Come read Sophie Goldschmidt's vision for the surf future!
I had the opportunity to meet Sophie Goldschmidt, the World Surf League’s chief executive, at Surf Ranch alongside the most important surf journalists of our day (minus Steve Shearer, Matt Warshaw and David Lee Scales) at a small Mexican restaurant on Lemoore’s main drag. I cannot properly recall if she was drinking margaritas or not, nor if she ordered a chimichanga, but I was happy for professional surfing that she was there.
Her predecessor, Mr. Paul Speaker, did not possess the temerity for face to face meetings. If I’m allowed to parse his brief run at the top, I would say that he believed in surfing without surfers. That he could take the core physical/competitive activity, burn off the ugly cancers, repackage and sell it to the rest of the world. Bigger than football. Bigger than life.
Unfortunately for him, surfing’s ugly cancers metastasized long ago and cannot be cut away.
Ms. Goldschmidt seems to recognize this fact, see her meeting at a small Mexican restaurant and read her words in a new, wide ranging ESPN W interview. It is well worth a read. My favorite bit was when first told about professional surfing, her response was, “Wow, this exists?”
I also enjoyed her take on the new Facebook partnership.
We feel for our long-term growth, we need to invest in technology in our events, in the infrastructure that we’re building out around our operations, in the Kelly Slater Wave Company, in our marketing and communications resources. I wouldn’t say we’re niche, but we’re not nearly as mainstream as we’d like to be. We’re really in audience-growth mode. We were so excited to expand our Facebook deal, which was pretty groundbreaking for us. One of the key reasons we went with it is because it’s free. You don’t have to pay to watch content on Facebook, and that’s really important to us. Maybe some at some point down the road, we will have some kind of subscription service for content, but I think, philosophically, it’s always going to be important that a significant amount of our content is available for free. It’s kind of the surfing ethos to a certain extent.
Gross, unrealistic expectations certainly are the surfer’s ethos. No wonder Paul Speaker tried to perform surgery.
Where and why did they find this person to run pro surfing? If she didn’t know it existed, doesn’t that immediately disqualify her from running it? This is the Dotard philosophy for picking leadership: Know nothing = great pick!
No matter how they package it, live televised surfing contests will never be entertaining to the masses, even some actual surfers find it boring.
“We’re really in audience-growth mode”. Does she mean Macy’s, Zumiez, PacSun, Tilly’s audience growth mode?
Kill me now.
They’re always so focused on “expanding” the “market.” The damn market expands on its own: they need to focus on the fans they have now, not the kooks they’re trying to bring in – they’ll come on their own, just visit north shore, you’ll see.
I like her Tee-o.
She looks in her element.
She seems nice! But convincing mainstream people to watch surf contests is a hell of a task. Good luck, I guess!
yes taking the surf culture mainstream , ask QuikBong how that worked out!
The onus is on you to make surfing undesirable again. Rape women on the beach and bash the groms.
I’m still not joining Facebook.
But then I’m not rabidly passionate about pro-surfing comps. I’ll watch the odd heat and enjoy LT’s articles, but really, I want to go have the fun myself. Not watch some other asshole do it for me… and get paid for it.
It’s still playing on the app for now.
Yes, and I’ll tune in now and again on that. Cheers.
She fails on some levels. Here is some but not all highlights:
Failing to listen to the Captain.
Not Morgan, but seems they should listen to him as well. Captain Obvious.
“One of the challenges for us is the uncertainty of when our events are actually going to take place, whereas in a wave system, you push a button and there you go, 8 o’clock on a Saturday night. We’re close to securing the land and will have to go through the permitting, but if we get a facility built, I hope there’s a good chance they would use it for the 2020 Olympics within the Tokyo district. We also have plans for building facilities in Florida and Brazil.”
Sometimes, things happen that you cannot avoid nor dispute the truth. John John cannot dispute the fact he fell while trying to navigate the rocks at Snapper. Gravity is hard punisher and rule enforcer, and he / she (still up for debate) will not mince the truth. Ask any aviator, base jumper, or John John, about trying to dispute that one can fall or not.
But other scenarios can be somewhat debated or fudged over. Like surfing vs wave pooling.
Sophie would win if she and others would admit that the wave pool phenom is not surfing, but its own sport. Like skateboarding is not surfing nor does surfing try to call itself surf skating.
