No sport is immune from a fight for relevance in a jam-packed sporting marketplace.
And Swim GP is Swimming Australia's latest attempt to blend sporting entertainment, just 12 months on from its last foray into the genre, Australia vs The World in Brisbane.
This year, the nation is keeping things in-house with a slightly tweaked format involving teams of domestic swimmers.
"I think it's a really exciting opportunity," three-time Commonwealth Games champion Jenna Forrester told ABC Sport.
"I wasn't actually at Aus vs The World last year, so this is going to be my first time doing an event like this.
But I got to watch some of it on TV and I thought that it was a really cool concept."
A cool concept but not an unfamiliar one.
Swimming has toyed with events like this for more than 30 years, since the Qantas Skins events in the mid-1990s.
Before COVID, the International Swimming League (ISL) came in to shake up the perceived monotony of conventional competition and act as a vehicle to keep interest in the sport high between Olympics.
The league has not been seen since 2021, partially as a result of COVID, partially due to the Russia-Ukraine war. The ISL's principal backer is Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Grigorishin.
However, later this year, the ISL will return with a one-off All-Star Match at the London Aquatics Centre on December 19.
That is despite there being legal issues between World Aquatics and the ISL: World Aquatics settled with a group of 263 swimmers in September 2025, who said they were denied a chance to compete, and therefore earn money, in ISL competitions.
World Aquatics paid those swimmers a combined $US4.6 million, and allowed them to participate in independent competitions such as the ISL without losing their ability to compete in the Olympics.
There is also a separate, ongoing lawsuit between the ISL and World Aquatics.
The ISL also played a role in forming the College Swimming League (CSL) in the USA, which had its first competitions in September.
The league brings together 12 programs from three of the biggest NCAA conferences: the SEC, ACC and Big Ten.
The league featured multiples, four-team competitions, with 30 events at each competition. That includes Skins events and a "jackpot" scoring rule.
Chief executive Rob Kent told Reuters the league was designed for a TV audience and for each meet to last a TV-friendly two and a half hours.
TV-friendly is exactly what Swim GP is going for too.
"I think it's just going to be a year-by-year thing that will just keep getting better and better as the event progresses," Forrester said.
"It is really exciting and it definitely is a bit different to what we're used to."
Skins matches, multi-round elimination races, play a big role in Swim GP, as do mystery relays and power plays, much in the same way they did in Brisbane last year.
It will also provide high-intensity race prep for swimmers outside of the major championships.
"It's a really exciting opportunity, and short course as well, so it'll be short and fast," Forrester said.
"It'll be good race practice and good race practice in coming together as a team, because that's something that's really important in swimming.
"It is an individual sport, but when we go away on the Australian team we really focus on the culture and bringing that Australian spirit.
"I think this will be kind of a good practice into turning swimming into more of a team sport."
At Swim GP, Australia's best and brightest able-bodied and para swimmers have been split into four teams: Team Kraken, Wahoo, KingTide and Tsunami.
Each team has platinum athletes as their headliners: KingTide has Flynn Southam and Lani Pallister; Kraken selected Kyle Chalmers and Mollie O’Callaghan; Wahoo had Meg Harris and Sam Short; Tsunami went with Kaylee McKeown and William Petric.
The first overall pick went to Wahoo, who selected sprint specialist Ben Armbruster.
Armbruster is as versatile a sprinter as they come.
The 24-year-old won Commonwealth and Pan Pac gold in the 50-metres butterfly, having reached the semifinals of the 50m freestyle at the Paris Olympics and the final of the 50m backstroke at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Mel Marshall used her first pick, second overall, to select Forrester for KingTide.
"To be second pick, that was kind of crazy to be honest," Forrester said.
"I'm curious to see what events they have because I feel like a lot of it will be kind of sprint events. I'm interested to see how I go trying to do some of those.
"It really just shows that I've had a pretty good year, I guess.
"Maybe that hasn't really settled in for me yet, maybe some other people are seeing it before I am."
