The number of professional surf fans no longer a mystery!
Maybe I am mistaken but didn’t the World Surf League used to host their videos on Vimeo and/or hide view numbers? I don’t think I am mistaken. I think they did and left fans everywhere wondering are the numbers in the high six figures or the low seven figures? Eight? Eight figures?
Well, now that they are on YouTube we know! The videos get high three figures to low four figures! If you take a look at the WSL YouTube channel and cruise through Snapper, Bells and Margaret’s (so far) you will find an average view count of 3,596. When star (JJF) are in the water the numbers shoot almost into the tens of thousands. The Snapper finals, feat. Wilko’s first win was watched over 40,000 times while his Bells win was not as well loved and seen by 24,000 souls.
So many potential jersey customers!
How do these stellar numbers compare to the NBA? Most of their videos are in the mid 500,000 with big plays etc. into the tens of millions. What about the NFL? Generally well over a million to, like, 600,000,000. That fucking tennis tour? Hundreds of thousands. The WNBA? More than the WSL.
Do you think maybe that WSL CEO Paul Speaker should engineer a stunning move back to hidden numbers before returning to the TV news circuit and talking about the twenty four millions who regularly tune in to professional surfing? Maybe? Or have more shark attacks mid heat? Yeah?
Who cares about the stats chas, if skif,tiff or whatever his name is stops kicking in his 100m/year there will be no WSL then what should we talk about? maybe how good it was when the WSL was around…
It’s very easy to buy numbers. Just search fiverr. $100 could get you massive numbers.
people even torrent the new JJF video, nobody’s paying to watch ADS outhassle Alejo for the inside position.
right, but you will also see a fairly standard correlation between live audience and youtube numbers. think that’s why he mentions that even programming like WNBA that gets crappy, measurable Nielsen ratings, still outperforms WSL programming on youtube. there’s no fucking way the live steam has more than a million unique views, which is why no one will buy the ads and they make us sit through silence to show the advertisers that we don’t log off during the space where their commercial could go.
Speaker…The world cares more for Middle Eastern refugees in Europe than they care the WSL.
That or they’re waiting for the Olympic Games!
Of course. Well on NeuLion’s website they list Samsung as a “partner” and the WSL as a “customer” along with NFL GamePass, ESPN Player, NBA League Pass, Tennis something and various electronic equipment makers (including Samsung again). NeuLion is a publicly listed company on the Toronto Stock Exchange (hurray for Canada!) and specialises among other things in setting up pro sports with paid subscriptions to their online video feeds, this caused a flutter at the time among surf observers who suspected this was a prep step to putting a price on the CT streams. This hasn’t eventuated, perhaps because of the viewership figures quoted by Chas; only small percentages of open fan bases will actually pay for online coverage of their sport, and a small percentage of 3,596 people is not very much money, especially if you’re swapping that money for occasional viewership peaks of 40,000 or more. NeuLion would have to be more expensive than YouTube as a platform, if you’re not recouping the expense through subs, why bother?
so you don’t have embarrassing stats splashed across the web for goons like us to kick sand in the face of
I believe they still use NeuLion as their owned-and-operated platform for all video content (that’s the video player on their website). Sure they pay, but I’m guessing they get a much larger percentage of the ad revenue that’s run on that player as opposed to what’s offered through YouTube (YT is notorious for pitiful ad revenue shares) and they have much more control over the inventory of those ads, when they’re run, etc. Plus I would imagine they’re also using NeuLion for video distribution/OTT and with the development of their app, all things YouTube can’t really offer. Added bonus: the view counts aren’t public facing…
Thanks for that Jerz!
Yes Chas Yes!!!! This was what I was waiting for amidst the self proclamation of addicts, we are back to the good stuff!!!
Those figures belie the complete fuck up that is the WSL – everything is there they just got no clue!!!!
I did some work back in 2011 at Quik pro they were talking TV viewership of 2 million aussies on free to air tv and 10 million unique visits online. They kept saying it to me with straight faces and I was just going – what Fucking drugs are you on!!!!
I think it’s clear at this point that BG has put far more thought into the WSL than than the WSL has.
You are slightly mistaken Chas. The WSL used Youtube for their first full year; you might remember YouTube was paraded at the time as a WSL broadcast partner. Stu Nettle of Swellnet did a really good series of pieces on tracking the numbers (you can search it on that site). They seemed to pan out about what you’re seeing now. Then the WSL switched to another platform, not Vimeo – something Lion? I’ve got it written down somewhere. It was uncheckable though and it put a stop to Stu’s articles. Maybe something Lion was a bit exy or some such.
