WSL CEO Paul Speaker tells the Fox Biz Network Kelly Slater ain't short of a shekel…
When my wife and I first moved to Hawaii roughly eight years ago, we were so horrendously broke that we couldn’t afford cable. Going set-less wasn’t meant to be a permanent thing, I do enjoy television.
Beyond the empty mind escapism it provides it also helps keep me balls deep in the zeitgeist. And I do run the risk of becoming dangerously disconnected, living as I do in semi-hermitage on a remote tropical island with almost no real connections to the rest of the world. Seriously, the internecine conflicts with Kauai County have far more influence on my life than whatever rich white asshole buys his way into the executive branch.
Thanks to advancements in online piracy, and even though we can now easily afford a big, dumb flat-screen and a premium subscription, we got used to scraping all the shows we want to watch off the web.
One thing I can’t get much of off the various private torrent trackers of which I am a member is the top notch spectacle that is Fox News.
It’s problematic. How am I to know how threatened I currently am by racial minority uppity-ness? What rhetoric should I employ to sabotage my own self interests? In what manner is my straight while maleness under attack?
Lucky for me they post drips and drabs of content online, most recently a hard-hitting interview with none other than the WSL’s Paul Speaker.
Some highlights below:
Slater makes $20 million+ per year. This is a great exchange between host Stuart Varney and Paul Speaker.
Varney: “I’m going to ask you a question that you may or may not want to answer… can that superstar, whose name I’ve just forgotten…
Speaker: Kelly Slater
Varney: Can he earn, say, 20 million dollars a year?
Speaker: Has and will probably for a very, very long time…
Varney: Really? Twenty million?
Speaker: Way more than that.
What else?
The most popular surfing spot in the world? Hawaii!
Surfing may or may not be bigger one day than the NFL.
The WSL has advertisers? I guess so, Fox News says so.
Twenty-two million people tuned into a WSL webcast in Brazil alone.
Viewers are tuning in in order to watch people wipe out.
Cloudbreak is only two inches deep.
Out of context sharks! Loads of sharks!
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
lol. I do recall Kelly earned a $10M bonus due to winning his 10th title so my conspiratorial mind went wondering if Quik slipped the judges some coin to score MF’s 7.0 a ‘9.5’ at Pipe to deny Kelly a possible $12M bonus. Kelly leaving Quik immediately afterwards supported my ‘neurotic paranoid psychotic conspiracy lunatic theory’.
quik
This is hilarious–2 inches Speaker says–(count them 2)- of water over a coral reef–umm- haven’t seen anybody surfing with 2 inches of water over a coral reef lately–the supposedly best known surfer in the world–and the interviewer forgets his name and has to ask Speaker his name again–“can that -‘superstar’-whose name I just forgot”–“Whose name I just forgot”–this is good stuff–..”Oh look –wev’e got sharks on the screen–lots of them–your– ‘selling the wipe out”–this is priceless –“Come back tomorrow-were not on–but come back anyway”….Oh man– good stuff..
That was painful. No wonder the WSL is in the shitter.
WSL loading up on the porkies.
Stab had Slater at $3.9 mill in 2013, before he left Quick and stopped winning contest.
Alternate title for article: 13-Footers in Fiji!
Varney: How high are the waves there?
Speaker: Uh, that wave is probably 10, 12, ffff, 13-feet?