This week, we do our best to keep up with our Russian rivals as we skate (or die) to defend Canada's honour as we talk about fans of that _hot_ sport, figure skating! The _burning_ question we have is... how important is Yuri!!! on Ice to the fandom? And how popular is it anyway?
Next week, we'll be travelling to China to talk about everyone's favourite MMORPG, ~~World of Magic Beasts~~ World of Warcraft!
## Episode outline
### Fandom Facts
**Origins:**
Figure skating, also known as _artistic skating_ in many other countries, is a sport where individuals or groups of people perform on a special type of ice skate (i.e. figure skates). It was the first winter sport included in the Olympics (in 1908) and, depending on the discipline, may include spins, jumps, lifts, throw jumps, death spirals or other elements.
**Size of Fandom:**
Let's take a look at the fandom funnel! By that I mean, more dedicated fans tend to put more into their expression of fandom, so we can use rough numbers to extrapolate how many fans there are. From what I was able to gather...
> - 184, 213: U.S. Figure Skating members during the 2015-16 season
> - 130, 000: Approximate readership of SKATING (a US figure skating magazine)
> - 108, 264: 2016 ISU World Figure Skating Championships attendance across all sessions
>
> — [U.S. Figure Skating Factsheet](http://www.usfsa.org/content/FactSheet.pdf)
Comparatively, the largest [figure skating subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/) has about 1600 subscribers.
Given that data is only from the United States, its hard to estimate, but I don't think it's unreasonable to estimate millions of fans of figure skating (in different levels of engagement).
**Fan Demographics:**
Using data from [U.S. Figure Skating](http://www.usfsa.org/content/FactSheet.pdf), it's possible to get some approximation of the age and gender of figure skating fans (given its 184 200 members), which is something! Transcribed below:
**Overall**
| Age | Members | Percentage |
|:-----:|:-------:|:----------:|
| 0-6 | 27 630 | 15% |
| 7-12 | 64 470 | 35% |
| 13-18 | 25 788 | 14% |
| 19-25 | 11 052 | 6% |
| 26-50 | 18 420 | 10% |
| 51+ | 9 210 | 5% |
| ? | 27 630 | 15% |
**Male**
| Age | Members | Percentage |
|:-----:|:-------:|:----------:|
| 0-12 | 34 998 | 19% |
| 13-18 | 3 684 | 2% |
| 19-49 | 5 526 | 3% |
| 50+ | 1 842 | 1% |
**Female**
| Age | Members | Percentage |
|:-----:|:-------:|:----------:|
| 0-12 | 73 680 | 40% |
| 13-18 | 25 788 | 14% |
| 19-49 | 27 630 | 15% |
| 50+ | 9 210 | 5% |
Figure skaters, then, are predominately young, and predominately female.
Though the data is a bit out of data, [Sports Business Journal](http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2001/01/20010115/This-Weeks-Issue/Demographics-Of-Figure-Skating-Fans.aspx) might have more insight into the demographics of fans in general. Again, fans are predominantly female (65%), but tend to skew older — the largest groups are folks age 50-64 (27%), 30-39 (20%), and 40-49 (19%).
**Changes in Fandom around the world:**
Interest in figure skating is hard to plot, but its probably on a slow decline [in terms of search traffic](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=skating,figure%20skating), at least. Interest is, unsurprisingly, periodic, with a lot of interest around the winter Olympics and in December when a number of championships take place (not to mention, winter in general). The [International Skating Union (ISU) Grand Prix of Figure Skating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISU_Grand_Prix_of_Figure_Skating) ends in mid-December, but starts in late October, so that might also be a factor.
Unsurprisingly, interest in figure skating tends to come from colder, northly countries. In particular, Canada, Estonia, the United States, Latvia, and Finland (but...
