Alex Honnold made headlines last month when he free soloed a skyscraper live on Netflix. Over 6 million viewers tuned in to watch, and it wasn’t just climbers who logged on to watch Honnold risk his life.
If the event taught us anything (besides the fact that Honnold attracts attention when he does anything), it’s that climbing can have mass appeal beyond gym-goers. Much like plenty of people who watch UFC, you don’t have to practice the sport to be an avid viewer.
When climbing is packaged in an accessible, highly dramatized format, it’ll draw eyes. And that’s precisely what the people behind the new Pro Climbing League (PCL) are betting on.
This weekend, a London event space will become a public arena, where the world’s best climbers (including Olympians and world champions) will face off in a radical new Pro Climbing League format: simultaneous, head-to-head climbing in duels where every second counts.
Even as climbing gyms become more popular, the sport remains niche in the broader culture. If the PCL delivers on its revolutionary promises, though, that may start to change. Here’s everything you need to know about the league changing the game in climbing.
Pro Climbing League: The Format
The PCL works quite differently from most traditional comps. First of all, athletes of the same gender compete against each other simultaneously.
Climbers compete in pairs, head-to-head on boulders, with a clock running. The winner is whoever tops the most boulders. If they get the same number of tops, whoever climbed it the fastest wins. If there are no tops, whoever controlled the highest hold on the climb wins. Win against your opponent, and you make it to the next round.
The competition will have four rounds. First, a seeding round the day before the main event, where climbers face off to be ranked. Based on those results, they’ll be paired (#1 with #8, #2 with #7, and so on). Then, during the big show, athletes go through qualifying (eight climbers), semifinals (four climbers), and finals (two climbers). In qualifying, they climb three boulders; in semifinals, one; and in finals, two.
The Appeal
Compared to World Cup comps run by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), the PCL has several features that may help bring in a larger audience. Unlike an IFSC comp, which has many more athletes and takes place over multiple rounds over multiple days, the main event of PCL is a fast-paced, one-night comp.
This format eliminates the math involved in IFSC comps. There, they get some points for zones (a designated “halfway” point on the boulder) and full points for tops (finishing the boulder). Each additional attempt on a climb after the first results in 0.1 being subtracted from their score.
For example, if a climber tops a boulder on their second try, the score would be 24.9. The score is the combined number of zones and tops minus attempts (the higher the number, the better).
The PCL eliminates all those complications. It’s simple and easy to understand: Whoever tops the most climbs wins. If there’s a tie, whoever did it the fastest wins.
The PCL design also ups the action: two athletes climb the same boulder, side by side, at the same time. In IFSC comps, athletes are in isolation, unaware of how their fellow competitors are doing.
Here, a climber will know if their competitor is just ahead of them, and might make a bold, desperate move to try to catch up. There’s more room for tactics and strategy, and knowing your competition topped a boulder will ratchet up the pressure.
How to Watch
Tickets for the comp, which will be hosted in the Magazine, a large event space in London, are already sold out. Viewers can watch online via Red Bull TV. The event will air Feb. 28 at 1:30 p.m. EST.
The Origins of the Pro Climbing League
The new venture comes from Danaan Markey, a climber and coach, and Charlie Boscoe, a former alpinist turned World Cup commentator.
GearJunkie spoke with Markey in a video interview. Markey has coached the German climbing team and knows just how hard athletes work to make it as pro climbers. Most of them make very little money and have to travel around the world (on their own dime) to compete in IFSC World Cups.
As a coach, “I was really seeing how much commitment, how much passion they were putting in was what made me start to think like that there has to be a better return for this,” Markey said. Much of PCL’s messaging is focused on better serving athletes.
Big Prizes, Travel Covered
One of the main ways it’ll do that is through prize money. In addition to bragging rights, the winners of the PCL will take home some serious cash. Gold earns athletes $13,600, silver $6,830, and bronze $3,415.
That’s far more than a winner of an IFSC World Cup would bring home. Typically, gold there gets you $4,390, silver $2,900, and bronze $2,050. Winning the PCL could be a serious payday.
Additionally, the PCL is covering all travel and accommodation expenses for the athletes, a rarity in comp climbing. And unlike in IFSC comps, where climbers have to wear standard uniforms from their home country, climbers at the PCL can wear whatever they like, opening up more sponsorship opportunities.
Markey and Boscoe are also working with local gyms to host signing events, where athletes are compensated. And when it comes to marketing, they decided to spend their budget on paying the athletes to create video content, which Markey says has gone over like gangbusters online.
Their strategy so far has resonated with athletes. “I think the PCL better serves the athletes because we have more opportunities to promote the sponsors and companies that support us,” American climber Annie Sanders said.
Markey says that the PCL has had friendly chats with the IFSC and doesn’t see it as in competition with the long-standing federation. “If we go into competition with the IFSC, the only people who lose are the athletes being pulled on which said to pick,” he said.
IFSC comps usually run from mid-April through September, so if the PCL operates outside that time frame, there should be little issue. The PCL has already got additional comps planned in Europe, North America, and Asia, centered on large cities like Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.
The Athletes
The Pros
The PCL got a murderers’ row of talent to participate in its first comp. Eight athletes of each gender will compete. Competition climbing’s G.O.A.T., two-time Olympic gold medalist Janja Garnbret, is set to climb. Paris Olympic gold medalist Toby Roberts will also be in the building.
Other Olympians slated to compete include: Oriane Bertone, Lucia Dörffel, Colin Duffy, Erin McNeice, Camilla Moroni, Yannick Flohe, Mickael Mawem, and Tomoa Narasaki. Rounding out the lineup are Annie Sanders, Darius Rapa, Mejdi Schlack, and Anon Matsufuji.
If you don’t recognize these names, rest assured that they’re some of the world’s best boulderers. They’ve won world championships and climbed up to V16.
Part of the drama and intrigue around the comp is who each climber will be paired with. Who will compete head-to-head against Janja? Can a young gun like Annie Sanders take on the legend?
The Qualifiers
In early February, the PCL held a citizens’ qualifying competition, open to anyone who wanted to earn a spot in the big show later in the month. The winners, Maximilian Milne and Jenny Buckley, punched their tickets to the finals after a hard-fought battle. Milne complimented the setting in the qualifying competition, saying it was just the right level of difficulty to separate the athletes, but not impossible.
Why Does It Matter?
With a sold-out crowd and top-tier climbers, the PCL will likely be an entertaining, high-octane event to watch. But it’s significant for more than just providing a rollicking good time.
For years, the IFSC World Cup circuit has really been the only name in the game for competition climbers. If climbers want to attempt to make a living (and a meager one at that), they’ve got to compete on the IFSC circuit. And the governing body has gotten its fair dosage of criticism over the years for its formatting changes and how it’s handled issues like disordered eating among athletes.
The jury is still out on whether the PCL is an improvement to the IFSC format (we’ll have to watch and see), but, not for nothing, it’s challenging the organization’s longstanding hegemony. Maybe the PCL will push the IFSC to modernize, help grow the sport beyond its current audience, or pay athletes more.
Athletes are embracing the new opportunity. “I hope that PCL will encourage more events to try new formats: I don’t think we’ve found the perfect bouldering format yet. It would also be cool to see more competitions with big cash purses so that being a comp climber can be a more attainable/sustainable career,” American climber Colin Duffy said.
Since climbing became an Olympic sport at the Tokyo Games in 2021, the Olympics have sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the competition climbing world. For athletes who don’t want to pursue that path (or can’t, since each country can only send two athletes per discipline), the PCL is another option.
We’ll be tuning in on Feb. 28 to see who wins the gold and if the PCL is as revolutionary as it claims.
