Has leading surf check site gotten too greedy?
If you live in the United States of America and enjoy either actively or passively checking the surf then, for years, Surfline has been your source. Oh it is a semi-helpful website featuring almost-scientific surf forecasts though does fall squarely in with the squares re. editorial content. Its editor-in-chief, Marcus Sanders, is one of the best and brightest in the game but I would imagine his hopes and dreams are severely curtailed by an aggressively conservative corporate worldview that finds drugs bad, sex worse and slavery an underutilized production tool.
It is also the official wave forecasting tool of the World Surf League and, as an extension, Michelob Ultra beer.
In any case, Surfline has enjoyed a near monopoly on computerized surf checking since its inception but is all about to change? Recently, the website stopped offering little 15 second snippets of surf camera action at select beaches for free and has slid the entire surf check offering behind a paywall. All fine and good but does it leave the door open for competitors?
A new, exciting partnership in Australia suggests yes and let’s read about Nick Carroll’s Coastalwatch and the behemoth Fox Sports.
Fox Sports has announced a new partnership with Australia’s leading provider of surf cams, Coastalwatch, which will deliver users free access to their Surf Check app for the first time with over 100 live streams from Australia’s most popular surfing spots.
The landmark deal, which gives Fox Sports and MCN exclusive commercial rights to the app through advertising and sponsorship space, is set to solidify the network’s already strong relationship with surfing.
Under the relaunched app, which is now available on both iOS and android smartphones, Foxtel will be able to market directly to a large body of prospective subscribers, with the popular surfing app having amassed over 500,000 downloads since its creation.
Fox Sports’ head of digital Brad Schultz said: “Surfing has always been a part of Fox Sports’ DNA and we’re delighted to partner with Australia’s most popular surfing platform.
“Coastalwatch already has over 3.6 million unique visitors logging in every year, and Fox Sports will now provide access to more surfers, with the app now free to download.
“Surfing and sport go hand-in-hand in Australian culture. The focus of this partnership is to grow the sport, and to explore ways to tap into Coastalwatch’s engaged audience to grow Foxtel.”
See what I’m getting at here? Surfers checking the surf, and checking it multiple times a day, and checking it when they are not near the surf or able to surf or even caring about what’s happening in the surf is a guarantee. I don’t know how valuable these eyeballs are but they could be good for padding a bottom line of unique viewers.
So, what if ESPN or Fake News CNN or the Failing New York Times or some other actual media property decided to offer free surf cams in exchange for clicks? I don’t think surfers have any real allegiance to Surfline’s product and I think they would flee in droves thereby tanking the website and 35% of Huntington Beach’s office rental economy.
But what do you think? Has abject greed clouded Surfline’s vision? Will it soon go the way of Standard Oil?
Surfline’s re-design of their website has to be the worst in history. The website was perfection……then they shit all over it and made it a site not worth visiting. Sad really. Sean Collins must be rolling over in his grave.
I like MSW better, but since Surfline bought MSW anyway, what does that mean?
Premium member here. Surfline was fantastic until the death of Sean Collins. Has never been the same since.
This.^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ass, Gas, Grass, Cash, or Wax-ain’t nothing free boyo.
Good move by surfline, all those cheap bastards that refused to pay for a premium account surely didn’t support surflines advertisers either, hopefully now surfline can make money and focus on being somewhat accurate in their forecasts.
Swirling frothy piss
Oh come on Chas, you know Americans don’t trust anything that isn’t American.
Tom Carroll was a conspiracy meant to bring down Tom Curren and expose the globalist illuminati underground for trafficking children and military-grade armament through backroom surf channels. Do your research it’s all there. Oh, and Australia was actually a piece of Florida that floated away due to the flat earth’s shifting plane and gravity field.
#TheGreatAwankening
Can only think of one thing that is a piece and floating that Florida resembles…and it smells…worse after being on the piss.
Whoa now I am really confused.
Americans…conspiracy theories…look up the “Q-Anon” crazies. Then you’ll get the joke…
Brain washed sheep.. but Nick them pomes down under aren’t too bright either.
No one will cry when Surflie dies.
And it’s only “conservatives” that remain blindly loyal to anything “American” Nick. The less information to form their opinion the better and if their fantasy (religion) has a position, even better. Nothing stronger than pious ignorance. Here’s the key, reports are that a very small fraction of US residents even possess a passport, let alone use one.
Here you go Nick…. an excerpt from research on “conservatives” and Passports in the US….
I decided to then compare my state-by-state calculations with the results of the recent 2016 presidential elections. As can be seen above, there is a striking correlation between the states that voted for Trump in 2016 and those states with the lowest number of passport holders. Those states that voted for Clinton had the highest percentage of passport holders (Alaska is a notable exception — a state which is historically conservative, but not surprisingly has a high percentage of passport ownership given its remote location).
