Pro Climbing League leans into urban boom ahead of sold-out London launch
When the first batch of tickets for the London launch event of the Pro Climbing League went on sale last month they sold out in five minutes. Not quite Oasis or Taylor Swift levels of devotion, but for a minority sport with little history as a spectator event, impressive nonetheless.
On Saturday night at Magazine London in Greenwich, 2,500 people will be in attendance to see the likes of Team GB’s Olympic champion Toby Roberts compete in what is effectively a pilot for what its creators hope will be an annual series staged in global cities.
Unlike traditional climbing competitions, it features a head-to-head format designed to maximise spectator excitement. Roberts, for one, is energised by the idea of duelling on identical boulders in front of a capacity audience in the capital of his home country.
“I think it’s a really exciting prospect. To be able to climb in front of a massive crowd with high pressure, it’s definitely going to get the adrenaline going,” he tells City AM.
Paris 2024 gold medallist Roberts, 20, expects “another level of pressure” from the head-to-head competition, which will feature 16 of the world’s top men and women.
“Not only do you have to try and climb the boulder problem, but you also have to keep an eye on what the other person is doing,” he adds.
“We’ve missed a climbing competition in London. I think it’s going to be a really cool prospect, and from the sounds of it. It’s going to be a really electric atmosphere, which I just love.”
Pro Climbing League wants eight events a year
Pro Climbing League co-founder Danaan Markey says he wasn’t surprised that the London event quickly sold out. Having worked in the sport in a variety of roles, he sensed there was an untapped opportunity among the passionate climbing community.
“We always knew that there was a serious demand for this,” Markey says. “The current market of climbing events, they’re traditional, held in remote mountain towns and not extremely well marketed, but the sport has evolved to become 80-90 per cent urban.
“The World Championships were in Paris in 2012 and 2014 – they sold out the Bercy Arena. There hasn’t been a major event in a major city since, and demand has only grown.
“We didn’t have trouble selling 2,500 tickets. There’s clearly demand for much, much more. This can and likely will be much bigger going forward.”
Markey has worked in climbing as a national team coach and commentator but it was while in sports marketing at outerwear brand Patagonia, a favourite with climbers, that he made the industry connections needed to formulate the Pro Climbing League.
A handful of angel investors who also love the sport have bankrolled it so far, but talks are advanced for venture capital to provide far deeper resources with a view to building out a full Pro Climbing League calendar in future years.
“The intention is to scale to three events in the next year and then five events the year after that,” he says. “I think six to eight could be the ideal setup longer term, but we will be conscious of how we build the business and make sure it’s the best for everyone.”
‘Climbing can be really big spectator sport’
Red Bull, which also sponsors Roberts, has helped the Pro Climbing League launch and will broadcast the London event on its own media channels. Other niche sports give its founders hope that more big brands will follow.
“When we sold out the tickets, pretty much every other climbing brand called me up and asked to come along,” says Markey.
“I don’t think there’s been anything that’s disrupted the sport so much in quite a long time, if ever. There’s definitely a lot of eyes on us.
“Undoubtedly, our intentions are to get non-endemic businesses involved in the sport, very much emulating some of the other sporting leagues, like World Surf League, where there’s serious buy-in from non endemic brands.”
The positive reception to climbing since its Olympic adoption in 2021 has encouraged Roberts that “climbing can be a really big spectator sport, especially with that duel aspect”, and he already has some destinations in mind for future legs of the Pro Climbing League.
“A lot of people who had never seen the sport before have really enjoyed it,” he says. “Maybe we could see it in Vegas, that’d be cool – or just going to big cities and putting up cool events, almost like a festival but for climbing, big arenas – that’d be amazing. I’d be super psyched.”