Surfing is linked to the ocean and built around that. Like a modern car has four wheels. Take away two wheels and you have a motorcycle. Take away one, and its tricycle. But not a car. Moto vs F1.
Let’s get musical. Guitar. Electric Guitar came around then 1940’s-50’s. Look at today. Music has separated electric guitars from their acoustic / classical brethren. There are some stuff that electric can excel, but others that only an acoustic can do. Greenday said it best, “Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated.”
But if wave pooling or wave pool skating / wave pool surfing were termed its own sport, it would lose the cool street cred that surfing built since day 0. And they fear that. Fear. And the loss of riches drives that fear.
Yet, the WSL is missing in a great opportunity. A freaking new, damn sport has just been made. They could totally start something new. Like Snowboarding in its glory early, hey day. Anyway to go but down!
The problem with the WSL is their ego. They are trying to take surfing out of the ocean, and unfortunately because the ocean is surfing itself, this will return only in heartbreak.
While a new sport can be built with its own rules, own style, a new frontier and wild wild west, but she is unwilling to admit to Captain Obvious because of the fear and greed.
Failure to see the signs
“One of the key reasons we went with it is because it’s free. You don’t have to pay to watch content on Facebook, and that’s really important to us.”
Sophie is putting her hopes on a media outlet that is showing its age. And in the terms of computing world, Facebook has long lost its luster, and now is dragged into a place where hacking and ID theft is made easier, commercialization and blatent disregards of privacy are made. And the criminal element has long turned into a survelliance tool to further their misdeeds. Fake news makes its home and spreads like wild fire, while truth is squelched by unproven complaints to force the truth spreaders to close their accounts or change their name or change their game.
And Facebook is trying to become a global despite facebook promoting polarization and tribalization. And there is no competition. Soon another social connecting site will arrive that does it better and with less negative options than facebook.
Myspace. Anyone remember? I do. But Myspace is gone. Facebook will be gone.
To get real sports cred, they need their own network or work with established media outlets (ESPN) that will hold with the times, but one can applaud the direction of moving to the “I” net instead of TV net.
The basics of Inetting, is one forges their own path in webspace. It’s how viral is done, it’s the next new thing. She should expand to youtube, vimeo or roku.
On equality:
“The gap between the men and the women is closing so quickly. The men comment on it all the time. We had an event at the Kelly Slater Wave Co. Surf Ranch with our top 10 men and women, and they were surfing exactly the same wave, and some of the women were doing it better than the men. While it’s been professional for awhile, it’s really only since the last four or five years that it’s really been elevated, and they’ve really had the same kind of platform. “
The No. 1 fail here is there was no “gap” in performance of surfing. Ladies have been in the water for a long time. The real gap is pricetag (prizes), coverage and number of events held.
Here she fails becuase homogenizing of the sexes doesn’t work. The Soviets tried that. It may work in theory but in reality it doesn’t last as long as recognizing differences and using them to their advantages. Not to down play the improvement in women’s surfing, but at the same time, Lisa A’s achievements were awesome in her time. Is Sophie going to tell her that Occy was so much better performance wise? They were both awesome. Both good. And different.
But women do surf a bit different than guys, and its good thing. I spent time in and out of the water around this place called Diamond and it was cool watching the locals surf. It is the dreaded longboard, but still it was good to see. Each person had their own style. They did moves similar, and the women had this amazing way of capturing the waves and moving. Different.
We need both though for both surfing and the wave pool faux surfing.
christ i bet you figure yourself a surf journalist with this post don’t ya
And you sir, must think you’re a critic.
Wow.
Beautiful work but “Greenday said it best, “Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated.”………..Offspring surely?
Confirm, she says, exposing her deep knowledge of trash ’90s music.
Also if you take a wheel away from a bicycle you get a unicycle, not a tricycle.
Either way TLDR
Thanks for that, Rain Man.
Nice. Surf/skate/snowboarding are all very different beasts, but based on snow/skate there’s a growing divergence between ‘real’ and ‘contest’. Contest specialists get respect, but even more so when they also prove themselves in real terrain. By the same logic, future wave pool champs will still be ‘real’ surfers, but nobody will care about them unless they are seen to be ripping on natural waves too. On equality: women are progressing at the same rate as men, which means the gap isn’t closing.
