The wisdom of the crowd.
February 21, 2025 by Josiah Zoodsma in Analysis
Speculation about which players will win events in the upcoming year and how sponsorship changes will affect this dominates the off-season disc golf media content. Last week, we distributed a short survey to Ultiworld subscribers and a subset of 2024 Fandom Survey respondents to collect preseason data on what disc golf fans think will happen in 2025. We received a total of 240 responses to this short prediction survey.
- Gannon Buhr (notably, 0x World Champion) is the fan favorite to take down Worlds this year in Finland, with 43.8% of the votes.
- Ricky Wysocki (last major in 2017) and Calvin Heimburg (notably, 0x Major Champion) garnered the next two highest vote shares.
- Roughly 7% of the respondents indicated that they think Niklas Anttila will win Worlds in his home country, while another 7% believe the three-peat will happen with Isaac Robinson!
- Only 2.4% of respondents believe 6x World Champion Paul McBeth will scratch another claw on his signature discs this year.
- Kristin Lätt (who has won 2 of the last 3 World Championships and 6 of the previous 9 majors) is predicted by nearly two-thirds of respondents to take down another World Championship this year.
- Holyn Handley (12.5%) and reigning World Champion Eveliina Salonen (7.3%) round out the Top 3 most selected FPO players.
Next, we looked at players who won at least one DGPT ES/M event in 2024 and asked respondents if they thought they would win fewer, the same, or more events in 2025.
- Isaac Robinson (72%, greater than 1 win), Calvin Heimburg (60%, greater than 2 wins), and Ricky Wysocki (41%, greater than 3 wins) are the three players that respondents selected most to win more than they did in 2024.
- Only 9% of the respondents thought that Gannon Buhr could do better than his astounding 9 wins in 2024, with a similarly small 14% thinking that of Anthony Barela’s 4 wins.
- Silva Saarinen (44%, greater than 2 wins), Kristin Lätt (43%, greater than 6 wins), and Holyn Handley (40%, greater than 3 wins) all share similar percentages of respondents who think they will have better seasons in 2025 than they did in 2024.
- Only 3% of the respondents indicated that they thought the 2024 DGPT Player of the Year, Missy Gannon, would be able to eclipse her 2024 win total.
What about players who did not win in 2024? We asked respondents if they believed these players would take down a win in 2025. We color-coded this list by players who had previously won an ES/M in their career and players seeking their first ES/M win.
- Ezra Robinson (86%) and Aaron Gossage (58%) are the only two players who have never won an ES/M, with more than 20% of the respondents believing they will take down their first victory in 2025.
- Over two-thirds of respondents think that Paul McBeth (54 career ES/M wins) and Eagle McMahon (13 career ES/M wins) will return to winning form in 2025.
- On average, respondents thought there would be 2.77 first-time MPO ES/M winners in 2025.
- Kat Mertsch (54%) is the only FPO player that more than half of respondents think will win in 2025 after not winning in 2024.
- Henna Blomroos (39%) and Rebecca Cox (35%) were the most selected FPO players to get their first-ever ES/M win in 2025.
- On average, respondents thought there would be 1.77 first-time FPO ES/M winners in 2025, averaging a full one-player less than MPO predictions.
Looking further out into the future, in the 2024 Fandom Survey we asked respondents which player they thought would win the most majors in the next 5 years.
- Over 80% of respondents indicated that they think Gannon Buhr, now a 3x Major champion, will continue winning and take down the most majors in the next 5 years.
- Despite winning back-to-back World Championships, Isaac Robinson was selected by under 2% of respondents.
- How has sentiment changed from this question compared to last year?
- Gannon’s recent dominance has led to a 24.4% increase in the percentage of respondents who favor him to win the most majors in the next 5 years. Anthony Barela, who won his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th DGPT ES/M events in 2024, had the next largest increase in vote share.
- Calvin Heimburg saw the greatest reduction in vote share for this question since 2023, as despite many great Elite Series performances, still has not taken down a Major.
- A similar story can be seen in FPO, with over 70% of respondents selecting Kristin Lätt. Holyn Handley and Silva Saarinen comprise the rest of the FPO Top 3.
- Despite having nearly three-quarters of all respondents believing Kristin Lätt will continue her Major winning ways, Kristin saw the largest decrease year-over-year in this question, with 16.7% of respondents choosing a different player in 2024. Likely contributing to this, Kristin was coming off a Major Grand Slam when this question was asked in 2023.
- Holyn Handley, who took down her 1st, 2nd and 3rd ES/M wins in 2024, saw the greatest increase in vote share.
Which of these future predictions do you disagree with most? Are there any players that you definitely think will win in 2025 that very few others believe in? Let us know using the feedback links below! In the next article in the series, we will dig into our mailbox to answer your questions. This is your last chance to submit mailbag questions to be included in this article!
Don’t miss the results of the Ultiworld Disc Golf subscribers’ predictions in the Discord, found below!
- If you are interested in learning more about the team and research goals at First Available Research, click here!
- If you want to be notified of the publication of future articles in this series and/or want to take future disc golf surveys from our group, click here!
- If you have any questions, comments or mailbag topics for future articles, submit them here!
Special thanks to Lauren Campbell, who was instrumental in developing our research plan and assisting with survey design. Also, thanks go out to the Fandom Survey’s editor, Karl Lamothe. Jesse Weisz also helped edit this piece.
Please see the full series of 2024 articles by following these links:
Links for the 2023 and 2022 Fandom Series articles can be found here.
Bonus Content for 2024 Fandom Survey: Predictions for the 2025 DGPT Season is only available to Ultiworld Subscribers
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