USA Table Tennis CEO Gordon Kaye faces the same challenge as many small Olympic sports executives: building a sustainable business around a sport that’s dominated by other countries and rarely in the public eye. But unlike some Olympic execs, he’s at least working with a product most Americans have encountered at some point in their lives (17 million play occasionally, USATT research says). The challenge is to convince sponsors, TV executives and potential stars to see table tennis as something bigger than a rec-room diversion. Now in his second year, Kaye is eager to professionalize the sport he loves.
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There is not one other sport where the risk of injury is so low and the return is so high. I challenge you to find anyone who’s had a bad experience playing pingpong. … It’s intergenerational. I was beating professional hockey players and I lost to an 83-year-old guy. We are a gender-equity sport. Men play against women. I’ve routinely lost to people in wheelchairs.”
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Photo: COURTESY OF USA TABLE TENNIS
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On calling it “pingpong”: To me, they’re sort of interchangeable. Traditionally the more elite-level, tournament-level people have been more protective of “table tennis,” but I think if we’re going to grow our sport and our relevance in the United States, we need to recognize that 17 million people play it, of which probably 17 million people call it pingpong.
On the United States’ lack of Olympic medals: I think as important as an Olympic medal would be … I think it’s more important that we start developing Olympic-eligible personalities. We have great kids playing for us. You look at Lily Zhang, who’s really one of the top three women in the country right now. She is a marketable personality, and so I think getting that Olympic relevance for somebody like her could be huge for our sport.
On the pitch to sponsors: Most of the sponsors, or potential sponsors, we’re talking to play table tennis. I’m not suggesting we’re talking to Google, but Google has 16 tables on their campus. They have a full-time coach. I just found out that the CEO of Adobe is a member of one of our bigger clubs in California. So you’ve got this really interesting tie-in that lends itself to this passion play. I can deliver a national champion player to your doorstep and have him play with you.
On getting on TV: I think the biggest problem with our sport on television is that people are interested when it’s on during the Olympics, but then it disappears because we don’t have products that are television-worthy. That is the key issue to me. … One of my big focuses is creating television-worthy content.
