Controversy has hit the international swimming community over FINA (Fédération internationale de natation)’s monopolization of the international swim meet calendar. Similar to the soccer vs. FIFA controversy, minus the corrupt officials, many world renown swimmers are boycotting the official FINA meets and opting for ISL (International Swimming League) meets.

The many problems arising with FINA are to do with the stagnant growth of the swimming community over the years; something that FINA wants to keep and athletes want to change. According to Adam Peaty, the world record holder in the 100 meter breaststroke, FINA monopolizes and discourages new swimmers to become professionals.

The ISL and Adam Peaty, along with many other athletes such as Chad le Clos, Cate Campbell, Madeline Grove and Taylor Mckeown*, want to create a team based professional league, making it easier for starting professional athletes to create a career out of swimming. This leads to the team of professionals and anyone else on the team getting a sponsor. Everybody is able to benefit from a team sponsorship, and it gives more companies initiative to dive into the swimming world because of the increased coverage of their products with a bigger selection of swimmers wearing them.

As of today, many companies have decided to pull their competitive swimming lines out of the market because of the increasingly hard market to crack, with most swimmers sticking to the brands that have been with the swimming community since the start. The biggest companies to pull their competitive swimming lines as of recent times have been Dolfin and Nike, leaving their only products for swimmers their practice suits and miscellaneous equipment that is cheaper to make than the other types.

Right now FINA is rejecting all proposals to start a new swimming league, citing that the meets scheduled by ISL will “…Not be consistent with FINA’s long-standing agreements and precedents, and undermine existing high-level competitions.” The ISL meets wouldn’t be scheduled during any of the main World Cup events, but instead be during the intense training seasons of most known professionals, leaving space for younger or less experienced swimmers trying to start careers with swimming a chance to gain more traction.

*As you may have noticed there are no american swimmers against FINA at this time. This is probably because of the already long established “Pro Series,” sponsored by a company each year and includes meets scattered throughout the year during in season training, basically a national league of professionals.