Farid Gaibov, the new president of the European gymnastics federation talked to Azerisport.com about his work and his plans for European gymnastics.
According to Gaibov, all 6 gymnastics sports will be represented at the 2019 European Games in Minsk just like they were in Baku in 2015, although he said that the number of the athletes will be lower. He didn’t specify exactly by how much (in Baku, for example, artistic gymnastics had three-person teams) and whether there will still be team competitions. According to Gaibov, a competition like European Games helps to promote non-Olympic gymnastics branches that are a bit less popular than the Olympic branches.
Gaibov said that currently, the most profitable branch of UEG is artistic gymnastics, bringing income from both competitions and TV rights. The second popular is rhythmic gymnastics and trampoline is in third place. The UEG hopes to change the way gymnastics is currently broadcasted to make it more interesting for the viewers and they had meetings about it with the European Broadcasting Union. They already tried some new things during the last Aerobic and Acrobatics European Championships. Gaibov says that they tried adding special graphics to the online stream and posting scores immediately and they plan to extend this innovation to other gymnastics branches.
He didn’t offer more details on possible innovation for the broadcasts, but if they’re at it already, can UEG please ask the SEC network (that handstand protractor!) or Emily Chan (the ninja scoring graphics!) for tips? The gymnastics community would be so grateful.
Photo: Azerisport.com
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