Live surf viewing is a growth industry!
The just wrapped Stab High was a wonderful event, something I was very happy to watch live across the vodka-cocos from David Lee Scales, and comment upon. It was the first vision of broadcast professional surfing we have seen since the Association of Surfing Professionals transgendered into the World Surf League and I was hungry, starving for a new, different interpretation.
Oh it was fun and of course just an airshow and in a pool but different and new. We all wag our tongues at what we are given for free by the WSL. We all wag our tongues and complain about blah blah blah and blah blah blah and sour grapes and Joe Turpel’s vacuousness because we are bastards. And bitches. All of us are bastards and bitches.
But how would different look? How would new look?
How many people spend either $9.99 (pre-book) or $14:99 (day of) to watch an airshow in a pool?
I enjoyed every second until the Acid Drop bit, though I did have a few heartfelt critiques, but overall was over the moon because it was different and new and hoped that hundreds, maybe even a few thousand, were enjoying with me. Hundreds maybe even a few thousand seeing a different, new interpretation of professional surfing.
Well guess what?
The numbers Stab is telling brands absolutely dwarfs anything the World Surf League has ever done aside from Mick Fanning getting bumped by a Great White Shark in South Africa.
20,000 purchases.
20,000 people logging on at either $9.99 or $14.99 starving, hungry for professional surfing.
Oh the number absolutely crushes anything the World Surf League has ever done (aside from Mick Fanning + Great White Shark) and we have Facebook to thank for that or at least Facebook to thank for some visibility here.
Of course we are talking concurrent viewers here but still, the WSL has never seen that windfall and especially not for people willing to part with money. An incredible number an amazing number and it gives me hope that our future is bright. That surf websites can harness an appetite for humor-filled good times and earn near $200,000 or $300,000 in pay-per-view revenues alone.
We’ve all made fun of the World Surf League’s response to lower than awesome numbers enough. The league’s “these-are-regional-representations” etc.
Let’s just all be transparent. Let’s just all let the freak flag fly.
Why not? We live in a beautiful world where plucky media properties can dance with billionaires.
We live in paradise.
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If someone from STAB is reading this please don’t charge to watch this mess in fact don’t put on another Wave Pool event in Texas it’s trash
I work in a surfboard factory, 15-30 dudes working in there on any given day. Shapers, glassers, sanders, marketing guys, sales guys, surfboard and surfing nerds who live and breath surfing and are incapable of stringing a sentence together about anything other than foam and resin and the pros piloting them.
NOTHING, not a word. The week leading up to and the days following the Waco flop. Not a word. You’re telling me 20k people paid for this? I ain’t buying the lies. 15-30 dudes didn’t even know it was on, didn’t care.
“Who won?” Noah. “Oh nice, shredding was he?” Yeah, bit fat but he surfed good. Only conversation, 2 days later.
In comparison, WSL, any event, QS1000 through to QS 10000 or whatever they are called these days, PLENTY of words. Every sanding bay, glassing den and polyurethane pit has a Samsung in a sandwich bag laying sideways with the webcast on. The Japanese guys are all gambling on heat results, the Aussies are retelling stories of nights outs with the guys in the rashies from Surfing Life mag trips…..often involving a working girl and illicit substances.
20K is lies. Waco was a flop, don’t care what Stab say, it was a flop.
Ha ha there’s lies, damned lies, filthy stinking fucking damned lies, and then there’s Internet statistics. They leave the almost innocuous hopeful lies of print publishers for dead and gone.
There is a 0% chance they sniffed anywhere close to 20,000 PPV buys.. ..
I think numbers are beautiful as is the gullibility of much of the media’s advertising spend. It still surprises me, and I know it shouldn’t, when an advertiser quotes another publication/site’s figures back to me as if they’d had been received on stone tablets atop Mount Zion. It’s a cherished fantasy for some reason.
Stab is the subterranean highway connect tone’l from that way to this way. Stay the course. People will head Beach Grit’s way.
We have to stay the course, we bet the whole dang farm…
That’s 40,000 pterygium covered eyeballs.
OK LET’S GO!
– It’s very hard to tell how many watch the CT comps. I think the all time high was Pipe in 2014 when Gabriel won which got around 1.8 million separate log-ins over the event. The biggest surf event in viewership was the Eddie in 2016 which got over 2m in a day. CTs today are a bit masked by the fact that you can watch it in numerous different ways, only one of which (FB) can be easily number checked by looking at the concurrent viewers. It’s way down at 1000 or so if the Ranch is a guide, but that’s a reflection of who who uses FB as a CT viewing platform, if you counted the app and the site and cable and CBS’s brief showing there’d have been quite a few more. Stu Nettle did that great backdooring of YouTube in the WSL’s first year which showed they were getting around 20k at any one time at a bigger event ie Bells, with more in big heats featuring Kelly in particular.
