We have live route setting. The resetting will
be done during the competition, between rounds.
Yeah, I would say we'll keep the whole climber
in view. We won't be having close -ups at the
key moments, which I know drives people crazy
on a lot of comps. And as I say, I'm not this
kind of rabid capitalist trying to nail climbing
and milk as much money as we can out of it. But
if you want to pay... an athlete 100 grand to
win an event that 100 grand has to come from
somewhere it's not going to come from thin air
we want to go to big cities big arenas i want
to go to madison square garden i'll throw that
out there right now i think we should be you
know we want to get in the garden we want to
get in wembley arena we want to be in staples
center in la we want to go really big Welcome
to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing
Podcast. I'm your host, Jinni, and I'm excited
to introduce my guest for today, Charlie Boscoe.
This is Charlie's second time on the podcast,
and this time he's back with a big announcement.
For those who aren't familiar, Charlie preceded
Matt Groom as the IFSC slash world climbing commentator.
This time, he's back to talk about the brand
new competition series, Pro Climbing League.
In this episode, we'll go over all the details
of what a PCL competition will look like, the
challenges they faced the past five years putting
this together, and I'm diving into all of the
finances as well. I hope you enjoy this episode
with Charlie. Thank you. Please pardon this brief
intermission, but I'm excited to talk about Madrock's
newest and softest shoe yet, the Remora Pro.
If you like being able to feel the chips you're
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then this is the soft shoe for you. They also
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have any questions about the shoes or sizing,
and you can use the discount code NOTREALCLIMBER
for 10 % off your entire Mad Rock order. Thank
you to Mad Rock for helping to sponsor the podcast.
Now back to the show. Well, how are you doing
today? Any holiday plans for you? Yeah, a bit
of skiing, a bit of family time, friends and
family, skiing. That's about it. Pretty quiet
Christmas. Just got back from the Netherlands,
so I'm feeling pretty worked. Ah, for work or?
Yeah, we had a PCL test event. Okay. Yes. So
I didn't, is there like anything about that online
or is it like a download test event? Not at all.
Not at all. About the test event. Well, like,
is it filmed anywhere or is there any like video
to see? Yeah, we took some footage. Other media
outlets were there. Red Bull were there. So no,
definitely nothing secretive about it. It was
at a place called Grip. uh in nijmegen in the
on the german border and it was great super productive
but so busy horribly busy but that's fine did
it go well it went great yeah we learned a lot
um we were testing everything from format to
route setting style camera different camera setups
um yeah it's great okay we'll have a question
about that later so we'll definitely get into
that yeah sure But yeah, before we get too deep
into those things, for those who don't know you
super well, what's your background in the comp
climbing community? I started out in terms of
comp climbing, working for Epic TV and presenting
their climbing daily show. And I went to some
World Cups and I thought, oh, this is cool. I
like this. So I ended up getting a job at the
IFSC. Since renamed World Climbing, I will probably
make that mistake. Same, yeah. Ten times on this
podcast. Okay. Yeah. Ended up working at the
IFSC for five years as their lead presenter and
commentator on the World Cups, World Championships,
Youth World Championships, anything they broadcast,
I was talking over. And then stopped that in
2020 when COVID came along and still do some
freelance commentary, done a couple of Arco Rockmasters,
a couple of Red Bull Dual Ascents in Switzerland.
and have also been working on the recently launched
Pro Climbing League. I guess now that I think
about it, did you leave IFSC slash World Climbing
to focus on the Pro Climbing League? No, no,
I didn't. I think we talked about this last time,
but I, yeah, I just, five years just felt like
a logical time to do it. It's a very tiring job,
a lot of travel, time away. And I just... felt
like I'd kind of done it and every season was
still enjoyable but it didn't have quite the
same feeling of this huge challenge that it did
the first year. I was kind of comfortable and
that has its place in life but I just felt like
I was ready for it. a new challenge so i think
that when i started ifsc i always had in the
back of my mind that i'd do it for five years
because that was i started in 2016 and five years
later would have been the olympics climbing's
first olympics so it was always kind of this
logical time to stop and as time went by i'd
still seem like the right right time to stop
and then it was the right time to start actually
looking into the pro climbing league stuff that's
when it started Yeah, I would say looking into
is the correct terminology. I think five years
ago, we thought we knew how to run the climbing
league. And much of the last five years has been
taking it up with realizing how little we knew
then. And hopefully we know a little bit more
now. But yeah, it's been a long process, much
longer than I could ever have envisaged when
we started out on it. it's there's something
great there's something wonderful about the kind
of naivety and optimism of just thinking we could
start a professional climbing league it can't
be that hard it turns out it is pretty hard but
you can do it if you keep going yeah so for people
who don't know too much about pro climbing league
or haven't heard about it i guess what's the
what's the gist of it what's the overview okay
so the ifsc world cups and the competitions they
run are great however i just felt We just felt
that there was space for something else alongside
it. A new format, a new business model, a new
way of broadcasting. Really, we took apart everything
that currently exists in competition climbing
and we said, how could you make this better?
And the Pro Climbing League is the result of
that conversation. Now, without wishing to state
the obvious, that conversation was pretty long
and it involved literally hundreds of people
whose opinions we asked. whose advice we sought.
But it is basically a new comp series with every
element of what comps currently are studied and
ideally made a little bit better or at least
tweaked. So it's completely different from what
IFSC slash world climbing do. And it's designed
to run alongside that, but just offer something
different to people. If it's going to run alongside
IFSC, it's going to be like separate dates or
like season from the world climbing season? I
don't know. Maybe we just call it IFSC. Okay,
okay. No, no, I'm kidding. Next time. I'm trying
to get into the habit. I'm trying. Yeah, we're
going to have multiple events. So London on the
28th of February is the debut, but there'll be
lots more across the States, Asia, mainland Europe.
There's a lot more events to come, but they will
be outside the IFSC's season. Okay, that makes
sense. So what will the format look like? Okay,
so the format is head -to -head. And the way
it works is that we have two identical boulders.
So if I was competing against you, it's whoever
gets to the top first is a winner. If no one
gets to the top, it's who got to the highest
hold. And if we both got to the same hold...
Whoever got there first is the winner. So head
-to -head formats have sometimes had a hard time
because people think it's speed bouldering. And
Adidas Rockstars, which was a good example of
a head -to -head format, I went to several times
and it was fantastic. It was an amazing event.
But they had a head -to -head boulder to finish
and they put a buzzer on top and... If you have
a buzzer, you have to have someone who presses
it. And if you have to have someone who presses
it, you have to have someone who tops. And so
therefore the boulders were generally pretty
easy. And it was really who climbed it fastest.
And we want to avoid that. It's not speed bouldering.
It's hard climbing. It just happens that instead
of you going, then me going, then the next person
going, two of us are side by side. But it doesn't,
yeah, it's definitely not speed bouldering. It's
hard climbing. But with two climbers on the wall
at the same time and a head -to -head for that.
How many boulders per round, I guess? Yeah, so
there are eight. This is per gender. Eight climbers
per gender. You get paired up, so we have a seeding.
competition the day before that's behind closed
doors that's not broadcast but we see the climbers
the day before so we get paired up so again for
example me and you would be paired together by
the way we have a men's and a women's categories
it's not mixed but for the purposes of this podcast
we would get paired up and we would compete on
a best of three boulders and whoever wins two
of the boulders progresses to the semi -final
And then the semi -final is just one boulder.
