USA Water Polo Capitalizes on Celebrity Success, Sees Organizational Uplift

PARIS — Throughout a big win over France in women’s water polo action on Friday at the Aquatic Centre in the 2024 Olympic Summer Games, the United States was cheered on by a display of star power that sometimes is only reserved for the most marquee of sports.

There was celebrity chef Guy Fieri, USOPC Chief Executive Officer Sarah Hirshland and LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman. And as always during these Games, there was former Public Enemy star Flavor Flav, who before the Games signed a five-year sponsorship deal as the official hype man for the national team.

“We live in a celebrity-obsessed society,” said USA Water Polo Chief Executive Officer Christopher Ramsey.

Flav’s celebrity promotion has done a lot for the sport while the Games are underway, the latest example of how the organization has worked to promote itself on social media starting with its own in-house operations as well, which Ramsey credits Chief Content & Marketing Officer Greg Mescall for.

“We actually built a broadcast studio in our offices,” Ramsey said. “It was modest and little, but Greg really led the way on that. And what we did is we started to use social media to recognize teams and performances all across the country. And so even though the sport initially was really California centric, we tried to nationalize the sport by the way we covered it. And that has really paid dividends.”

Some of the work has also been by utilizing the sport’s mindset.

“Water polo is an unusual sport because it combines certain qualities that most other sports don’t have,” Ramsey said. “What I found is people who play water polo have learned from the sport that there’s more than one way to get you to get to your goal. And sometimes it might be a sneaky backdoor way, but they’re very creative. And I think that’s had a big impact on the sport’s growth and it’s our ability to attract other people who are interested in the sport. Because they’re kind of like, wow, I’m not sure I understand what this is, but I’ve never really seen anything like it.”

What have fans seen so far in the Games? The U.S. women, having won the past three Olympic gold medals, will be in the medal rounds in Paris after going 3-1 in group play, culminating with a dominant 17-5 win over France on Friday that tied the mark for most goals in a game so far in the tournament.

The U.S. men followed that with a win over Montenegro on Saturday to advance to the medal rounds as well. It finished in fourth place at the Water Polo World Cup in 2023 after silver medals in 2020 and 2022 in the FINA World League.

Oh, and back home the national governing body is also running one of its biggest events of the year, the USA Water Polo National Junior Olympics with sessions in Bay Area having been completed last week, followed by three days of competition in North Texas with all three sites combining for the latest age group water polo tournament in the nation. It’s a balancing act Ramsey is proud to juggle.

“We’ve become a mature organization with highly developed national teams and really a solid foundation of youth sport underneath it,” he said. “That was not the case when I first came to (the organization). We spent a lot of time working on how to build that and creating partnerships with our clubs within the sport. With great locations, great venues around the country where we could have events that people wanted to attend.”

USA Water Polo also knows as much as it continues to expand nationally into new markets, it also is inextricably linked to California — Southern California in particular. No team outside of California has made it to a title game in men’s or women’s water polo in NCAA history; it has sponsored the men’s championship since 1969 and the women’s since 2001.

The next Games being in Los Angeles will be “jet fuel” for the NGB, Ramsey says, with water polo slated to be in Long Beach. Those will be the first Games in a while that Ramsey can attend as a fan; he will retire as chief executive officer after Paris concludes, having been in the job for 17 years.

“I kind of felt like they brought me in in part because I was a bit of a gunslinger and I was willing to face up at High Noon at the OK Corral,” Ramey said with a laugh. “That’s been a critical part of my makeup because there were certain entrenched parts of the sport and habits that people built up that needed to be changed in the best interests of the members and the organization over time. I’ve had my share of gunfights and I was watching a Western the other day and thought, old gunfighters don’t really get to hang up their guns at the end of the day. There’s always still somebody that’s going to call you out.”

USA Water Polo membership now totals nearly 50,000 and has increased revenue to $16 million in 2022 from under $4 million in 2006, along with launching the Olympic Development Program and National Junior Olympics. And state-of-the-art aquatics complex at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, serves as a hub. Jamie Davis, the current leader of USA Volleyball, will take over at USA Water Polo this fall.

“I always wanted to leave the place shipshape,” Ramsey said. “And I feel like financially, performance wise, at the national team level, from an expansion and growth point of view, all of those areas now, the place is in pretty good shape. One of my concerns was leaving it in a way that it could continue to grow and be successful and I really feel confident in that now. Jamie’s a great guy and he’ll do an amazing job, he’s got a different portfolio than I had and he’ll have some expertise that will be really valuable.”