Pro Climbing League: Rethinking Competition Climbing | Charlie Boscoe & Danaan Markey
With a head-to-head format, a high-profile lineup and a focus on credibility over spectacle, the Pro Climbing Leaguepositions itself as an alternative to established competition formats. Ahead of its sold-out debut in London, founders Charlie Boscoe and Danaan Markey outline their vision for a climbing competition that gives back to its community.
Founded by two climbers from the United Kingdom, the Pro Climbing League (PCL) introduces a new competition format for the world’s bouldering elite. The PCL features a three head-to-head elimination rounds, with invite-only athletes competing on identical boulders.
Beyond the format itself, the league places a strong emphasis on supporting athlete careers – from visibility to creating clearer pathways and opportunities within the sport. The Pro Climbing League will debut in a sold-out London venue on February 28, with Olympic champions Janja Garnbret and Toby Roberts among the confirmed athletes.
We met up with PCL founders and industry insiders Charlie Boscoe and Danaan Markey a couple of weeks before the big event. In this interview, they reflect on their journey building a professional bouldering league and discuss route setting, athlete selection, and their long-term vision for shaping the sport in a credible and sustainable way.
Interview with founders Charlie Boscoe & Danaan Markey
Kletterszene.com: The launch of the Pro Climbing League is just around the corner. Are you busy with final preparations already, or still in the thick of it?
Charlie: A bit of both. The major decisions are done – what we’re dealing with now are the smaller details: who brings the fingerboard to the warm-up area, who mounts it, who runs the clock? We just had a meeting about the technical side of the event. Right now, it’s about how everything works minute by minute. There’s a lot of detail here.
Danaan: These last weeks really showed how different Charlie’s job and mine are. I’ve mostly been speaking with financial groups about how the PCL can become a global property after the first event. At the same time, I’m working closely with the athletes and handling communications. I’ve had ten meetings since lunchtime. I’m not even joking.
Despite all its growth, climbing is still a niche sport. Why did you feel now was the right time to launch a bouldering league specifically?
Danaan: The answer to this is quite data-based. Yes, bouldering is still a niche within a niche, but it is by far the most participated discipline. The industry has seen massive growth in the last decade. In the last five years, the sport has reached a point of rapid, sustained growth, which made now the right time. We would have done this earlier if we could.
Bouldering offers more room for innovation than Lead or Speed.
Charlie: I think bouldering is also the best discipline to watch, and it offers the most flexibility for format innovation. Speed is speed, Lead has limited options for rethinking the format, but with bouldering, there’s just a lot of room for development. Bouldering competitions are also easier to run logistically and financially, they offer more venue options, and are easier for audiences to follow. We initially discussed multi-discipline events but quickly realised that bouldering fit best on every level.
You chose a head-to-head format, with two athletes climbing identical boulders. What made you decide on that approach?
Charlie: We believe that something is missing from traditional boulder and lead competitions: direct, visible competition. Climbers rarely go head-to-head in a way audiences can clearly see. In many sports, athletes compete simultaneously, and those formats tend to be more engaging. At Climbing World Cups, the competition is certainly there, but it’s more implied than clearly visible – you don’t actually see climbers competing directly. We wanted to make that competition more tangible to the audience.
How important is it for you to reach a broader and potentially non-climbing audience with the PCL?
Danaan: It’s not the first and foremost goal. Our focus is on building a credible sport that athletes and audiences care about, while leaving room to grow. In big cities, many people have tried climbing or know someone who climbs. When you watch the head-to-head rounds, there’s something instinctively compelling about it. While it wasn’t the core strategy, we believe non-climbers will enjoy it, too.
We want a real sporting competition, not a gimmick.
Charlie: We knew early on that we wanted a real sporting competition, not a gimmick. Chasing numbers alone can be dangerous. Yes, we want to grow and reach a big audience, but credibility comes first. If your only goal is maximum views, you’d make cat videos.
What kind of atmosphere are you hoping to see the between athletes?