So you'd be head to head against whoever. So
if you won our pair, for example, in round one,
you would get paired up against the winner of
another pair on the semi -final. And that basically
determines who's going to go into the small final,
third, fourth run, and the big final, which is
first and second. But they're different boulders.
Obviously, you have the three boulders in the
qualifying round. The semi -final is then a different
boulder. The small final is a different boulder.
And the big final is also a different boulder.
So to win, you have to win at least four boulders.
But it could be five, depending on how the qualification
round goes, if you win 2 -0 or 2 -1. Okay. Is
qualification and semis and finals all in a row,
like on the same day? Yeah, it's all in one event.
So we'll do one gender's qualifying round, round
one, another gender, and then all the knockout
rounds. For example, it'd be the men's semis,
then small final, then big final. And then it'd
be the women's afterwards, women's semis, women's
small final, women's big final. Do you need like
a ton of wall space? Like it's all going to be
set at the same time? We have live route setting.
Oh, wow. So the route setting, the resetting
will be done during the competition between rounds,
which as I'm sure you are currently contemplating
involves. quite quick changeovers. And this is
something that we're working on. It's one of
the things we were studying in the Netherlands
at GRIP was how do we get that process to be
quicker? How do we make it super accurate? Just
trying to improve our systems around that. And
we've done a lot of work on it and made a lot
of progress. So those route setting breaks will
be remarkably quick. It's pretty amazing how
quick you can go. And I actually think it's quite
a cool element of the competition. I think people
in the arena and to an extent people at home
watching the broadcast will enjoy watching that
element of it. I guess, like, how do you keep
people engaged during that break? Are you going
to be commentating? No. Oh, okay. I think it's
a little bit too much to be heavily involved
with the organization and then having to commentate.
I'm not sure that I could combine both those
things. Yeah. But... So we've got a few ways
of, I guess you'd call it gamifying those reset
breaks and making them engaging to watch. The
flow of the show at times, we'll want to focus
on that route setting. At other times, we might
want to take people's attention away, people
in the arena. At some stage, you need a break.
So some of the resetting breaks will be kind
of engaging with that process. And other times,
we might not engage with it and people just go
and grab a beer and have a break. But it's amazing
how fast you can change boulders with the skill
team. How much time does it take? I would say
with enough well -trained people, you can get
all three duplicated boulders. So we have three
walls. Each will have two boulders on it, like
one boulder duplicated. So effectively, it's
six boulders, albeit three times two. We reckon
we can change the whole lot in 10 minutes. Okay.
Which when we first tried it seemed ridiculous.
But actually, yeah, we've done a lot of work
to bring that time back. Yeah. I mean, I could
see it. I mean, you already know where the holds
are going to go. And then if you just have like
a bunch of people, it seems doable. It's a bunch
of people who are well organized and know the
boulders as well. Because you've got to think
you've got to put start tape on. You've got to
put a disc saying top with tape at the top. you're
potentially moving volumes you're going up and
down the ladder you've got to make sure there
are no screws left on the stage um so you can't
if you drop any screws that have got to get picked
up it's all these little details but it's actually
really it's been really fun and actually really
satisfying figuring that process out i'm sure
it'll get faster too it's kind of like the f1
tire changing process it seems like Yeah, exactly.
I think the record for changing four tires on
an F1 car is under two seconds now. So that'd
be cool to see. I think two second bold changes
may be a little bit beyond us right now, but
never say never. It'll be interesting to see.
I could see people finding just the whole changeover
process cool to watch. Yeah, well, I think climbers
are interested in route setting. Any route setting
video always does well. And it's kind of this...
It's like this mystique around route setting
because it's a creative science. It's science,
but it's also completely creative. So it's a
really fascinating process, route setting. And
especially when you see over a dozen people descend
on the stage and quickly swap out six boulders.
I think that's really cool to watch. And I've
watched it a few times, but to see it with a
crowd, I think it's going to be... really really
exciting yeah yeah that'll be cool and then you
said that there are eight athletes per gender
i guess like how did they get chosen or like
in the future if this becomes a bigger thing
how do people become one of the eight people
who get to attend so right now it's invitation
only um just because when you've only got eight
each side if we went down the road of trying
to qualify people then suddenly we've got to
organize qualification events There's a whole
lot that comes along with that. So for now, it's
invitation only. We will invite seven people
per gender. And then there's actually going to
be a wildcard event in London, the details of
which are now on social media at Pro Climbing
League, where you can qualify and grab that eighth
spot. And they are more or less open. So somebody
is going to qualify for the event. wow yeah i
know how cool is that how cool is that i mean
i i love that but longer term what we would love
to have is a pyramid system whereby i don't know
for people that watch a free ride world tour
the skiing it's probably a good example of it
but at the top you have pcl maybe below it there's
tier one tier two three four and going down and
we would love to have events more or less in
every gym in the world that had a clear pathway
into qualifying for the PCL. So kind of like
you have in European soccer, if you play in the
North London Sunday League or whatever, in theory,
if you keep getting promoted, you keep winning
the league and you keep going tier by tier, you
can end up in the Premier League. We would love
to have that in the PCL and that's kind of the
longer term goal is that there are qualifications
all over the world and you qualify for your regional,
then your national, then the PCL qualifying.
But not right now. That's a lot to set up. Oh,
yeah, yeah, for sure. That'd be cool. Anyone
need buying from all the gyms? Yeah, there's
work to do around that. But, yeah, longer term,
we'd like a qualification system, I think. It's
to be decided how we do it. I would like, I think,
like Freeride World Tour, a few people you invite,
a few people qualify, and maybe a local wildcard
every week, something like that. Cool. So should
I like fly out to London and try to compete and
get in? You totally should. Yeah, that's exactly
the kind of thing we're looking for. I mean,
how good would it be if the wildcard won? I think
that'd be amazing. If I became the wildcard?
No way. No shot. I don't think so. I don't know.
I'm not sure this Janja. What's her name? Garnibre?
I think so. Yeah, something like that. You think
I could beat her? Wow, I'd die. Maybe she's not
all she's cracked up to be. I mean, till you
try, you don't know. I saw her climb a couple
of times and she looked pretty impressive to
me, but... Okay, we'll see. Hey, you've got to
be in it to win it. I think maybe if everyone
mysteriously gets super injured, I'll have a
shot. Yeah, I mean, that's really my only shot
of winning a PCL event is like mass sickness
or some sort of... mass casualty event which
means i'm the only person with two functioning
arms i think other than that but you wouldn't
be allowed to compete yeah we should check actually
we haven't written any rules around that i don't
think we have a rule saying pcl employees can't
compete so maybe maybe i should dust my shoes
off you said you're even too busy to commentate
so i don't think you really have the time to
compete yeah but now you got me dreaming now
so if people want to watch you compete how do
people watch if they want to watch me compete
They'll need to fall asleep and have a very specific
dream. Okay. If they want to see professional
climbers compete, then the whole thing will be
broadcast on Red Bull TV. Or, if you're in London,
even better, buy a ticket. Yeah. The tickets
go on sale 8th of January. Okay, yes, that's
coming up soon. Is there anything that you feel
like... Thinking back on when you were commentating
for IFSC World Climbing, is there anything that
really irritated you at that time about things
they did or decisions they had made that you
kind of now understand going through the process
of setting up a competition yourself? That's
a good question. I think the overall understanding
of how hard it is to put on a climbing comp comes,
it's so easy to watch the IFSC and go... Why
doesn't the cameraman show us the angle we want
to see? Why is that boulder set that way? Oh,
it's so obvious that the zone should be the hole
before. It's so obvious that all this stuff.
