It’s Here! The Pay-Per-View World Tour!

Uh, bodyboarding only. But still! Maybe the future.

Today marks the kick off of the very first event of the 2015 Free Surf World Tour, a bodyboard-only, video-based tournament that’s actually kind of cool.

Rather than go the traditional run-a-heat-and-make-the-guys-scrap-for-points format, the FSB is taking the purely social media route.

For $US4.99 a contest viewers are given access to the videos and allowed to vote on their favorites. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. It’s not a totally original format, there have been numerous video voting contests run, but this one could, potentially, spell actual money for competitors.

I think.

See, I first heard about the FSB about six months ago, then promptly forgot about it.

In the meantime they underwent a site redesign and some of the information I’m about to relay has been removed.

Or moved.

Whichever, I can’t find it. So the following is dredged from the depths of my drug-addled mind, making it of somewhat dubious reliability. But it might be totally factual. \Sometimes I surprise myself.

Anyway, it goes like this: twenty professional bodyboarders (plus an unspecified number of wildcards) have one month to submit minute-long clips which are voted on and ranked accordingly.

The twist is that voters pay $US4.99, per event, for the privilege of casting a vote, the proceeds of which are split among the riders.  The split goes: $1 to the company, $2 into the winner’s pot and $2 to whichever athlete got your vote.  It’s an innovative plan to get some money into riders hands, one that I like.

But not everything is perfect.

Their website still needs some work (Click here) , not a great thing for a web-based contest series, and the fact that everything is locked behind a pay wall from the get go isn’t very enticing.

Ideally they’d give the first away as a free trial, show that it’s a worthwhile concept to support, and begin charging with the next one. Though that would mean they’d have to pony up cash for the first event and it is bodyboarding.

There’s undoubtedly a ton of love behind the tour, but very little cash.

They need to take a second look at the name as well. It’s called the Free Surf World Tour, but promotional material repeatedly refers to it as the FSB, short for Free Surf Bodyboarding. It confused me, and I’m not totally retarded, so they’ll probably want to tighten things up a bit.

But it’s run regionally, which means guy are competing in the same swell window, eliminating a need to travel extensively. Which is great, since, again, I highly doubt these guys are making enough sponsorship dough to travel the world chasing swells. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

But it’s a great idea and I really hope it works out for them. When everything ocean related is being commoditized and marketed at a break-neck pace it’s great that their weird little clan of belly sliders exists out their on the fringes, doing their own weird little thing.