How should CrossFit Games Success Be Measured?

How should CrossFit Games Success Be Measured?

We are exactly 2 weeks away from the first Friday Night Lights of Open Season 2024. Let's take a step back in time though... It's mid-evening on August 6th  2023 and I have just watch Roman Khrennikov have the moment of the Games, not because of his immense physical ability but for attempting double unders on one leg with a broken metatarsal in his other foot and it got me thinking, how should the success of the CrossFit Games be measured.

Let's look at the obvious shall we, was this a good test of fitness? Well there will always be those who have much more CrossFit programming experience than I do, who will have their gripes and plenty who would put their own spin on it. Ultimately this was an event that tested all of the 10 elements of fitness outlined by CrossFit and the fittest Man and Woman over the 4 days came out on top. But does that constitute success?

When I worked in Tennis we talked about the game like a funnel (and there were lots of conversations about how you should go about funding that funnel! Maybe that's something to write about in the future). In CrossFit Terms you would have fans at the top of the funnel, below that your Affiliate member/ active Cross-Fitter, followed by those signing up for competitions (such as the Open) and down through your different stages to your elite athletes. This is where is gets interesting. In this model you grow your fan base by having a strong product at the Elite Level. One that captivates its audience and creates fans, those fans who are then inspired to find an affiliate and give CrossFit a go. From there the trend in Tennis at the time was that those people who actively competed in competition were the people who were going to be players for a long time. In comparison those who didn't were more likely to give it up after a period of time (whilst I think this is probably also true in an Affiliate, I believe CrossFit has many more hooks to keep people coming back beyond regular competition). From there you can see the correlation that the best get better and become your elite athletes engaging the next generation of fans.

So if I’m right and the above is true for CrossFit like it is in Tennis, then the measure of success in the CrossFit Games goes well beyond programming and directly to the number of new fans, new affiliate members and the number of sign ups to the Open there is next year. This of course comes with a caveat that although the Power of the Games is immense and far reaching, the CrossFit ecosystem has a massive part to play in converting that success i.e. easy to find affiliates, great coaching, appropriate open tests, etc.

Let me know what you think!!

Andy