And actually, once you start dealing with the
challenges of setting up a climbing comp, I probably
have a lot more empathy for how challenging it
is. We all think we could do better, right? We
all. Think, well, if I had a comp, this would
be the format and I broadcast it this way and
these would be the athletes and these would be
the sponsors and these would be the holes I've
used and we'd have this type of boulder wrap.
And that's great and that's exactly what we thought.
But then you actually start running into financial
reality and you actually start running into the
politics of who will and won't work together.
You start running into how sponsors get rewarded
and actually you can't. build the sponsorship
model you thought you could build and you can't
build the format you thought you could build
because of a million logistical issues so i would
say anything that did frustrate me i have definitely
become more empathetic about because it's it's
bloody hard to make a climbing competition was
there any like specific like example you can
think of where it was like wow egg on my face
kind of experience I'd say the venues would be
one of them. Because some of the venues we went
to at the World Cups, you think, oh, it's not
a great venue. But actually, venues are really
expensive. It costs so much to rent a venue.
So if it costs so much, someone's got to pay
for it. So how do you make enough money to pay
for a venue? And actually, you can't just say,
well, let's just go in. Wembley Arena in London
let's just go into Madison Square Garden doesn't
work like that it's really expensive and logistically
challenging to get in and out of those places
not just in terms of hiring them out but the
logistics of how you get your walls in there
that's challenging the logistics of how you sell
tickets and where you sell tickets and how much
you price them that's all really challenging
so I think yeah probably venues is the one where
I often Not often. I sometimes thought that the
venues we were using weren't great. But now,
having tried to find my own venues, I appreciate
that that's not as easy as it might seem. And
there's an awful lot more that goes into it than
where would be a really cool venue. What were
some of the costs you saw for certain venues?
I think that information may not be publicly
available, but we are talking, no, we're talking,
it's tens of thousands of pounds, euros per day.
multiple tens of thousands per day for any decent
venue um and one of the challenges is you've
got to pay for it before your event so if you're
counting on selling the tickets it won't work
because you don't get your ticket money till
after the event you've got to pay for the arena
beforehand so there's all these kind of logistical
issues that when you're dreaming of how you would
do things perhaps you don't think about i know
we were guilty of not thinking about it i mean
i remember thinking well we'll find an arena
that seats 10 000 people you know because i remember
uh ifsc as it was then sold out the biggest arena
in paris um 12 000 seats in 2012 and they did
it again in 2016 and i went to it and to be in
an arena with 12 000 people watching climate's
pretty awesome so we And naively, I just thought,
well, let's get an arena, 10 ,000 seats, 50 pounds
a seat. You've got 500 grand, half a million
bucks. Yeah, that's plenty. It doesn't really
work that way because you've got to stump up
the cash to pay for the arena. You've actually
got far more expenses than you think. You've
got to bring a wall in. You've got to buy holds,
route setters, staff, all the expenses of people
staying in that city. It's not quite as simple
as saying if we sell 10 ,000 tickets at 50 pounds
each, we've got enough money to run our event.
Sadly, we pretty quickly learned that that is
not the simple mathematic equation it might appear.
I definitely want to go more into financials
in a bit later. depending on how willing you
are to talk about all the things that go into
the financials. But before we get into that,
just more about the whole planning process. What
sparked the idea for this? I think when your
job is to go to loads of events, you can't help
but think about what you do to improve them.
And that was just something I always thought
about everywhere we went. Just naturally. you're
curious i'm curious and i'll be looking there
and thinking wow i would have put the stage over
here or i would have done it this way or i feel
like the comps go a bit quiet in this stage of
the format so if i had a format i would try and
get rid of that element of it so if you take
the format as an example um we kind of looked
at all three disciplines of climbing and wrote
down what's good about them what's bad about
them okay how do we keep the three columns of
good and get rid of the three columns of bad
and you can't do it entirely but how do we kind
of take the best thing about lead the best thing
about speed the best thing about boulder and
put them in one format and we had so many iterations
of our format um some of which have made it through
to the final version and some of which haven't
um but yeah i would say i don't remember what
your question was actually but uh how it came
about how it came now yeah um And I think it's
just that process organically of thinking about
how would I change this if you could do it differently?
And I would say the World Cups are great. I went
to 100. They're really good. But I just felt
there was space for something else. And that's
all this is. It's not us. It sounds like I'm
kind of finding fault with the World Cups. It's
not that. It's just saying if I had a blank slate,
which obviously IFSC don't because... They're
an established organization who are tied into
member federations and the international Olympic
committee. But if I had a blank slate, what would
I do? And that was more me philosophizing. And
then I met Dan and he kind of had a lot of the
same thoughts and we just started talking about
it. And one thing I would say about this whole
thing is that there's this insane power to actually
starting something versus having it in your own
head. So it probably sounds a bit of an unrelated
example, but I saw a documentary about a guy
who wanted to see kayak from Australia to New
Zealand. And his best friend said, now we all
know that's impossible. You can't do that, right?
He goes, but you sit in the pub and order a round
of beers and start saying, okay, if you did do
it, how would you do it? It actually, in a very
funny way, it makes it possible. because you're
actually starting to solve the problems. You're
saying, okay, well, you can't do it. But how
long would it take? It'd take 21 days. Well,
if you're going for 21 days, you'd have to tow
something behind the kayak. Okay, well, if you're
going to tow something, what would you tow? What
would it look like? How would it work? And you
actually start making it possible by the act
of discussing it, if that makes sense. And that's,
I think, that when I saw that documentary, it
resonated with me because I thought, Oh yeah,
that's kind of what happened to us. When I look
at what we've finally managed to put together
and how long it's taken, it essentially was impossible.
But there's just this incredible strength to
just starting to talk about it. Because as soon
as you start talking about it, you start saying,
okay, obviously we can't start climbing, but
if we did, what would your format be? we can't
start a climbing league but if we did what venues
would you go to we can't start a climbing league
but if we did how who would you invite suddenly
you start putting these pieces together so that's
been pretty remarkable is is the power of actually
just getting started on something did he do it
uh he uh he made it into new zealand waters and
capsized and they found the boat they didn't
find him yeah wait so he doesn't he's dead He
died, yeah, he died on it, but he made it. He
was in sight of New Zealand. Yeah, I know. So
it's kind of a super sad documentary and everything,
but I'm a sucker for adventure stories and things.
Wait, what's it called? I knew you were going
to ask that, and I can't remember now. Oh, okay.