I totally remember now! What happened with Lion?
I don’t know! I’ll add it to the list of questions that won’t be answered by anybody in the loop.
Good call “Nick.”
Yes, Stu Nettle did a good job of portraying what Surfmediatruths had been posting on Twitter for a year or so before. I think Stu and Chas are the only people I’m aware of who have the balls to publish this obvious stuff.
The real Nick Carroll actually published an article years ago in some Oz surf clothing catalog that the viewers were around 30k at best. That was before all the YouTube stuff. Not sure if he got a kick in the seat for that slippage, but no one else in surf media picked up on it or ran with it – considering the reps for publicly held companies like Quik were in the booths, day after day, telling people they had millions of viewers.
It was corporate collusion at the very least.
I swear to god, one more fucking merchandise tent jersey sale update and I’m going to buy a fucking plane ticket to WA from Seattle, walk up to the daft cunt selling jerseys, reach into my pocket, and buy either a Medina or a Wilko jersey, I JUST CAN’T DECIDE!!!
You live in Seattle? Let’s drink next time I’m there!
Just my closest international airport currently, but yes!
Throw a shark into the mix here or there and those numbers will go through the roof!
Do these numbers account for streaming?
No! which is why this article is accurate but by no means is it the amount of people who actually view the live event through their app.
Their live streaming numbers were on YouTube for two full years. It showed exactly how many people were streaming the contest. The most ever documented, by @surfmediatruths on Twitter with screen captions, was 100k the day Medina won the title I believe. The average viewers though, for contests, was between 15k and 30k. And that includes the Brazil and Japanese feeds that were also running and displaying live numbers. Having run a blog at one time, I can attest to the fact that most surf website traffic comes from people who already work in the surf industry – so there is that to consider from a capital POV.
Once the WSL brought in Akamai to run their feed, like the RedBull contests, the numbers could be hidden. And that’s when Speaker started dropping lies on Fox News about “40 million viewers.”
Of course, no one, besides Chas here, and a few other trolls on Twitter, have called Speaker on his lies. And no one in “surf media” has published any in depth analysis of who actually watches the contests (they don’t even get a high enough rating to register on Neilsen polls where it’s shown on obscure cable networks – which is only in Aus and Hawaii which are tiny markets. USA will show it edited down a month or two after an event but nothing live.) I’m guessing that publishing the actual numbers on a reputable website would result in negative invites to join the circle jerk on sponsor trips, contest access and fish tacos.
This article simply points out the obvious: Speaker is lying and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If they had 1/8th the number of viewers Speaker has lied about, they’d be beating most major American sports and have sponsors and live cable coverage up the arse.
Instead, they get “unspecified amounts” from local governments (paltry sums even in Australia from what I’ve seen) and the WSL continues their write-off scam. If they just owned up that it was all a scam and ran contests down and dirty like the Backdoor Shootout and had guys like Warshaw, Chas and Longtom doing the live commentary, they’d get the same viewers but without the bullshit overhead. Own that you’re a stupid little niche.
And maybe more than 15k-30k (most of whom are surf industry worker bees who add zero in marketing value) of the real surfers in the world would tune in occasionally?
appreciate the antipodean spelling of the posterior.
but truth.
Speaker could be the greatest propagandist of the post ww2 era.
Well I imagine pro sports are all full of people telling little fibs in support of their gig.
No doubt. But those sports are under a microscope pro surfing can’t even imagine. For every Nick Carroll in the NBA there are a thousand nationally published Bill Simmons wannabes.
The horror! The horror!
Swellnet did a real good analysis a year or two ago when live streaming figures were available; Chopes topped out peak concurrent viewers during an event with 118,911 but most were half of that and average viewership numbers half again, interesting read:
http://www.swellnet.com/new…
http://www.swellnet.com/new…
http://www.swellnet.com/new…
Ummmm you should have written the piece.
Cheers, maybe you should publish the next article. I work in marketing for a surf game developer and we offer just as much or more viewership for our partnerships than that.. Really puts things into scale and makes me even more confident that our game could be the largest media outlet in surfing eventually.
CEO Speaker coming up with the 24 million figure for regular viewers:
“Australia has approximately 24 million people, and they all surf!”
The end.