Charlie: We want to give the athletes a platform and let them decide how to use it. We’re not telling them to be competitive, talk to each other or create a show. We won’t give guidance on behavior beyond clear rules about distance and interference. If they want to ignore each other, that’s fine. If they want to share beta, that’s also fine.
From our test events, we’ve seen all kinds of approaches. That said, when someone is climbing right next to you, it’s almost impossible not to be aware of them – even if it’s just a glance. And just like at World Cups, some climbers engage more, others less. That’s simply part of the sport.
Let’s talk about the route setting, which will clearly play a key role in shaping the competition. What can we expect?
Charlie: In current formats, what happens between the zone and the top often doesn’t really matter – you either get the zone, the top, or neither. In the PCL, every move matters, and that fundamentally changes how you can set.
We want climbers on the wall together, so the boulders shouldn’t throw them off immediately. Instead, you can make individual moves more meaningful and progressively harder.
In the PCL, athletes have four minutes to top the boulder. If no reaches the top, the winner is the athlete who reaches the highest hold the fastest. The final attempt may be completed after the time has expired (4 minutes +).
Danaan: At the same time, you don’t want to over-control route setting, but trust the setters to do their job. That’s why we’ve focused on assembling an exceptional setting team and giving them the best possible conditions to work in. The other day, Charlie even suggested bringing in a masseuse for the setters. We hope this really helps them do the best job they can do and raises the level.
In the PCL, every move matters – that changes how you can set.
Charlie: Exactly. If I tried to tell five of the best route setters in the world how to do their job, they’d just laugh at me. Our role is to explain the format and share what we learned so far. Beyond that, we must empower them to draw their own conclusions.
In the end, we’re placing our faith in the route setters, but that is true of every climbing comp ever. We’re very confident in the team we’ve put together.
You’ve also assembled a high-profile lineup of athletes. With powerful climbers like Janja Garnbret and Yannick Flohé already announced, could we see a move away from parkour to harder, more old-school climbing?
Charlie: I think that’s very likely. For example, I can guarantee there will be no running across a volume to start a boulder (laughs). I think parkour has been confused with coordination and dynamic movement. When people hear “no parkour,” they sometimes imagine tiny crimps on a slab, but that’s not what we mean. There will still be dynamic, exciting moves, but they will resemble the kind of climbing most climbers do.
Some athletes have said they don’t particularly enjoy the parkour-style elements in competitions. Did that influence your approach?
Charlie: For the PCL to succeed, the athletes have to enjoy the climbing. The current system doesn’t always measure who the better climber is. At the elite level, you need meaningful ways to separate athletes, and certain low-percentage moves can work like a kind of “get out of jail free” card. We don’t want climbers falling off arbitrarily just so someone wins. We can do better than that.
We don’t want to make climbers fall off arbitrarily just so someone wins.
Danaan: That said, building risk into the climbs is key to any format. When you’re setting for the very top level, it’s incredibly difficult to know what will separate athletes like Toby Roberts and Mejdi Schalck. There are fewer than ten people in the world with recent setting experience at that level, and that’s something we’re very aware of.
The debut of the PCL will feature 16 invited athletes, 8 male and 8 female. How did you decide who to include?
Danaan: A lot of different factors went into that. The athletes are central to the story we’re trying to tell, so we wanted a mix of experience, backgrounds, and career stages. Big names provide credibility, but diversity was just as important. Even though the event is in the UK, we only have two invited British athletes, Erin McNeice and Toby Roberts – the rest come from all over the world.
Who represents the sport as a passionate role model?
One reason for the invite-only format is that it allows audiences to see the same names more regularly and build real connections with them. In bouldering, apart from two or three athletes, finals lineups change constantly, so there’s very little continuity. Ultimately, we asked ourselves who could represent the sport as a passionate role model and also bring an interesting community with them.
All 16 athletes – 8 male, 8 female – have been announced for the PCL.
The full lineup can be viewed here.
Will the PCL remain invite-only in the long term?
Danaan: It’s not purely invite-only. We chose to have a wild card for one open spot, which changes the dynamic quite a bit compared to the World Climbing (former IFSC) system. There, athletes are selected for national teams and only some then make it to World Cups, often lacking a clear pathway. With the PCL, there’s a single day where you have a real chance to earn that final place on the big stage. This is something we really want to develop further in the future.