I'll look it up, I guess. Yeah, you'll be able
to find it if you Google Sea Kayaker Australia
New Zealand. It should pop up. Andrew, what was
his name? Andrew something. Anyway. I knew you
were going to ask, and the whole time I was thinking,
what's it called? And now it's gone. Well, hopefully
you don't follow a similar fate, I guess. It'd
be pretty terrible if you ended up dying halfway
through. I feel like there's a million ways this
could go, but that hopefully is not one of the
outcomes, whereas I think sea kayaking, the Tasman
Sea, you're taking a little bit more risk. Yeah,
good luck. So one of the Instagram questions
I got from Graydon Salanders was what prompted
the head -to -head format. If you're interested
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to the show. That's a really good question. I
think one of the frustrations I have with a lot
of climbing comps is there's kind of multi -elements
to this. For a start, You don't see direct competition.
So I think if you see tennis, soccer, whatever,
there's this person on the right and there's
this person on the left and they're going at
it and they are competing with each other and
you can see them both. And we don't have that
in climbing. And I think when we talked about
why speed was great, we said it's fantastic because
there is this sociological, psychological element
that there's someone standing next to me. And
it doesn't affect what I do, but it does affect
what I do. And I think that's really interesting.
And I think climbing, having an I go, you go
format, which we traditionally had in climbing,
it removes that element of competition. And I
wanted to see that. So that was one of them.
Another element is it's not nearly as engaging
or easy to follow when it's I go, you go, because
let's say you come out and try the boulder, you
get the zone, but you don't get the top. And
then four climbers later, the other person who's
racing to win comes out. I can't really remember
what you did. unless I'm really dialed in and
making notes, which is what I used to do commentating.
I'd make notes of, you know, Ginny got here,
so I'll remember that one. But for the average
viewer at home, they're not remembering that
stuff. So it's actually kind of hard to work
out what the person before did and therefore
where that leaves you. It's kind of hard to follow
the competition in that respect. And the final
thing, probably the most key, is we wanted a
really clear winning moment. And I think one
of the frustrations I've always had with climbing
formats, again, with the exception of speed,
is someone can win and you don't know they won
until half an hour later. And the best example
I give of this always is one of the Brianne Son
World Cups. There were really strong climbers
in the final. I don't remember who. And there
was a young Japanese kid, 19 years old. I'd never
heard of him. So I went to the Japanese coach,
did my research, figured out how to say his name
properly, got a bit of background. So I'd have
something to say in commentary. And this kid
was out first. Kid. He was 19. That's a kid.
Yeah. He climbed. And obviously I said, oh, here
he is. You know, talked to his coaches earlier,
gave a bit of background, did my best to commentate
this guy and respect his achievement again into
the final, but didn't really give him like a
big intro. or make a big deal when he fell off
anyway the final goes on it turns out he won
but by the time he won he climbed an hour ago
see had a winning moment that was an hour old
so it was really uh i really wanted to solve
that winning moment thing i wanted you to sit
at home and go i can see my screen so i know
that that person is winning they're winning because
they're ahead of the person next to them and
therefore they win i wanted that kind of clarity
in that big moment So that's kind of where head
-to -head came from. And I know head -to -head
at times gets a hard deal, but it's hard climbing.
They're just next to each other. Does it get
criticism? I don't know. A few people have said
to us, well, I just don't want this to be speed
boulder, which I get. I don't either. I didn't
know that's the main thing that people would
think of. I never thought it would become speed
-based. Well, the problem... At a very basic
level, if I get there first, I beat you. So there
is an element of time. But then what's interesting
is when you actually start doing a little bit
more of a deep dive into this stuff, time corresponds
very closely to attempts. So traditionally, we
measure attempts, whereas we're going to place
a bigger focus on time. But actually, the results
are pretty much the same with your measured attempts
or time. Like if you, you can like go faster,
but you have to rest if it's like hard and you
fall off. Exactly. Yeah. There's a pretty close
correlate. Basically, whether we measured attempts
or time, 99 % of the time, the result will be
the same. Yeah. Excited to see. Another audience
submitted question related to this. Did you consult
with athletes when developing the format and
what did that process look like? We did. It wasn't,
we didn't go out with a kind of formal questionnaire.
I just called up athletes I know and got their
take on it. And very luckily for me, having worked
on the World Cups, I know some pretty good climbers.
So they're kind of well -qualified opinions.
But yeah, we really wanted to deliver for the
athletes. I think one thing that's really clear
is the athletes have to enjoy this. There's no
use saying to them, trust us, this is the best
format. I promise you, you know. Maybe you don't
like it, but I promise it's for the best. There's
no use. They've got to love this. And I understand
it's new and so you might come in with a raised
eyebrow and think, oh, I wonder what this is
all about. But every climber who's actually taken
part in the test just loved it. So, yeah, we
did. We consulted a lot of the world's best athletes
to make sure that they were good with the format.
And we scrapped some ideas based on what they
said. What got scrapped? So I had a format and
I will die on this hill. I still think it would
have been awesome. I think the finale of the
comp should have been a highball boulder over
a foam pit. So you get the cool thing about lead
is the last minute of an attempt, right? Because
they're just flamed and they're just living move
to move just about hanging on. that's the best
bit of a lead attempt to me. The first minute,
first two minutes, it's kind of ho -hum. But
when they're really starting to scrap, that's
great. And so I thought, could you have a side
-by -side boulder that's, I don't know, eight
meters high? So it's long. We're talking, my
math isn't very good, but maybe 20 moves, something
like that. And so you basically take our format
and put it on a highball boulder as a great finale.
And I just imagined like... Madison Square Garden,
and you've got this big wall jacked up high above
the crowd with people unroped eight meters above
the foam pit. I think that would have been awesome.
A lot of athletes didn't like it. Oh, really?
What were their reasons? That also sounds like
a financial issue. That's way more expensive.
With the benefit of hindsight, that financial
issue might have become a clincher. But at the
time, we were dreaming. They had safety concerns
over it. Even though I actually went to a place
with a foam pit in Montana, and you can land
in the foam pit headfirst, and you can't tell.
The airbags aren't good. So people have tried
comps with airbags, but the airbag's pretty hard
when you hit it from eight meters. So no airbag,
but a foam pit. But yeah, at risk of injury,
I think there was a feeling that it was a bit
gimmicky. which I don't think it was, but that's
fine. That's why we called the athlete, is to
say, what do you think? And if they say, we don't
like your baby, which is effectively what their
feedback was, then you've just got to stomach
it. And actually, I think logistically, in terms
of credibility, if you go out to the climbing
world, you say, oh, we're going to do a high
ball above a foam pit. It does feel a bit like
a gimmick, maybe. If that happens in the future,
you'll know it's because I got my way. And I
managed to convince enough people that we should
do it. I'll die on that hill. I would love the
highball. But that's a classic example of something
where I thought particularly it was awesome.
Some people pushed back on it, especially the
athletes. So we scrapped it. Are there any big
mistakes you feel like you have already made
in the process? I would say the hardest thing
is keeping your... I guess your emotions in check
because it's really easy to get off a phone call
and think, wow, this amazing thing's about to
happen or, oh, there's this complete disaster.
