International Agility Festival: The Greatest Agility Party That Never Happened

Do you know the Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened? If not, we recommend the documentary, which has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards. It tells the story of the FYRE Festival in the Bahamas Islands of Great Exuma in 2017. Touted as the biggest and most glamorous event of 2017, a two-weekend paradise island was to host a festival like no other. With the support of well-known stars from the worlds of music and fashion. The fact that Netflix has published a documentary about it may reveal that the event did not take place as announced. So much in advance. But what exactly does this event have to do with Agility?

To reveal this, we have to rewind a few months. To be more precise, at the beginning of 2023, when a tournament announcement caused a stir in the Agility community. A large international Agility tournament was planned for early summer. Namely the International Agility Festival. Not only the planned size of the event caused astonishment, but also the name of the event. A name that is well known to our British readers. The International Agility Festival has been taking place there every summer for many years. Organized by the English Kennel Club. One of the biggest outdoor tournament in the United Kingdom.

But it was mainly the daring plan according to the announcement that caused a stir in the community. For example, a total of 10 international judges from all parts of Europe and beyond were announced. The planned location in Inzell, Germany, was no less pompous. The plan was to hold the competition in the Max Aicher Arena ice rink. For this purpose, an artificial turf should have been laid to create space for three rings and a separate warm-up area in an outbuilding. Actually, something like what is otherwise only known from the Agility World Championship. The whole thing would have been financed not only by the entry fee and sponsors but also by ticket income. According to the Eventbrite ticket portal, tickets were available from 6.50 euros. That may be peanuts compared to the FYRE Festival, where some visitors paid more than 1000 dollars. Just to find spectators without Agility background is anything else than easy. The range for that is lacking. Even with a few hundred spectators, the financing seems very unrealistic.

Maybe by now you also understand the connection between the FYRE Festival from the introduction and the International Agility Festival. Simply the former, more or less, took place and the International Agility Festival was officially canceled two weeks before the event. A cancellation with an announcement. When we in the editorial office first heard about this daring plan, we all pricked up our ears. Because already in January this all sounded somehow too good to be true. Skepticism grew. As a joke, the idea for this article was already thrown into the room. Well, six months later I’m sitting here writing these lines… Over time, our concerns became more and more true. This started, among other things, with the already rather sparse homepage being offline again after just a few days. According to the organizer Ultimate Sports, the server problems should be fixed within a few days. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months.

Nevertheless, wild announcements such as 3D animations during the tournament in the live stream or online draws for the planned Nations Cup followed. All in-house production alongside the actual tournament. That, too, is a biased story. Ultimate Sports was intended, among other things, as the official paystream at the Gold Rush Competition 2021. Shortly after the tournament started, the stream was canceled due to technical issues.

But back to the International Agility Festival. There in the meantime dark clouds were brewing. The co-organizing club in addition to the organizer Ultimate Sports has withdrawn for reasons that are not known. As a result, the tournament lost its status as an official FCI tournament and all the officially titled runs suddenly became pure open races. The public search for a replacement club over Facebook was – not surprisingly, unsuccessful. This was probably the final deathblow. Even though the organizers still have always assured that the tournament will take place as planned. Just at this point, almost nobody really wanted to believe that anymore. According to the unfinished reporting platform (also this platform was a product of Ultimate Sports), registrations remained in the lower double-digit range until the end.

The cancellation of the tournament followed in mid-May. A rejection in one short sentence. No reason given, no information on whether camping fees that have already been paid will be refunded and, above all, no apology. This followed a few weeks later and gave a little insight into the fiasco. Various open outstandings from different people and unpaid prize money from a previously held mini tournament.

It’s not about blaming someone. That is why we deliberately refrain from going into more detail here and naming the person. Especially since the intention behind it was not of a malicious nature, but happened more from being overwhelmed and a total misjudgment. But of course we don’t want to leave the story untold. In that sense, it was probably for the best that the tournament was canceled a few days in advance. The German International Agility Festival was thus spared a story similar to that of the FYRE Festival.