Who are the Ballers?

[Horton]

http://ballofspray.com/NonJoomlaFiles/2013SurveyResults.pdf

[klindy]

Interesting...

[Skoot1123]

Very interesting - wonder what the demographic is for jobs/industries that people work in.

[gator1]

Wow. That's a pretty extreme skew towards money. Horton's gonna get deluged with banner ads from Rolex and Porsche.

 

Obama gets wind of this, there's gonna be a "baller" tax bracket, and we're going to have "take back the lake" picketers camping at our tourney sites. The SEC will demand that ballers publish the percentage of their take home as compared to the average skier, and the PCAOB will begin auditing the AWSA audits of driving paths.

 

Pelosi will demand that we run hybrid power plants so that our boats do not exceed 25 mph, and ration gas, only allowing us to buy it if we agree to pull a non-baller half the pulls. Boats, as killers of jet skiers, will require a 45 week "cooling off period" before they can be purchased, only by those who have no arrests. Drivers will only be allowed to drive a tourney if they have never had a drunk driving record.

 

Tourneys will be forced to shut down until we can modify our tournament participation demographics to prove that we are not enforcing a de-facto age/race/sex discrimination program against all categories except those who find Thekrista attractive while at the same time being twice her age.

 

A commute trip reduction task force will be set up, and require, by law, that we post carpooling flyers at our sites, and provide counseling to all ballers on the evils of driving alone to the lake.

 

The government will decry the fact that many people can not afford their god granted right of owning a tournament boat, and will require FannieMae to grant boat loans based upon desire to own a boat rather than income.

 

Injuries received while skiing will be excluded from Obamacare coverage, as such injuries were prima facia evidence of wanton spending and excess.

[A_B]

Spread the skiing tax

 

[bdougherty]

USA waterski should be alarmed that 44% of ballers are not members. Pretty significant in my opinion.

[klindy]

508 respondents is more than I would have expected. I forgot how the survey was built but did 508 people answer all the questions?

[MattP]

@bdougherty lots of ballers are not American.

[Horton]

@OB The data sample is good.

 

@klindy Actually there were 662 responses. I weeded out the dups and the international for the resulting data. International skiers were included in the drawing.

 

The sample does seems heavy with USAWS skiers. They are core enthusiasts. As a snapshot I feel really good about this data.

 

There were 40K Unique Visitors in August and 38K in September so 600+ data points is not really all that big.

[bdougherty]

@mattp good point! Still would have thought a stronger majority would have been members. I am not a stats guy but the survey was of ballers and not just average joes, would like to think that a stronger majority of skiers would be members and support the national govering body. Leads me to believe that skiers may only be joining out of requirement (tourney participation, club membership or private lake insurance etc.). Just a thought but why are 44% of survey takers not members?

[jayski]

@MattP I'm not American and I get a membership every year and know of quite a few 'non-Americans' that hold as well...

[MattP]

Hell @skoot1123 did not think about joining USAWS until today because of something that was mentioned on the site. He is an avid skier and member. Why he is not a member I have no clue. Most people have their "reasons". I believe all skiers tournament or not should be members the body does way more than sanction tournaments. There are benefits and the greater the member base the greater pull and standing USAWS will have when trying to do their job.

[Wish]

@MattP agree. I'm guessing the word is out there for folks that want to ski tournaments and find out you have to be a member. Others who may not be interested perhaps are not getting the info. Something I'm sure is being worked on as we speak by USAWS. I'm sure @The_Krista has seen this. By the way, she "liked" me. I think I blushed. ;-)

[MattP]

@jayski yes there are a few that are the exception but I'm talking about readers on other continents who do not ski in the US

[ToddL]

So, when I log in from work on that laptop, then on my phone during the commute home, then on the iPad when I get home; is that probably 3 unique visitors because the ip addresses are likely all different?

[Horton]

@Toddl yes but you are not typical. There are a few hundred like you.

[ctsmith]

With the high number of private lake skiers I would have guesstimated that the number of non boat owners would be much higher than 6%.