And actually, I don't remember the quote, but
the poem that if you can keep your head while
all around you are losing theirs. Now I've forgotten
the rest of the poem, but the basic point is,
keep your head together, you'll be okay. So I
think just staying balanced, not getting too
high, not getting too low would be a big thing.
I think we got let down by a few people, so I
would definitely advocate people to get everything
down on paper. If you think you've got an agreement,
a handshake's great, and I like to work on a
handshake, but getting it in black and white's
never a bad idea. I think my highs are very high
and my lows are very low. So maybe I need to
read that poem. No, I'm the same. I'm the same.
We've got off some calls. Obviously, during this
five years, we didn't think it was going to take
five years. We always thought it was about to
happen. You can get off a call and you think,
oh, my God, we made it happen. We kind of took
steps. We founded the company three, four years
ago because it looked like it was about to happen
and it didn't happen. And then you kind of buy
a website and you start making the website and
then it doesn't happen. See, you can think it's
going to happen and it doesn't. So I think, uh,
yeah, if anyone knows how to do that thing where
you don't get too high and too low, then please
let me know. Cause I definitely am not able to
do it, but I wish I could. Yeah, definitely.
Okay. And then another audience submitted a question
about the planning, or I guess more about like
the broadcasting side of things. They said, we
as viewers often gripe about videography and
production values. What is the best way to capture
and broadcast a comp and any interesting challenges
you expect from this one? I would say if in doubt
at the key moment, zoom in on the climber's feet.
That's what I'm kidding. Okay. That's one of
the criticisms you see a lot. No. Yeah. My mantra,
whenever we went to a new World Cup and we kind
of met the new cameraman, I always used to say,
if in doubt, zoom out. We want to see the whole
climber. We want to see where they're going.
No problem seeing a bit of where they've been
before on the boulder. So in some ways, the best
way to film climbing is just to keep it pretty
simple, which is to keep the whole climber visible
and the next move visible and really get some
context of where they are. We're working with,
excuse me, working with Red Bull on the broadcast.
They definitely know what they're doing when
it comes to broadcasting. So, yeah, I would say
we'll keep the whole climber in view. We won't
be having close -ups at the key moments, which
I know drives people crazy on a lot of comps.
And we are going to have very innovative angles.
We're going to put cameras in places that haven't
been put in climbing comps before. I can't, we
spent last week testing a lot of this. I'm super
excited to talk about it, but I have to kind
of leave that to Red Bull. But suffice to say,
we won't be cutting away at the key moment to
show a closeup and we have better angles and
better quality broadcast equipment than you've
ever seen in a con before. How's that? I had
talked to Antonin, who was doing broadcasting
for the IFSC, and some of the issues he had mentioned
was when you're traveling around, you don't have
access to the same camera people or people who
necessarily know climbing. So how are you fixing
that issue? Well, I actually spoke to Anto this
morning. He said hi. Well, for London, it's simple
enough. because Red Bull are bringing their production
team. And going forward, that will likely be
the case. Okay. Are they all around the world?
Yeah, they have the means to produce a broadcast
of comparable quality anywhere in the world,
pretty much. So wherever we go, I don't anticipate
any kind of drop -off in broadcast quality, which
is one of the challenges on the World Cups. is
that every time you go, you get a new camera
crew. The IFSC financially aren't in a position,
understandably, to fly out camera operators to
Japan when there are plenty of capable camera
operators already there. So I would say we won't
have a drop -off in quality no matter where we
go, but I understand why it does happen, having
worked in the broadcasting for the World Cups.
each time you go you take a core staff but you
then have to get local operators and that means
you get a variety and quality but that's not
something that we will have to worry about okay
i guess i just wonder like how come they didn't
try to i don't know get a sponsor like red bull
that has i don't know action sports broadcasting
everywhere i don't know sorry i'm not dodging
the question i just don't know yeah i would seem
like a a good partnership but it's it's very
hard and especially with the world cups you got
so many um for a broadcast company it would if
you think about the the costs and the logistics
of moving a sufficiently big crew around to do
a great job of showing the world cups it would
be a big investment for someone so you'd want
to be pretty confident you were going to get
enough viewers to make that worth it true okay
well um Definitely want to get into the finances
a bit. I hope that that's something you can disclose
some information about. Yeah. So how did you
get financing and sponsors for this event? League.
League, yeah. Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't say that.
No, it's fine. It's a slow process, I would say.
I think once you land one, it's a lot easier
is one thing I would say. One thing that I think
we've got in our favor is we have a good contact
list in the climbing industry. So early on, although
most of them didn't end up working out, I could
at least go to people at work at major brands
and say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this.
What do you think? What's your take on it? If
we came to you, what would you be looking for?
And so we had the opportunity to refine what
we were doing. uh to reflect what the brands
were saying which i think if you were coming
in cold would be a lot trickier you've got to
go to whoever it is and say hey i'm ginny i want
to start a climbing league and they don't know
who you are and that makes it a lot trickier
so the old adage that it's who you know not what
you know is so true because we were just able
to go to the head of marketing for europe for
big climbing brands and say hey man can you meet
me in the pub you know um want to ask you some
questions and we can start learning pretty quickly
but once we uh landed a couple of sponsors it
um it made it a lot easier so i would say getting
the first one is the tricky bit and if you have
an in you have someone who can smooth your passage
then uh then that makes it a lot easier but yeah
i think for us working with red bull was a huge
deal because Even now, if we were to go out cold
to sponsors and just say, hey, we're these people
that really know about climbing. You remember
me, I used to do the World Cups. Give us loads
of money. That's pretty tricky to get them to
put their hand in their pocket, especially a
big sponsorship in climbing is not a big sponsorship
by mainstream sports standards. And it's maybe
not enough to move the needle on a big event
like this, the amounts. The amount that a climbing
company would spend on sponsorship is not enough
to really get something like this moving. So
being able to say, hey, we're working with Red
Bull. We convinced Red Bull that we could do
this. I think, yeah, that was huge. That really
opened the door for us. So yeah, getting the
first one and getting a brand or someone who
will stand up and say, yeah, I'm putting my money
into this. I believe in this. So whoever, the
next person that comes along is not the first.
That's the tricky bit, getting the first one.
And so what was the most expensive part of the
whole process? Oh, that's a good question. I
haven't looked at the budget for ages, actually.
Well, you know, the overall budget, I looked
at the bit I'm managing. I'd say the venue. And
if we weren't working with Red Bull, it would
be the broadcast. Because if Red Bull weren't
doing the broadcast, we would have to pay. someone
else to do it um so a lot of what you try and
get is value in kind if you think about the cost
of um booking arena flying out the climbers accommodating
the climbers route setting walls holds um the
broadcast it's an awful lot of money so if you
can get someone who says i'll give you the walls
in return for sponsorship i'll do the broadcast
for you in return for sponsorship that's when
it starts to become possible um if you tried
to get climbing brands to sponsor it pull all
that money together and then paid for it all
you would be at 10 of the amount of money you
need yeah so yeah i'd say uh getting people to
provide things in return for a sponsorship is
is the way yeah the way it works we're by the
way we're still looking for uh a sponsor in some
fronts if any hotel in London thinks you know
what this sounds great I'll give you I'll give
you 50 hotel rooms oh that'll be a tough one
are you willing to give like an overall cost
of the whole like even just running this one
event in London uh no okay I don't really know
why I don't know why I just feels weird I know
it just feels weird talking about money I hate
talking about money No, I hate talking about
money. You know what I mean? Byron wants to know,
you know. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yeah. It's a lot of money. It's more money than
I've ever seen. That's for sure. And I got to
say, this whole thing would be easier if we were
just rich. Of course. Because if you could just
launch your event and not have to go, because
what we were doing was we're saying, okay, so
we think we've got this. So if we can convince,
yeah, we think we've got A. So if we can convince
B that A are on board, then B will sign up. And
if B signs up, we've got A and B, which means
that C, which we really need, then believes in
it. And so you're always kind of spinning plates
and trying to get enough people to commit that
the next person commits. And then eventually
you kind of hit critical mass and you think,
oh, we actually have enough to make this happen.