A hippy gets onto a bus and sits next to a nun in the front seat. The hippy looks over and asks the nun if she would have sex with him. The nun, surprised by the question, politely declines and gets off at the next stop. When the bus starts again, the bus driver says to the hippy, “If you want, I can tell you how you can get that nun to have sex with you.” The hippy of course says that he’d love to know, so the bus driver tells him that every Tuesday evening at midnight the nun goes to the cemetery to pray to the lord. “If you went dressed in robes and some glowing powder,” says the bus driver, “You could tell her you were God and command her to have sex with you.” The hippy decides to try this out. That Tuesday, he goes to the cemetery and waits for the nun. Right on schedule, the nun shows up. While she’s in the middle of praying, the hippy walks out from hiding, in robes and glowing with a mask of god. “I am God, I have heard your prayers and I will answer them but you must have sex with me first,” he says. The nun agrees but asks for anal sex so she might keep her virginity. The hippy agrees to this and quickly sets about having sex with the nun. After the hippy finishes, he rips off his mask and shouts out, “Ha ha, I’m the hippy! ” The nun replies by whipping off her mask and shouting, “Ha ha, I’m the bus driver!”
The US State Dept reckons there are about 113m US passports on issue. It’s always puzzled me, that reluctance to travel. Is it just socioeconomic gravity? Fear of the other? Lack of curiosity about the world? Other things? I have heaps of friends in the US yet the number who’ve visited Australia, you can count ‘em on one hand. It’s not like they’re poor, or particularly conservative.
Lack of curiosity Nick, bingo. Bushman is spot on too…. you take an entitled people, bury them in bank loans for all kinds of meaningless crap and overpriced homes, make same debt slave commute hours to work each day and all they want is “easy”….. TV provides a shallow easy.
Just like kids who value a self taken photo of themselves near something special… whether or not they explore that special moment is irrelevant if their social media implies that they did.
A close friend went to Australia in June for vacation. He asked my advice with the caveat that his wife and daughter want an experience of their own too, not solely surfing. I told him how good the northern Sydney beaches were, that his entire family would enjoy the location. In short, he scored and came home raving about Sydney.
At my local brewery, they call the Hippy “Marco Polo” because of my travel…. locals here won’t even drive a half hour south to much better waves. They can’t believe I would drive everyday to surf when I live on a beach. Why do I fly all over the world when there is a point break in my town? Most only surf Rincon, which basically means they don’t surf often.
I work in Las Vegas every year. One night at dinner alone, I overheard the table next to me… “It’s like we traveled the world today, the Venetian, NY, Paris Hotel”. And he meant it.
Travel is the best education a human can absorb.
deadly combination – most americans are actually poor as shit. fact. a recent study found that 40 percent of all americans don’t have enough cash in the bank to cover a $400 emergency expense. meaning they’d have to borrow or sell something in order to pay for it.
the 60% who can at least get by? huge percentage of them are self-satisfied fat conservative fuckers who have no imagination or curiosity about the world. i can’t think of another country on earth where a presidential candidate would get heckled for knowing a foreign language. everywhere else on the planet, people seem to agree that education isn’t such a bad thing. not here. god help you if you pronounce a foreign word correctly, ya commie.
Ten channels seems inherently untrustworthy. If you trust it, why shouldn’t we?
Are you MAD, I don’t trust ten channels. I just don’t see that as a reason not to love them
Nah. Not mad at all. I’m American ya see. And when you said we don’t trust it unless we put the US in trust, I gots to thinking. Every time you mention the 10 channel that you could trust there existed two realities. 1) you trusted your ability on it, and 2) you trusted anyone else would eat humble pie.
The WSL has really warped trust for me. For instance, the whole WSL math of how the Margs debacle all evened out in the end.
I detest Fox and their whole evil manipulative schtick. Not sure I could bring myself to download it, free or not.
Surflines a dead duck.
It may be a sacred cow in the US, but a soon to be extinct cow.
Heck, even on the reports from WCT venues some of the graphics they have been using used to come straight from Windyty. They’ve got their own graphic package lately but cmon, it’s just a different representation of the same data. Nothing unique about it, ohh except you gotta pay.
Smart of wsl to prop it up.
Concur… have not been there in 10 years looking for wave prediction, plenty of better wind and wave model sites available…the site takes fukken a day to load with all the advert….should get paid to go there.
Pretty obvious there ready to be bought or in the grave yard.
What about us limeys. We are stuck with that piece of shit Magic Seaweed that couldn’t predict the date of Christmas each year.
Where you be DA?
MS actually not bad here in Newy, but I’ll admit it was a bit ropey for the east coast of Scotland.
Where Martin Potter was born! No shit! The greatest export, like, ever!
Lovely part of the world.
Better swell window than what I had a few hours north!
Eat a cock schnitzel sandwich Swellnet
Premium cam !
I’m fairly certain that I can get webcams for Pipe and Waimea for free so, in theory, I no longer have any real reason to go Surfline.
Yup, free cams at every state beach in CA with a B&B in sight of the water. Shitty on mobile but the visual’s there.