Actually if you look at Medieval Times and the markets its in, and you consider the investment required, the best I would say is that it has achieved enough niche status to survive for a while. Nothing more. Worse for them, when the novelty of Medieval Times wears thin (in my experience that takes all of one visit), its not something you go back to.

I'd dare say Medieval Times only works in the big markets because there are enough new tourists coming in for other things that the tide keeps Medieval Times afloat.

fog machines and rock music, eh? sounds a little like WWF, which given, i have watched, but only because someone else was.
I still don't think it would take off. most of the people who want to watch someone get the snoot beat out of them have WWF, or MMA, and usually have only a passing interest in the added horses, armor, and medieval style weapons. The people who want the horses, armor, and medieval weapons usually also want historical accuracy, or are satisfied going to the renaissance festival and watching a skit.

I'm throwing out examples. Anything with the right marketing and budget behind it can be popular for at least a short time. Sponsors will jump on just about anything that will get their name out there. You just have to pitch it right. I've gotten money for everything from films to documentries, to trash runs, and road trips by getting sponsors. Throw the power of media, televison and marketing behind something like jousting, and you could get a crowd. Look at the recent revival of Roller Derby, granted, bringing something back in populariy after 25 years is easier than 400. My groups fight show at the local Ren fair is one of the most popular shows there, we have been asked to do 4 shows a day (impossible right now, the body can only take so much), people love the idea of people beating the living snot out of each other. That has now stemmed off to doing full contact shows for the Airforce and Army, schools, and colleges. Plus WWF and MMA don't have swords or lances... :D

Here is my perspective on the sport. Like NASCAR racing jousting reqires a considerable investment of capital and not only capital but an investment of time as well. Admittedly I am not too knowledgable of NASCAR racing but I know that racers have corporate sponsors whose products sell to NASCAR racing fans and to the general public as well racing fans or not. Swords, armour, horses have a limited appeal and therefore a limited market, not a general one like NASCAR so sponsorship is limited.

Here is the bottom line. Either one has deep pockets or else one must seek out sponsors. In medieval times the knight had a Lord as sponsor or else was the Lord himself. Everyone was involved in patronage which meant service was owed to one's liege Lord. The system became so complicated that no one could tell who owed service to whom and sometimes service owed conflicted with service owed to another. It was found too cost prohibitive to continue the system and more cost efficient for the government to raise a professional army thru taxation...i.e. scutage or shield money. This was much more efficient than patronage. The cost of doing business put the knight out of business.

Like the knights of old the modern practitioner must devote himself to the skill needed for the sport of jousting. To
begin with one must know horse flesh to select a suitable mount. Next comes training the mount which involves considerable skill or the services of someone who can properly train the mount. Then consider that as in the days of old one must have another mount if not several mounts available. Anyone who knows horses will tell you that a horse can go down for no reason at all and requires some time to be brought back up to a normal level of performance.

Next comes investment in a horse trailer and truck to pull it and this can run as much as $50,000 or more. Horses also have to groomed, fed, watered, flysprayed, and their stalls mucked out which necessitates the services of an assistant comparable to a squire.

Finally, training demands constant attention without fail. Training demands equipment and the contest demands fighting equipment probably several sets. Cost?

Here is the bottom line...either one has deep pockets or else must seek out sponsors. In the days of old the knight was in the services of a Lord or was the Lord himself. Mordern day knights must seek a modern day Lord, the corporate sponsor. As in the olden days it is the sponsor who calls the tune and participant must be prepared to dance the dance of the sponsor.

Adam,

I do not know the gent in question so this is more a general comment than a specific one.

Perhaps some knights were so but I'd guess most were not . In that day and age jousting was just one aspect of being a knight or in the knightly class and in reality a minor one. No matter how good you were in the joust if you did not get along with those around you it'd be hard pressed to keep what you had, get promotion, or at times stay alive.

Issues in a challenge also often include the challenged deeds as well so not sure your example shows anything more than traditional customs they had, in this case listing feats of deeds which goes both ways in most cases.

Lloyd,

To be fair after having gone to reenactment events in the UK, Ren Faires in general, just seem a shadow now. It was a totally new experience, one I imagine others would enjoy if it took place here in the USA. Having so many people really working to get the right period look was excellent. There are good groups here in the US no doubt but seeing so many people in one place like that was awesome.

RPM

Randal, I am completely with you there. Back in the mid-90s, I got to spend 3 weeks in England and went to a LH event at Warwick Castle. While I enjoyed the Knights of England show (a theatrical joust), it was the LH aspect that I was really captivated by. Unfortunately, faires in the US care little about historical accuracy anymore.

To become a "mainstream" sport, there needs to be an active following of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of spectators. I think the trade-offs that would have to be made (i.e. the pro wrestling/MMA mentality and marketing) is not worth it.

However, now that the SCA is experimenting with balsa jousting (which is often extremely hard hitting!), the opportunity to expand IJA/IJL "styles" in the US is increasing. I would love to be able to put on (and joust in this time) more tournaments in the US. My friends up in Canada have been doing a great job in keeping their organization vital.

It is pretty well known that I lost a lot of friends and burned quite a few bridges when I put on the IJA tourney in Michigan back in 2007 (hell, when I joined the IJA and made public my preference for a more historically accurate form of jousting). The tournament more than doubled the faire's normal attendance (to more than 8000 per day), but since no one was killed, injured or paralyzed they declined to do it again.