 

Good news for ski builders, the less than one year old skis and intentions to buy a new one in a year is high.

 

Not many new skiers here.

 

Apparently boat builders look at the income surveys too, as does Goode.

[kona]

@horton How many unique visitors a day do you get ?

 

I fall in the high averages of almost all categories except for skiing on private lakes and in the course but then I live in Utah also.

[woolly110]

How many unique posters per day?

[MattP]

@ob skiing public is not the intended sample. It's the readership of the site.

[Than_Bogan]

IF the samples are taken randomly, the number of samples you need is essentially independent of the size of the population. For a question with just two options, there is a fairly well established formula to compute the 95% confidence interval, and it depends only on how many samples you TAKE, not the size of the population you are sampling. (For the ultranerds in the audience: 1) That's not quite true if the population is "small" enough. 2) The formula actually relies on a Gaussian distribution being a tolerable approximation of a binomial distribution, which is a good assumption if the number of samples is "large" and the measured result is NOT near to 0% or 100% (i.e. the vast majority of respondents picked the same answer).)

 

Here's a calculator. 600 samples should typically get you within about 4 percentage points of the correct population value for a 2-answer question:

 

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

 

Unfortunately, this data was taken by volunteering, which is not legitimately random. So any statistician (and I'm not one of those, but have taken the basic math behind it) would have to look for any reason for a systematic sampling bias. I'm certain there is a little of that, but my guess is that this is fairly representative of the BOS population. I basically just have to assume that everyone in the BOS population really wants a free Goode, and that eliminates a significant amount of sources of sampling bias!

 

Overall, I'd say: Well done, Horton.

[Than_Bogan]

@OB In that case, you can simply view my post as me dropping a grenade on your statistical incorrectness.

 

My dad used to be a stock analyst for many military suppliers, and he had an awesome hat from a company that sadly I've forgotten the name of. It said in the background "Laser Guided Bombs." In the foreground it said "One Bomb. One Target." He especially enjoyed wearing this around our home town in NJ, where political correctness was getting an early start in the 80s. He also liked wearing it on Wallstreet to compliment his suit.

 

Good times.

[Than_Bogan]

Well, look what I found on internet. And apparently the Paveway Laser Guided Bomb was/is a Raytheon product.

 

[ral]

Than saved me from having to write a longer nerdy post...

 

Bottom line, 600 is a large sample size.

[A_B]

600 of the skiing population that like to talk about it on the internet.

There are good skiers who just ski, don't post out here, or talk much about what they do, train, setup, etc., and that is fine, but I believe that if all were like that, the sport would fade faster than what it is. Talking about stuff and exchanging ideas on the internet has to help the sport.

 

@OB is right though, there is some decent % of skiers that don't even know or care about web forums on skiing. I am not so sure that is a good thing. Sort of says I do what I do and I don't need anyone else. Sort of the elitist attitude that makes it hard for new skiers to break into.

[Than_Bogan]

@AB I don't think I'm following. Technically, Horton has banned a few folks, but this is pretty darned close to a completely public forum. If folks aren't interested, that's fine. But I can't see how it's elitist to have a completely public forum on the internet. Guessing I misunderstand?

[Horton]

Yes the visitors to this site are a very small subset of global or US skiing public. To state the obvious, the survey is of the skiers to read this site. I intentionally did not advertise the “Enter to Win” with Facebook or in the Goode newsletter.

 

If there was a skew in the data it would be based on enthusiasm or desire for the free Goode. I am as confident in my raw traffic stats as any site owner can be* but I do question with the idea that 56% of the readers of the site belong to USAWS. The survey results are not empirical but I believe they are a reasonable representation of the readership.

 

*I cross check traffic data with 3 totally unrelated tools.

[klindy]

@Horton you "question the idea that 56% of the readers belong to USAWS". Do you think that should be a higher or a lower number?