But if any one of those people pulled out, you're
kind of back to square one. um if you just had
a pot if you had a pot of money it would be so
well but it would it would be easy because yeah
of course but it's um it makes me realize you
know you look at uh i was listening to donald
trump the other day and he's talking about how
he's a self -made man except that his dad gave
him gave him a million bucks no yeah and you
think well if somebody just given us a million
bucks we'd have been rolling three years ago
So yeah, it would be a hell of a lot easier if
you had a ton of capital behind you, but when
you don't and you're kind of doing it from a
standing start, it's definitely tricky. A lot
of it for us obviously is value in kind, so what
we actually spend on this event won't be the
total cost because people are doing things for
free in return for being associated with it,
but it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiple
hundreds of thousands. That's a lot of money
for me. It's a lot easier to make money when
you have money. Yeah. Although according to Trump,
he's a self -made man. It's just that million
bucks just to get him off the ground and the
private school. And when his dad died, he inherited
280 million more. But apart from that, self -made
man. Yeah. So what do you think you would do
with a million dollars? How would you make this
event amazing if you had a million? I think what
you can do when you've got money is you've got
more certainty. Oh, for sure, yeah. Yeah, because
as I said, when we're putting this together,
you've got A, you've got B, you've got C, C pulls
out, so then A get caught feet, they pull out,
so you've only got B, and now B is shaky, so
you've got to go and get D. You're kind of juggling
all this stuff, and we were always absolutely
straight with people, but to some extent, you
are kind of... putting it together piece by piece.
You're absolutely relying on that first person
who said yes to stay yes. And if they change
their mind, which did happen to us, you're about
to scroll on. So I think if you had the million
bucks, it's not even that we'd be doing it differently.
It's just you'd have years ago, we'd have just
had that certainty where we just go, okay, we're
good. We'd pay ourselves a salary so we don't
need another job. We can book the arena. If we
lose money on the event, well, that's okay. We've
got our money. We can't lose money on the event.
we got a business to run and it has to and it
has to function so it would just give you that
that certainty I think would be the big thing
people always ask like oh what would you do if
you didn't have to worry about money or like
what would your work be and I always say that
I would just like run unprofitable businesses
that are just like so fun yeah exactly it would
just be so fun I would just want to put on like
the most fun event yeah exactly and It's kind
of hard for us because we've always, sadly in
the intervening five years since we started talking
about this, we haven't run into a million bucks.
So we've always been doing it without this lump
of capital that we bring. We've always been doing
it with the help of companies supporting us.
So I've never really imagined what we would do
if we had a massive pot of money. So another
audience submitted question from Instagram from
climbingggggb. I think something a lot of people
are wondering, what will the prize money look
like? I'm not sure if that information is publicly
available yet. I've got to be careful because
we've released some information, but not all
information. The one thing I would say is it
will be very, very high by the standards of climbing
competitions. Definitely more than double what
you win in your average climbing competition,
your average World Cup. And the other thing I
would say is big prize money is the kind of first
thing we want. One of the first things we want
to achieve with the league is we want really
big prize money. That's not... because it's appropriate
that you get really well paid. You're performing
at an elite level of something. And if the industry
is big enough to support that prize money, which
it is in climbing, then you should make a lot
of money. And I think if you look at surf, skate,
smaller, but similarly kind of niche, slightly
outside the mainstream sports. type sports they
have a hundred thousand dollars for a win in
their equivalent of the world cup and i think
that's entirely appropriate and we'd like to
get there sooner rather than later so paying
the athletes more is a huge priority for us and
it'll be by climbing standards very very good
prize money in london but it's going to scale
quickly and we actually spoke to this is kind
of random but we spoke to a guy who's an agent
for nba players um early on and he said as soon
as you can just pay the athletes more always
pay the athletes more and he said because it
makes it aspirational so we to some extent some
more than others but we look up to rich people
if you hear that lebron james or steph curry
makes 100 million a year or whatever it kind
of puts them on a pedestal socially um so there's
that but also increases the jeopardy Imagine
if someone's going out to the final boulder and
if they top it or not, there's 50 grand riding
on it. It's pretty cool. It increases that jeopardy.
So it adds aspiration, kind of kudos to the athletes
if you pay them well and it also makes your comps
more dramatic. Yeah. I'm wondering now that you've
gone through this financing and planning process,
what do you think is the difference that allows...
these like similar size sports like skateboarding
or surfing to pay out more to athletes versus
why it's just like not able to happen in climbing
so far? It's a really good question. I think
that those leagues are set up as commercial entities.
So what we have now with the IFSC is a federation
and a federation is a not -for -profit organization
that has multiple member federations. So it makes
it... very hard to generate huge amounts of money.
It also makes it very hard to make changes to
your rules because you have to go through committees
and a long, long process to really making any
change to what you do. Whereas something like
the World Surf League is a commercial operation.
And when I say commercial operation, it gives
things a hard time. We're not just out to make
profit. But if you're a private business, you
can basically say, our format didn't work in
London because of all this element of the format
was problematic. We're just going to change it
and it'll be better in the New York event. So
I think also the way those leagues are set up
is enables more sponsorship to come in. So if
you look at... current world cups you have to
compete for your national federation so you therefore
have to wear federation gear which means you
can't advertise your sponsors as well and the
the commercial opportunities for sponsors are
pretty limited you can come sponsor a climber's
shoes or their chalk bag and nothing else so
then uh the world cups as amazing as they are
and as good as they've been for our sport i mean
wow we've got to climb into the olympics but
um It's very hard to scale the commercial side
of Federation events. I think the other thing
is the World Cups don't get massive viewing figures
relative to the size of the climbing industry.
I think if you look at World Surf League, Freeride
World Tour, Skate, is it World Skate League?
Could be. Whatever the professional league is
in skating. I spent a lot of time studying it.
I've just had a brain fart. But they get really
good viewing figures. And the more people that
watch your comps, the more valuable they are.
So I think that's probably the two big factors
is you need bigger viewing figures. You need
more people watching. And you also need to structure
it in a way that it's appealing for brands to
sponsor. And as I say, I'm not this kind of rabid
capitalist trying to... nail climbing and milk
as much money as we can out of it. But if you
want to pay an athlete 100 grand to win an event,
that 100 grand has to come from somewhere. It's
not going to come from thin air. Someone has
to put that in because it has to be worth 100
grand for them to sponsor the event. So yeah,
you need more viewing figures and you need more
commercial opportunities. But we're always conscious
that we don't ever want this to feel like it's
just a commercial. It's got to be done subtly.