Sophie would win if she and others would admit that the wave pool phenom is not surfing, but its own sport. – 100% spot on.
You met with her but quote ESPN W? Did she say anything in your company? Like, anything?
I heard Sophie told Chas that Surf Ranch “is his burden to shoulder.” Later on, Chas found out just how right Sophie was.
I think KS has a secret stash of other people’s burdened shoulders in his basement.
Das shoulderdungeon
chas has a thing for powerful women
I chatted some with her but that damned embargo rendered most of it forgotten…
The fact that it’s mostly forgotten says plenty. I imagine she would speak like a press release.
too right. ethos my ass. free live stream (too boring for the masses) with loads of adverts and a subscription for condensed heats and heat analyzer (for those who actually work and can afford it, just can’t afford to be watching it all day or throughout the night).
Black power!
not at all! Sophie is charming in real life. chas just forgot his notebook.
shaaaaaade and i like it!
here’s a lil clip from the piece I wrote for the Journal:
I spent some time talking with Sophie Goldschmidt, the person tasked with selling the Pool. In early 2017 the WSL took a majority share of the KSWC; part of the WSL CEO job description specifically spelled out the sales task, pricing Pool franchises at $25 million a pop. Sophie seemed to bear this pretty lightly. I asked her if she was already growing a bit bored with watching people surf. “No!” she said. “Not at all. It’s such an unusual sport. All the other sports I’ve worked in, if the athletes were on a break, the last thing they’d do is play that sport. But as soon as the pros get time off, all they want to do is plan surf trips. I can’t tell you how rare that is.”
Sophie was inveigled into surfing by her longtime boyfriend, an Australian who is a keen surfer. They went on holiday to Bali 13 years ago, and she did a surf lesson. She is an ex-pro tennis player, and thus understands technique development, but as the rest of us have discovered, water is something else again. “I’m pretty good at most sports,” she said. “But surfing! I couldn’t do it. I could not do it. At the same time, I’d never had so much fun just trying to do something.”
She hadn’t planned on this job at all. “I’d already accepted another job (in the UK), I’d started the process of buying a new house in London.” She says she was converted after meeting the Ziff family; like everyone I’ve spoken to who has met the Ziffs, she found them delightful, intelligent, and committed enough to pro surfing to convince her.
But what a job! Sophie sketched a quick verbal outline of the WSL’s plans for the Pool, which she calls a “wave system”. They hope to have six or seven Pools up and running around the world in the near future, with Championship Tour competition built in. “Then there’s the Olympic Games coming up … I really think surfing is about to have a moment!” she said, exuding a kind of native enthusiasm.
She paused, looking off into the middle distance, as if sensing for a moment how crazily optimistic this all sounded. Then she smiled, switching on the charm again. “Of course it might all fall apart — but we can’t just sit still.”
This is in TSJ or AJ? Either way, I shall read!
Having to bare witness to 6 or seven “wave systems” and built in championship tour is a diametric change and the fact more voices are not speaking out in this direction concerns me of my lack of forward thinking or chlorine is destined to bleach the soul out of the sport i love..
Beachgrit: Where commenters have a bigger research budget.
She was converted to a high paying CEO job of a sport she knew nothing about after meeting a billionaire with deep pockets.
What a surprise!
“native” or “naive” enthusiasm?
Oh native! My sense is that she has deep wells of enthusiasm.
…and the fact that you can pretty much write a novel on a mobile device these days or at a minimum, use the record feature on that iPhone that Chas hates so much to make some decent notes. I guess I will never get that beer from Chas at this point
I do miss the glamour of free-flowing booze and loose sexual mores…
embargo prevents you from writing?
Ever heard of a tape recorder? Good God
Are you really interested in what she had to say?
I’m interested to see if she has anything interesting to say about surfing. So far, so bad.
I am sure every surf shop owner in the world agrees with Sofie .Surfers are cheap..
website owner?
?..no,surf shop
Surfers are not cheap. Surfers put what matters to them first which is surfing leaving little to no energy or time for anything else in life. Therefore, no money. Get it?
Sure..do you ..get it?
Sofa King Sophie
She looks like she has a pretty tidy little figure though.
New look WSL with 2023 World Champ, Eric Silverman:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“It’s kind of the surfing ethos to a certain extent”. Alright let’s get one thing straight you tennis nazi CEO; you’re doing a great job and the market will of course flourish th views.