Charlie: Invite-only makes sense for now, but long term we want a clear pathway into the PCL. That could mean a mix of invited athletes, qualifiers, and wildcards – perhaps even on a local level. There needs to be a way to earn your way into the league.
You’ve said before that the PCL also aims to help athletes make a sustainable living. How do you support them differently?
Danaan: One important step was making sure athletes can wear their own sponsors’ clothing. That way, the brands supporting them year-round also get visibility at the main event, and that value flows back to the athletes.
Of course, there’s prize money and support to get them to the event, but it goes beyond that. Many athletes want to grow as communicators of the sport, so we’ve built support around social media and storytelling. We also actively connect athletes with gyms and other organisations while they’re in town. That includes opportunities outside climbing as well, although not everything is confirmed yet.
The goal is to help people build careers in climbing.
Danaan: We’re also providing on-site performance support, not just during the event but before and after, to help athletes manage the mental side of a professional career. On top of that, we’re organising sessions around business skills – from starting a YouTube channel to opening a gym. A lot of that’s obviously very focused on the competing athletes, but there are non-competing athletes that will be involved. The goal is to help people build real careers in climbing in a way that suits them.
Charlie: We’ve always looked at how other individual sports like tennis or golf operate. We basically want to give these athletes the biggest platform we can offer and create opportunities, rather than just handing out prize money and stopping there.
How did your own backgrounds in the climbing industry shape your approach to building the PCL?
Charlie: I started out in mountain guiding and alpine climbing, then moved into broadcasting and writing. I’m a bit of a generalist – I’ve done most types of climbing at a decent level, but I was never a top-level competition climber. My strengths are in broadcasting and competition formats, while things like marketing and finance are newer to me. Danaan is much more rooted in bouldering, route setting, and coaching, so there’s a very logical split in our knowledge, and it works well.
Danaan: Charlie has a strong connection to mainstream sport and understands how to take the PCL from a niche concept to something broader. My background is all climbing. I coached early on, including the German team, then worked as a commentator at World Cups. I also moved into marketing, eventually taking on the sports marketing at Patagonia Europe, which gave me international insight into climbing communities. I’ve also done route setting and guidebook work, although Charlie has written more guidebooks than me – and probably made more money from them (laughs).
If something doesn’t feel right to us as climbers, we won’t do it.
Charlie: That said, I believe having people involved who aren’t climbers has been incredibly valuable. People from outside the sport see things differently and ask questions climbers often don’t. It’s true that if something doesn’t feel right to us as climbers, we won’t do it. But those outside perspectives have helped us question a lot of things that insiders of the sport often take for granted.
You’ve recently been quoted on a podcast saying that the long-term venue goal for the PCL is Madison Square Garden. What short-term plans can you share for this year and into 2027?
Danaan: We’re very deliberately fitting our events around the World Climbing season, so the athletes won’t have to choose between the PCL and World Cups. Right now, the plan is a three-event season. Of course, the focus is on doing the first event well, but everything is aligned as well as possible for that. The idea is to scale up from there.
Our intention is to host events in North America, Asia and Europe, and ultimately to bring the PCL to the biggest climbing communities around the world. So, three events probably starting next year, then potentially five events the year after.
Your first event in London is sold out with 2,500 tickets – congratulations. How can everyone else tune in?
Danaan: The event will be livestreamed on Red Bull TV on February 28 from Magazine London. We’re really excited for people around the world to join in and be part of it online.
Any final thoughts ahead of the kick-off?
Charlie: This whole process has definitely been a lesson in complexity. The deeper we got into it, the more layers revealed themselves. When I look back at our early notes and emails, it’s almost funny how straightforward we thought it would be. In principle, the idea is simple – but doing it properly, and doing it well, adds a whole different level of detail.
Thanks, Charlie and Danaan.
The PCL will debut on February 28, 2026 at 20:30 MEZ.
You can find the livestream here.