We'll happily leave some money on the table to
maintain the quality and the sanctity of the
event. So it's a constant balance. Yeah, I think
it's hard when so many climbers actively hate
competition climbing. I don't really know where
that even came from. Yeah, it's an interesting
thing, isn't it? It's very unusual. We have...
Okay, the numbers vary, but I think as a conservative
estimate, there are 60 million climbers in the
world. And if you look at the viewing figures
for competitions, it's a very small percentage
of that, like less than 1%, which is incredible,
really. There aren't many sports where 1 % of
people who do that sport watch it at its highest
level. That's very, very unusual. Maybe, I don't
know every sport in the world. I'm inclined to
say it's unique. Yeah. But there may not be another
sport where that's the case. So, yeah, and I
understand it. I know I've worked on World Cups.
I'm thinking, this is amazing. If you love climbing,
you've got to be watching this. There are other
World Cups where it's not amazing. And not all
our events are going to be exceptional, but you're
going to have some are better than if you watch
soccer, you watch NFL, whatever. Some games are
better than others. That's fine. But I think
if you can consistently put on something that
more people want to watch, I feel like a lot
of people will get over that. So I think they
kind of solved the whole thing where there's
like events that aren't that interesting by adding
in gambling. I've been getting really deep into
the sports betting, like not personally sports
betting, but I get a lot of content about sports
betting. The podcast needs to start paying, right?
You go pay back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I'm
just so interested in sports betting and it like
really solved the issue of there being like,
boring football games or like boring whatever
where you don't feel connection to the team or
you like don't like it's like two really bad
teams and no one really cares and i feel like
that kind of solved that part where now people
even want to watch those games just because they
have like money in it so i really want to bring
gambling into climbing i don't know i don't know
On the face of it, I'm not adverse to it, but
I'd want to take a pretty long, hard look at
what that would really look like. I guess it
is terrible, but man, it sure would work. Oh,
it works. Yeah, it works. But I mean, in Europe,
we've had legalized sports betting forever. But
in the States and Canada, it's been a more recent
development. And I think betting has changed
a lot with phones. Back in the day, you had to
go to a physical betting shop and write on a
piece of paper what your bet was. With the phone
now, it's completely instant. And I don't think
we've, it hasn't quite bottomed out how that's
going to work long term and what the pluses and
minuses of it are. But yeah, who knows? I'm definitely
never saying ever for sure. But I'd want to do
some investigation. Yeah. If someone wants to
figure this out with me, I'm totally interested.
Are you into sports betting? No, I've never tried
it. I think I'm in California and I don't think
we're allowed to. I really wanted to try out.
When you get the new bets, they have the new
sign -on opportunities and I really wanted to
try it out. But I think it's not legal in California.
You know, I love the NFL. And when I go and watch
the NFL in the pub or at someone's house, everyone
I know gambles on it. And it's great because
I get to live vicariously through them, but it's
never my money at stake. Yeah. Still makes it
exciting. Yeah, but I can totally see how you
end up spending a load of money on that. I kind
of have a reasonable understanding of the apps
just from sitting with people and talking about
what they're betting on. They're pretty smart,
those apps. They're pretty good at making you
spend money. Yeah. It's a super interesting area
for sure. I've even seen videos. I don't know
how real this is because I never actually saw
it in person, but I've seen videos where there's
a website where you can bet on games that not
even very... big games just like random sports
games or like i saw one where you could bet on
like a high school football game or something
like that thing is it gets a bit sketchy because
you get match fixing you get fixed results because
there's if people aren't getting unless they're
making nfl nba money people are really susceptible
i think tennis had a problem with this a while
ago where if you weren't in the top 20 in the
world you could really use an extra hundred grand
true and so it was open to a lot of dubious practices
and game fixing so oh yeah that is something
you'd want to be very wary of it's a minefield
i i can see why they legalize sports betting
in the states but it's wow it definitely feels
like no one's quite sure they've opened the gate
and let the animals out and they don't quite
know what's going to happen yeah i guess for
sure there's a lot of comments anytime something
crazy happens in a game that it's like fixed
or that it's for the sports betting or yeah or
it's scripted i bet they're not always wrong
people saying that well i mean all publicity
is good publicity to some extent yeah i agree
yeah although i feel like a like a comp fixing
scandal would actually just not be good publicity
but you never know maybe we could spin it Yeah,
it could be interesting. Makes things interesting.
Okay, so I guess back to the topic. Financials.
I think I covered everything in the financials
then. What will success look like for you? That's
a really hard thing to define. I would say I
expect the PCL to be a professional organization
comparable to... the best sports league is in
the world maybe not in terms of revenue but in
terms of how well it's respected and how well
it's run i think these should be the best events
in the history of climbing uh both for the athletes
and the fans and i just hope that the piece in
fact i know that the pcl will be kind of an industry
defining organization and i hope that oh what
would success look like yeah i mean don't get
me wrong we have financial and sponsorship answers
but that's pretty dry uh and uh yeah that's not
really i don't think what you're getting at i
think well i mean if you want to talk about like
success in terms of money that works too well
no i mean we put it this way if someone gives
you 50 grand you've got to deliver 50 grand's
worth of value back to them i mean without wishing
to state the obvious so If you think about what
the event costs, we've got to deliver that back
in values to people. It's not always that easy
to quantify. Henry Ford said the problem with
marketing is that half the money you spend on
it is wasted, but you don't know which half.
And that's so true. So we've got to deliver that
value. But more globally, I think success for
me would be that more climbers watch comps. that
everyone involved with climbing everyone who
goes to the gym is at least aware of pcl and
hopefully watches it and is inspired by it that
the athletes love it the athletes start making
real money um and that um this is a long -term
sustainable league that's here for the next decades
i think it'd be so cool if the gyms could get
involved in it i think that would make a big
difference yeah and i think uh slightly off away
from what you talked about what success but one
of the things we've talked about constantly is
um how do you link what people do in a gym to
what happens in the comp and that's something
that's massively missing right now you watch
a comp it's a comp when you go to the gym it's
something completely different and we have a
lot of theories about how you might do this and
we have plans to make this a reality but if we
can link what goes on in a comp with what goes
on in a gym and you can create a synergy between
those two, then I think we'll, we're really onto
something because right now they feel so disconnected.
They don't feel relevant to each other and we
need to do something about that. Yeah. One of
the gyms around me has like a, I guess like a
world cup wall and they also play like comp climbing
events on the TVs around. And I feel like that's
a great way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And we've got
a lot of plans around this longer term for sure.
Nothing you can get into. I probably shouldn't
right now, but stay tuned on that one. Stay tuned.
We really want comps to be relevant to the gym
experience. And we want to bring gyms along.
I think the biggest expense for a climber right
now is a gym membership. And so we really want
to. We really want gyms to be a big part of the
PCL. All right. So let's get into some of the
other audience submitted questions. The first
one, what will the schedule look like in the
future? Will there be a regular circuit? And
similarly, how will you select future locations
and venues? So there will be a regular circuit.
