected athletes: Adam Peaty, Cate Campbell, Sydney Pickrem, Kyle Chalmers, James Guy

Great to have signed as an ambassador for @SwimISL and to have joined the @ISL_LondonTeam with many other Olympic Champions. It’s going to bring something the sport has needed for a long time! pic.twitter.com/RQIwmYUjYQ — Adam Peaty MBE (@adam_peaty) March 7, 2019

Team Iron

City: Budapest

General manager: Dorina Szekeres

Selected athletes: Katinka Hosszú, Peter John Stevens, Kira Toussaint, Alia Atkinson

What’s the league hoping to achieve?

In an interview with SportsPro earlier this year, Konstantin Grigorishin, the ISL’s founder and financier, spoke of bringing about a “paradigm shift” in swimming, a sport he believes harbours huge untapped commercial potential but which has long suffered from inertia on the part of Fina.

Grigorishin, a wealthy businessman who heads up Energy Standard, the Ukrainian utilities firm that has lent its name to the ISL’s Paris outfit, insists his upstart league will put athletes first, offering previously unavailable earning opportunities and providing a platform for them to showcase their talents on an international stage outside of the Olympic Games and the biennial Fina World Aquatics Championships.

As such, every ISL competitor will have access to financial benefits, including substantial prize money, personal insurance and pension plans. Each of them will have signed two contracts - one with their team and another with the league - with central revenues, generated through sales of sponsorship, media rights and merchandise, distributed equitably.

“There are a number of payment mechanisms,” explained Ali Khan, the ISL’s chief executive, during a recent media call. “There’s appearance money that all athletes will receive, there will be prize money that the teams will be competing for, and there’s a revenue-sharing agreement with the league itself.

“It’s quite a unique set of commercial terms that swimmers have never experienced before, and I think apart from the competitive spirit that is clearly evident today amongst the teams, there is certainly a commercial prize to be had for all the swimmers competing in a way they’ve never achieved or had access to before.”

Gender parity is also central to the ISL’s mission. With equal representation on each team, men and women will receive the same prize money. Each team will pay its swimmers from a total salary budget of US$150,000, with additional cash bonuses on offer based on performance.

“The bottom line is there’s no difference,” said Khan. “It’s about performance. There is no relevance to gender here. There’s no discount or premium, and that’s very important.”

What are the athletes saying?

It’s been cool to be involved behind the scenes. I remember the first time meeting Konstantin and Ali last August. As they pitched this idea to me, their question was: ‘So do you think that athletes are going to want to do this?’ My reaction right away was ‘yes’. A lot of athletes have been clamouring to try to organise swimming, to elevate the profile of swimming, and I think ISL is giving us the best opportunity to do that. I’m really excited to see where this is going to head, both from the perspective of raising the profile of the sport, and allowing us to make a career out of swimming. Ryan Murphy, three-time Olympic gold medalist and men's 100-metre backstroke world record holder, LA Current

I’m very excited to be part of this huge movement. I know that we are going to change a lot of things in the sport of swimming. For me, it’s more like a double excitement because I’m an owner of Team Iron and a swimmer in Team Iron, so I see how both sides and how everything unfolds. Katinka Hosszú, three-time Olympic champion and seven-time long-course world champion, Team Iron

Everything that we do now is just in preparation for the future of swimming and making it more of a professional sport that can be mentioned alongside the NFL or NBA, and hopefully get to that calibre. Because swimmers put a lot of time into what they do and it’s about time that they do get the payoff for it. Lia Neal, two-time Olympic medalist, NY Breakers

It’s going to be bringing in an audience that never really knew how exciting swimming could be. I think the ISL changes the mould - it takes an old mould and they make it better by being extremely bold with competitions and making a show out of it. I’ve been known for doing things very differently - I started swimming professionally as a 14-year-old - and I think the ISL is doing much the same, going a very untraditional path. I’m just super stoked to see where it all goes because I know it’s going to be massive. Michael Andrew, 100 metre individual medley world champion, NY Breakers

Will the league be a success?

As ever with an upstart sports league, the key barometer for success will be longevity - and in that sense only time will tell whether the ISL can achieve what it has set out to accomplish.

The level of athlete support for the league is certainly impressive, as evidenced by the big-name stars signed up to participate, while swimming’s estimated 300 million regular participants worldwide provide a ready-made fanbase. Yet building the business sustainably and garnering widespread exposure will be a challenge, not least in the current media landscape.

Prior to launch, details regarding the composition of the league have been sketchy and plans have changed several times over the past few months, but that is to be expected given this venture is starting from scratch. The big question concerns whether the ISL can live up to its lofty ambitions of championing athlete rights and growing mainstream interest in swimming outside of Olympic years - something many other established sports on the Games programme have found it difficult to do.

Much of the focus ahead of the launch of the ISL has centred on its legal disputes with Fina

Much of the focus ahead of the launch of the ISL, particularly within the media, has centred on its legal disputes with Fina, which clearly has its own ideas when it comes to boosting swimming’s commercial potential away from the Olympics. Those spats have made for easy headlines and positioned the ISL as an intriguing, anti-establishment conversation piece, but they are unlikely to be enough to drive viewership, generate relevance and sustain fan interest in the long-term.

For that to happen, aside from continued athlete support, top quality production value will be paramount. If the live event presentation and the standards of broadcast coverage fail to not match the quality of the talent in the pool, the ISL will struggle to convince even the most ardent swimming supporters of its sporting merits.

More broadly, though, the launch of this type of rebel league could well be a sign of things to come. It is no secret that the athlete voice is growing in volume as sport’s standout performers aim to assert their collective influence, with movements like the recently created Global Athlete calling for sportsmen and women to have a greater say in decision-making at the highest levels of governance.

In that sense, the athlete-fronted ISL is already delivering. At a time when talk of breakaway leagues and rival competitions has resurfaced across multiple Olympic sports, many governing bodies and private investors will be watching how the league fares with interest.