I sold my soul for a long time, jousting in a style that I knew was dangerous all to please the crowds. I did so because the alternative (this was my second job, remember) was to put on full theatrical jousts (with good guys, bad guys, fake blood and "jousts to the death" - all of which I abhorred then and still do now). However, I needed the money and that was my fallback job for years.

I hope that soon, there won't be a question of "what style is best" - at age 47, the number of injuries that I put myself through are starting to catch up with me, and I would greatly prefer our next generation of jousters not to have to go through what many of us did in order to participate and enjoy our sport.

For those that may be looking to "dip their toe" into the sport - I will be giving a clinic on medieval mounted games, which is the first step in becoming a mounted knight.

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=20051

Hi,
Interesting that you should mention fog machines and music for the joust. I just got back from a tournament in Poland, at Gniew. They used a fog machine. Not a great idea, since none of the horses were used to it and they had it at the entrance, so horses were shying BEFORE they entered the lists...not a great look.
But they did use modern music to accompany the jousts, and the crowd lapped it up...really got them pumping, even to the extent of a ( coerced) Mexican wave :eek:
I doubt jousting will really 'make' it as a popular spectator sport, mores the pity, but we can only hope. I think it would need a lot of money thrown behind it for anything to happen in the short-term
Cheers
Justin

Interesting points everybody. I think virtually all are valid.

While we don't believe Jousting will become "mainstream" in the conventional sense, we do however feel that it can gain significant exposure and hopefully some sponsorship, much in the same way that show-jumping, rodeo and other equestrian sports have.

The one point I would disagree with is one that Lloyd made early on, that people interested in history will gravitate toward Renfairs. The subcultural shift toward semi-adult entertainment seen in the last 5-10 years in the renfair circuit keeps most history buffs and the family crowd away, rather than attracting it. We have more people than I can count saying they don't like the renfairs because they're not suitable for children any more and they love our tournaments because they're educational and family-friendly.

The evidence that our type of tournaments are gaining popularity and audience is proven by our first expansion event the Tournois dy Lys d'Argent recently held in St Colomban, Quebec, just north of Montreal. The audience, which had been used to a plate armour "show" joust at a more-or-less "reenactment" style festival, absolutely LOVED the history combined with true and honest competition. It was the exact same refreshing audience shift toward our style of tournament and it will continue as we expand our WorldJoust Tournaments circuit.

The only way to truly understand the movement, even for people who "think" they've seen "jousting" in all its respective forms, is to attend our Tournament of the Phoenix" next month, October 22, 23, 24. We have some of the best jousters in the world scene competing, not just in jousting but in foot combat with Pollaxes and Club Tourney. It's our 5th event and will be better than ever.

http://www.WorldJoust.com

I thought it also worth pointing out that we very much recognize that education and training are key to the success and expansion of jousting as an ongoing competitive sport.

To that end, I've been holding KnightSchool MONTHLY here in California for the last 4 years. We have 4-6 local students every month, and often have students from out of the area and out of state come in not only for the regular monthly sessions, but for private instruction and our "open" practices, where we rent our horses and provide field equipment to pre-screened students for general practice. We introduce students to jousting via Skill at Arms, since most want to explore the activity before investing in a harness and the training to use it. There has been a substantial amount of interest and in the last year I've trained and outfitted 2 new -very- serious jousters, with 2 more entering the scene in the next year.

Those numbers may not seem impressive on the surface, but considering the amount of detail in the training I offer, and that I don't consider someone "ready" until I trust them to enter the international scene, they emerge from my schooling at a much higher level than that seen from the majority of jousters in this country. Horsemanship is always the fundamental separator between the crowd who's been strapped into harness, put on a draft horse, handed a closet pole and thrown by a squire down a closed tilt, and the folks commonly associated with the "European scene". Horsemanship and confident riding is the foundation upon which we train jousters and we believe it's the way to ensure people are safe, successful and respected in the list.

That said, considering there have been, until only very recently, nearly no American jousters qualified to joust in our WorldJoust tournaments, having 2-5 new competitors entering the scene from our training ground is EXTREMELY encouraging. I've also received more and more inquiries about my school, our joust training and our tournaments.

It's looking up, and we're doing our part to keep it moving forward.

http://www.KnightSchool.us

Similar coverage from the Cincinnati Enquirer: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101001/E...-no-jester .

Some of the folks covered by the article in the OP now have a show coming out on the National Geographic Channel:

Knights of Mayhem

I wonder of those ''american style' jousters ever had a horse killed, it seems quite possible if you look at their disregard for safety...

Some of the clips pretty much convinced me that they're nuts, but I suppose most people doing "extreme" sports are wired a bit different than average.

One thing jumped out at me when I read the article:

Quote:

The news that they were rejected because their armor wasn’t historically accurate left them sputtering. “If you’re a historian, go ahead and play your little game,” Adams says bitterly. “There’s a warrior class and an artistic-historic class.”

Is this one of the guys who dismissed the poleaxe, sword, and other forms of combat and all the other trappings of an ACTUAL warrior class as mere pageantry? He's got guts to focus on one aspect of medieval combat and proclaim himself "warrior class" while putting down the people that try to do it all as artists/historians.



As for the OP, no, I don't think jousting is going to become mainstream. If somehow these guys manage it I don't think it would be a good thing, just WWE on horseback.

I find it extremely pretentious that Mr Andrews calls himself world champion. I have a group of friends that I fight with. If I beat them, that doesn't make me world champion, even if one of them is Canadian.

I found some video that had these guys swearing and bragging like street thugs followed by the narrator describing Adams and Andrews as "Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad."

Come on. We all know that not all knights were the picture of honor and chivalry we'd like them to be, but... Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad? Seriously?