 

I would have guessed it would have been a higher number. Because you really polled those interested in winning the ski not necessarily the "readers of this forum". Althougth I suspect most who visit here are also likely to enter the contest. That said if you're getting 40k unique visitors, I would have thought more would want to win the ski and therefore enter.

[Than_Bogan]

@OB OH! Thanks.

[Horton]

@klindy The USAWS membership number seems larger than I expected.

[Waternut]

I really thought I made good money until I saw those stats. Apparently I'm not even middle class according to that...

[MattP]

@waternut I don't think there was a choice low enough for my income...

[gregy]

@waternut my thoughts when saw that - I need to find a better job. Actually I make more money now than I ever have, but were does it go? I remember making $10 / hr out of college and I felt rich.

[MattP]

@gregy I make a good bit more than that an hour and feel poor. Granted it's only 12.5 hours a week.. Which is more like 18 hours a week... Got to love college.

[A_B]

@Than_Bogan, yes, what @OB said.

I ski with 4-5 guys, all but one ski in tournaments, 2 are regular P^2, (podium posers) at nationals, and none are Ballers. Maybe one thinks he is an elitist, the other guys just don't do internet, or whatever.

 

[LeonL]

@Waternut, I have a friend who makes a good living, repeat GOOD. One time after returning from a Big Dawg qualifier he commented, "man most of those guys make some big bucks". Basic observations of an intelligent guy.

[ToddL]

Middle "Competitive Waterskiing" Class is significantly higher than Middle Class USA.

 

While the survey didn't calculate the median income since it didn't capture a list of actual values, one could make a rough assumption that it would have been around $100k.

 

Per the US Census, Median household income in the United States in 2012 was $51,017. (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb13-165.html)

More info if you are interested: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-02.pdf

[Waternut]

Well I guess it is fair to say that majority of people who are serious about any particular sport usually aren't scraping by either and most people are fairly serious about it are often on some kind of forum. Golf memberships at a nice course are comparable to some ski memberships. Even fisherman can figure out how to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the same thing that someone can with a bamboo cane, a hook, and worms they dug up can do. Not sure if that logic is sound but it helps me understand the difference anyway...

[Skoot1123]

Lets face it, skiing is hard and those who strive to do well in it have got to be driven individuals. I think that goes for all aspects of their lives too.

[bogboy]

@gator1, how about a buoy disproportionate tax. The shorter the line, the higher the tax.

[gator1]

@Bogboy. Perfect. Those who can run 38 OWE those who can't. It's only fair. The 38 off guys didn't earn those turns. They are taking advantage of those who can't

[oldjeep]

Income without location is not of much value. 168K in CA is comparable to making 100K in FL.

[Horton]

hmmm @oldjeep if I have time this week I will parse by state

[ForrestGump]

@waternut Golf memberships are comparable to ski memberships? I don't know where you golf, but in Houston, skiing is WAYYYY cheap compared to golf.

[Horton]

in California there is almost no club access and almost everybody I know owns their own boat. You would be lucky to get started today for under $250,000

[Waternut]

Woah!! I worked at one of the nicer private golf club in Columbia, SC for about 2 years. The premium golf membership included 2 courses, clay tennis courts, 2 pools, and social events. I think that was around $350 a month plus cart fees and a $10k intro fee that could be spread out.

 

$35k a year sounds insane! Guess I'll never be part of that elite group.

[ForrestGump]

Even $350/mo plus 10k intro is way more expensive than skiing. In Houston, a private membership starts at $35k intro fee and $1k to $3k per month. That does include cart, though.

[ral]

I do not think you can find a better deal than @OB's anywhere in the world...

[Skoot1123]

As crazy as it sounds - and I don't mean to go all "hickville" on here - but tractor pullin' is crazy expensive too. Twin Allison Aircraft engines.......and triple Allison Aircraft engines, not to mention jet engines either. Some of the rigs they use to pull the tractors around have gotta be more than $1M.

[MattP]

If more clubs were run like WSA under @OB 's guidance there would be a lot more skiing going on around the world. Dictatorships work, club boats are awesome, supports Jrs. and paid drivers at the lake!