We would like to get into bigger and bigger venues.
We think we can get into big arenas. If you look
at the IFSC selling out Bercy Arena in Paris
2012, so what's that, eight years before the
first Olympics, 14 years ago when the industry
was less than half the size it is now, we think
we can sell tickets in big arenas. Again, without
wanting to state the obvious, if you pay to rent
a 10 ,000 seat arena and sell 4 ,000 tickets,
you've got a very big financial problem to solve.
So we've got to be careful. We've got to scale
it. But yeah, there will be a regular circuit.
We want to go to the biggest cities in the world
and the best venues in the world. And one thing
that's absolutely key about this is we're going
to climbers. Climbers aren't coming to us. I
think a lot of climbing comps are still held
in climbing's traditional heartlands, which is
the mountains. But climbing has changed beyond
all recognition. Most climbers live in big cities.
and don't climb outside. So we are going to them.
They don't have to come to us. So we want to
go to big cities, big arenas. I want to go to
Madison Square Garden. I'll throw that out there
right now. I think we should be, we want to get
in the garden. We want to get in Wembley Arena.
We want to be in Staples Center in LA. We want
to go really big. So yeah, there'll be a regular
circuit, but hopefully the venues get bigger
every year. Okay. Are there other locations already
announced for this year? No, but there'll be
a North American event next year and there'll
be another European event next year. Already
confirmed or hopeful? Not confirmed. We know
what the venues would be. We know where we'd
be going and we've found venues that we think
work for us. But no, we haven't confirmed them
yet. They won't be confirmed before London, or
very unlikely to be confirmed before London.
Just to clarify, next year is in like 2026, because
I guess this is coming out next year. Yeah, 2026.
There'll be multiple PCL events in 2026, beginning
with London. Okay, cool. Exciting. Next one,
when you tested the PCL format, what aspect of
it was the most engaging or exciting for the
athletes? The fact that there's someone standing
right next to you, because it just... fundamentally
changes the way you behave. If I fall off a boulder
and I've got four minutes, there's no one else
on the stage, I can rest for exactly as long
as I want to rest. If there's someone standing
next to me who I've got to beat, that completely
changes. So as simple as it sounds, it's the
element of having to think about someone else's
performance because if I've got four minutes
to myself and I know that I've got to top the
boulder, I'm only focused on how to use that
four minutes smartly for me to top the boulder.
I don't have to worry what anyone else does.
So just adding another person in there completely
changes it. So I'd say that's the biggest thing.
For the athletes, when you're watching, it's
when people are really near the top of a boulder
and they're head to head. And it's been remarkable
a few times in the tests how close people are.
We had a move not long ago where you jumped out
left and swung. and they were literally it was
like they were choreographed dancers perfectly
timed and then there was a slower move and one
of them did it a bit quicker than the other and
then the other one began to catch up and when
people head to head climbing at their limit near
the top of a boulder that's about as good as
it gets are there any like strategies you saw
come up that were interesting yeah yeah for sure
and um I think we'll see lots more. I think that's
one of the biggest unknown elements for us is
how will people actually interact with each other?
So we did one test where there was a boulder
that was kind of hard to read. And one of the
people, so the pair run out, one of them just
stepped back and watched the other person climb,
which is so cool because if the guy who's on
the wall actually does it, you just look like
an idiot because you just stood there. but you
might glean this information that then enables
you to do it. So we really want to see that interaction
between the climbers and we want to see tactics.
You see it in every sport that your opponent
does one thing so you react this way. And we
want to see that. I think that's massive for
us. And it's really, I can't even predict how
people will interact with each other. I just
know that they will. And I think I did the Red
Bull dual descent. Oh, there wasn't one this
year. Anyway, the last two years, whatever. And
looking across at your opponent is just this
whole different world. And yeah, people do get
tactical and we encourage that. And I'm looking
forward to seeing the world's best climbers under
that kind of pressure. yeah that'll be interesting
to see last one from instagram uh will you use
adjustable walls like last week in grip niche
megan sorry is that terrible no i had to ask
a few times it's pronounced apparently it's pronounced
nine megan oh can i ask it again you know what
never mind it's fine it's fine i haven't heard
of it before it's fine Yeah, you've had Matt
Groom on here. Me and Matt between us have butchered
enough names. I thought this was like, okay.
For some reason I read this and I was like, that
sounds like a Japanese thing. No, it's in the
Netherlands. Apparently it's a very nice city.
We were there a week. I never went to the city
once. I just drove back and forth to the hotels
and the gym. But that's fine. So was that where
you did the test event? Yeah, so there's a...
The biggest gym in the Benelux region is called
GRIP in Nijmegen. And it is a fantastic facility.
And so we did the test there. Yeah, on the adjustable
walls. Stuff to watch. Okay. Sad. Let's just
say there's probably a reason why we went and
did the test at a place with adjustable walls.
I guess like what... does adjustable walls look
like like just the um like angle yeah yeah you
can change the angle like a board uh yeah but
then we're not using boards okay i'm not sure
what we can say about the i don't know what like
what's out there and stuff but but it is where
i wouldn't have flown to the netherlands to test
it on um walls that can be adjusted for no reason
okay Good to know. I only got back not last night,
the night before, so it's definitely feeling
a bit second best, but it was worth it. We'll
be very creative with the route setting and the
competition. Let's say that. Well, I don't know
how this person saw that, but is there video
online of this event, the test event? Yeah, there's
some. You'll have to check. If you have a look
at GRIP Nijmegen. nidge megan yeah it's fine
i had no idea i mean how where does the j come
into it why is it yeah i have no idea it's the
whole week i was trying to read dutch i speak
a bit of german and dutch is a mystery anyway
um yeah if you go on the grip and i make an instagram
socials and stuff there's they've got some stuff
and uh over the next few weeks you'll see a bit
more from us and from red bulls so yeah there'll
be bits and pieces coming out from that Cool.
Yeah, I'll have to take a look at that. Okay.
Well, I think that covers all the questions then.
Thanks for joining me again for the second time.
Anything else that you want to let people know
about or thoughts on the whole five years of
planning? Hard to believe it's been five years.
No, I would say to people, just be excited. Help
us out. Support us. Let us know what you think.
We're not stamming here saying we've got all
the answers, but we're trying our very best to
make this the best thing that's ever happened
in climbing. So if you're in London, come along.
Wherever you are, sign up for the socials at
Pro Climbing League. Go to proclimbing .com,
sign up for our email newsletter. Just support
us, like our posts, tell us what you think, buy
a ticket, get behind it. Yeah, it's a huge...
moment for climbing to have a professional league
starting like this and it's it's happened every
sport has in some way or other has a commercial
league in it um and we're really excited that
this is climbing is finally going to get one
i think it's going to be amazing for the athletes
i think it's going to be amazing for people watching
it's going to be amazing for gyms i just i'm
excited so get excited help us out awesome will
be cool to see i'll leave all of that in the
description below as well So yeah, thank you
again. It was a good talk. Thank you. Thank you
so much for making it to the end of the podcast.
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed.
Otherwise, you are a super fake climber. If you're
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the discussion on the free competition climbing
discord linked in the description. Thanks again
for listening.