Fencing is without doubt one of the oldest sports activities in Olympic historical past. It’s additionally one of many least watched domestically. Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, is on a mission to vary that, and with the 2028 Los Angeles Video games on the horizon, he’s working out of time. In a masterclass in scrappy model constructing, he shares how he’s constructing a sports activities model with virtually no price range and no marketing playbook, cold-calling CMOs, crashing Comedian-Con, and convincing Snoop Dogg and Taste Flav to choose up a sword.
That is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the previous editor-in-chief of Quick Firm Bob Safian. From the staff behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Speedy Response options candid conversations with in the present day’s prime enterprise leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Speedy Response wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you by no means miss an episode.
Within the lead-up to the 2028 Olympics in LA, you’ve been advocating for sports activities like fencing that get much less consideration, despite the fact that it’s rising, as you say, to band collectively. You pulled collectively 5 sports activities into what you name the United Sports activities Collective. That’s fencing, squash, biking, crusing, and rowing. This kind of collaboration doesn’t usually occur, as I perceive it?
No. Traditionally, nationwide governing our bodies, and to provide a really transient rationalization, a corporation referred to as the Worldwide Olympic Committee, or the IOC, owns and operates the Olympic Video games, and there’s the IPC for the Paralympic Video games. Beneath that, you’ve acquired a world federation that manages every sport all over the world, and so they primarily write the foundations and maintain world championships. Then every sport has a corporation — on this case, U.S.A. Fencing — that runs the game domestically. Traditionally, nationwide governing our bodies, or NGBs, haven’t actually labored collectively very intently. So once we based the USC, and we’ve now added lacrosse to that group, the concept was to collaborate extra, significantly round business partnerships. That’s how we began it, but it surely’s really changed into a little bit of a best-practices unit the place now we have very related demographics throughout these nationwide governing our bodies, and we face comparatively related issues.
So you’re employed collectively to lift cash, and also you’re additionally sharing details about what’s working for you.
Completely. After all, we’re nonetheless doing that individually as U.S.A. Fencing, as U.S. Rowing and as U.S.A. Biking, but it surely’s an ideal place for us to have the ability to alternate concepts and leads. Particularly when you consider the business panorama, when you consider, “I want to focus on X demographic,” you don’t assume, “I wish to goal a rower or a squash participant or a lacrosse participant or a fencer.” You assume, “I wish to goal the demographic that works for my enterprise.” So as a rule, there’s a possibility the place we could be stronger collectively throughout these completely different nationwide governing our bodies. Equally, we are able to alternate what’s working in rowing and what’s working in fencing, and generally these gained’t be the identical factor. Generally it’s good info that makes you assume, “Oh, wait, that’s an ideal concept. I can adapt that for what I’m doing in rowing or what I’m doing in biking or what I’m doing in lacrosse,” for instance.
As I perceive it, you used to run U.S.A. Weightlifting.
I did.
You didn’t do that there. U.S.A. Weightlifting is just not one in all these packages that’s a part of this. So for the sports activities which are a part of this grouping, what are the same challenges they’ve? What are the same demographics?
If you consider rowing, fencing, crusing, and maybe squash and lacrosse as properly, we’re all nationwide organizations, however now we have a deal with the Northeast. We’re strongest in New York Metropolis, Boston, DC and Philadelphia, and that’s frequent throughout these organizations. They’re additionally NCAA-focused, collegiate-focused organizations. To speak about U.S.A. Weightlifting, it was a beautiful expertise spending 10 years in that sport, and I like that group, but it surely’s very completely different from fencing, each in the way in which that we’re arrange geographically and, frankly, within the affluence and demographics of the game. We’ve acquired much more in frequent as U.S.A. Fencing with U.S. Rowing than we essentially do with U.S.A. Weightlifting, which can even have extra in frequent with U.S.A. Boxing or U.S.A. Judo than it has with us.
Hollywood could also be a main cultural heart for swordplay. How does that assist or influence your advertising efforts? Are you actively cultivating that? Would you like fencing to have its F1 second?
We’re utilizing each device that we are able to on this fantastic window now we have, the place there’s heightened curiosity within the Olympic and Paralympic Video games forward of a house U.S. Video games. Notably now following the World Cup, I believe that pleasure’s solely elevated. We’ve acquired a database we put collectively of over 600 individuals who have wielded a blade in a movie, and also you see an attention-grabbing variety of fencers really come into the artistic industries who had been reputable highschool or faculty fencers. So folks like Jerry O’Connell, Angelina Jolie and Greta Gerwig had been really fencers as children, who went via our system after which went on to be, after all, who they’re in the present day.
And there’s really a duel in Star Wars the place it briefly goes from being what we all know as lightsaber, that typical kind of very broad motion, to being precise épée. And that’s as a result of Bob Anderson, who was an Olympian in fencing, a British Olympian, was the primary individual behind Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars and so forth. He and a colleague of his, Nick Gillard, primarily invented lightsaber from a mixture of sabre and épée. I believe it’s in Revenge of the Sith — I could be incorrect in saying that — however they really change it to épée briefly between Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen. And also you’re proper, we’re leaning into that. Now we have ambassadors, folks like Mandy Patinkin, after all well-known for Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, during to folks like Orlando Bloom, who after all performed Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Yeah, and when there’s a cultural phenomenon like Ok-pop demon hunters who use swords, does that encourage children to say, “I wish to be a fencer”?
It does.
As you look forward to the 2028 Olympics, what would a profitable Video games seem like for you, for USA Fencing?
The primary is the apparent one: the sector of play. We wish to do properly. We wish to win. We’ve acquired an ideal staff. We’re defending Olympic champions, defending world champions, and in order that’s thrilling. On the enterprise facet, we ranked sixth for earned media out of the sports activities in Paris, up from twelfth in Tokyo. A variety of that got here via relationship constructing. It got here via constructing relationships with individuals who can carry eyeballs to us. So the primary sport that Snoop Dogg tried on the Video games was fencing, and we had a big half in making that occur. Taste Flav fenced, and a part of that was he needed tickets to foil. So we mentioned, “Nice. You now have to fence Lawrence Scruggs.” To my shock, he mentioned, “Nice. I’m in.” So he did. Lots of people noticed fencing, in addition to our constructing conventional media relationships with NBC, ABC, CNN and so forth. The most important alternative that lies earlier than us is that this distinctive pleasure for sport within the subsequent 10 years in the USA, however significantly across the Los Angeles Video games for us. We wish to see medals, certain.
Then we wish to see these medals and people experiences translate into folks going, “Wow, that’s impressed me, and it is a sport that speaks to me, and I wish to go and check out it.” The large catchphrase for the London 2012 Video games was inspiring a technology. It doesn’t occur by chance. You’ve acquired to be deliberate about it, and that’s our job. LA28 is just not going to do it for us. They’re going to be a part of it. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is just not going to do it for us. NBC isn’t going to do it for us. It’s our job, USA Fencing, to exit and ensure we encourage the subsequent technology of fencers for the USA.
