Mather Wiswall is the owner of the NPGL’s Miami Surge. He sat down with Muscle Insider, one of Canada’s largest muscle and fitness magazines, to discuss the league and where it goes following its second season. The league has definitely had to work through many challenges including two CEO resignations and the struggle of building a new league from the ground up.
Below is an except from the full article:
GRID: A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
Q. Why doesn’t CrossFit want anything to do with GRID, and vice versa?
A. It’s not that we don’t want anything to do with CrossFit. I think that many athletes involved with GRID train CrossFit; we appreciate what it is and the methodology behind it. What we are is different than CrossFit. We’re not specifically one type of training; we’re an entertainment entity and a sport. That’s what we were created for, so our target audience and our goals and objectives are a lot different than CrossFit. It’s just a natural separation in direction overall.
Q. Let’s talk money for a minute. The NPGL is billed as a professional sports league; do the salaries of the players and the caps for owners reflect that title?
A. For the most part, it’s a good supplement to whatever their existing job is. We’re a brand new league, just starting up, building our fan base, so of course we’d love to be the full-time option for our athletes, but there’s still some growing to do to get to that point. I think that anybody that wants to compete for a living in functional fitness wants to take a few different avenues and opportunities to build the best income that they can. We’re a good part of that, but I don’t think we can be the only part just yet.
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