I started filming ultimate in 2010 and I have had the privilege of traveling all over the world to film the sport I love. Ultimate is spectacular, and has the potential to be a great broadcast product that brings money into the sport. Let me explain why this is a good thing and how it relates to the WUGC Kickstarter.

Chicken and the egg

So before we went for the Kickstarter option, we were out hustling sponsors. We got a direct “No” from Nike and many other possible partners. The feedback was we didn’t have the viewer numbers or history to justify their monetary support.

We need sponsorship money to produce a great broadcast, but we need a great broadcast product and viewers to get sponsorship.

WCBU 2015 was great. Why do we need $75K for WUGC?

As you may recall, WCBU in Dubai had fantastic coverage and set the bar for what production of our sport can look like. To make that happen, Dubai Sports brought a $7 million USD broadcast truck, 6 cameras and crew to the beach for $0. Just a single lense on one of their cameras was worth more than all the equipment Skyd took to WUCC in 2014.

It would not be totally stupid to move all ultimate events to Dubai for the next 5 years. But I don’t think that is the solution.

Luckily, to reach the level of quality in Dubai, we don’t need a $7 million dollar budget, we need far, far less. Our intention is to go above and beyond that production with the support of the funds raised in Kickstarter.

If we don’t hit our proposed goal, quite frankly, we will probably work out a way to stream something (we don’t know what). But it will be more of the same shoestring budget we have done in the past, and it’s simply not going to inspire sponsors to get on board next time.

I am happy with how ultimate is growing, I don’t feel the need to contribute to this campaign

I totally get this point of view, ultimate is going gangbusters. However, ultimate is an unfair sport.

In many other sports, if you have the skills and talent you get selected and paid to play (or at least expenses covered.) To play in a representative ultimate team at WUGC you need skills, talent and MONEY! If you have skills, talent and you don’t have the $$$ you don’t play. It’s no surprise that we’ve seen so many individuals and even teams take to crowd-funding in order to even attend London this summer.

Top level players work their asses off to play at such a high level and compete at the World Championships. Imagine if with the broadcast revenue from WUGC we could eliminate player fees, pay for the travel expenses of players or even pay them a small amount for their efforts.

This is what I believe we are working towards with Kickstarter and our broadcast plan. This is the main reason why we as a community should get together and contribute.

As of writing we are almost a ⅓ of the way there, please do not wait until the last minute to chip in. If we can get close to the $75K before the end of the campaign we have some exciting stretch goals we can go for too.

So do not delay, pull out your credit card, go to the site and chip in what you can. Let’s change the path of our sport for a fairer future.

Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1044184606/share-the-sport-of-ultimate-with-the-world