It’s not doing a whole shit load better than in the past though, when Billabong did a “live” audio plus scores stream of the JBay event in 1999 it got 388,000 log-ins. That was no vision at all, just people checking in to see who was winning etc. The power of novelty in action there.
– I think around 88,000 on the reg and a lot more through a year.
– I dunno! Chas?
– Hmm print highs and lows, the biggest selling single issue of a surf mag was Surfing magazine, August 1989, the “Waves” special, which sold over 70,000 on the newsstand and about 52,000 via subs. At the time the two big mags, Surfer and Surfing, regularly claimed a “pass-along” readership in excess of a million. When Tracks magazine was sold by its founders to the publisher Philip Mason in 1976/77, it claimed sales of 44,000 a month. The mid to late 80s was the real peak for surf magazines, as Echo Boomers got right into surfing and there was no Internet to diffuse the readership. Today you’d be hard put to it to find a surf mag anywhere that sells 10,000 copies off a newsstand.
– Surfers in Australia, ha ha ha, we’ve been through this but what the hell. In 2012 the Aust Bureau of Statistics thought there were about 226,000 regular surfers in the country. It estimated the annual beachgoing population at around 3.5 million, which fascinatingly was the figure being put about by the ISA and Surfing Oz etc as being the actual surfing population. If you go to the beach, I guess they figured, you must be a surfer. The ABS figure was a slight downward fluctuation on previous surveys, I suspect since then it’s grown a bit as more kids and early adult learners have come into the sport. Be hard to see it being more than 250,000 though.
– Surfers on the west and east coasts of the US, I honestly do not have a clue. One significant figure is the number of WaveStorm boards sold by Costco on the west coast last summer, according to a source I respect they sold nearly 80,000 of the things, an extraordinary number. Of course family ownership of a WaveStorm does not make anyone a regular surfer.
– Again, honestly, no real idea. Enthusiastic Brazilians of my acquaintance quote a figure of three mill, but it feels like it’s being plucked out of the air a bit. Maybe the global surfing population is a bit more estimable, the ISA says 35 million, but based on global board sales and some data from CT webcasts visits in earlier years you’d have to say it’s more like about a tenth of that, like 3.5 million. Even that could be an overcall, for sure if you count a “surfer” as someone who surfs often, ie once a week or more. That figure would be considerably smaller I would guess.
All that adds up around Stab’s figure in a most unusual way, the event ran less than a day and was locked in the US time zone for the most part which would have v much limited its potential. But holy shit, if they really did get 20,000 people to pay to watch it, they have done the most successful thing in surf media in many years. Such a number defies all expectation and must have caused absolute palpitations at WSL HQ, like they would have be thinking “Hang the FUCK on, we’re running a $50 million world tour with the most famous men and women surfers on earth, and just got fried by the back yard!”
damn you Nick Carroll , damn the truth , damn surfing , destroying our urban surf myths …I mean, can’t we just bullshit on about how great surfing really is and that every body in the world loves surfing , and 3 billion fans are just trying to work out how to get to the ocean , from the mid west and buy their surf gear in Montana/etc so that they are living the dream tour and growing the revenue of all surfers…..damn!
hey btw C Drives save the day once again, I was wrestling a bit with that 5’10″at low speeds, it felt a bit catchy and boggy. Took out the 5 size fins and stuck in small C Drives and blammo! Speed, freedom, release, everything! I’ve given up trying to think it through though it feels like just having less drag on the tip is a big thing. But fuck.
The discerning reader can work out actual figures from the exaggerated numbers thrown around in ad meetings. So let’s reveal: In Australia, a surf mag in the nineties was doing ok if it sold 5000 to 8000. In the 2000s, 2000 to 6000. Advertisers were told the mags were selling 30 to 40k. This sorta lie became an issue when you suddenly had 40,000 DVDs land at the printer. You’d put 10k on the stands and burn, in batches, the leftover DVDs. The whole thing became such a con game that at one point we seriously thought about just printing enough to send to advertisers and putting zero copies on the newsstand. Therefore, in the instance referenced in this story, you can, and you should, take any claimed numbers with a grain of salt, as they say.
Love the intensityTwill’s
A true win for the “grumpy” surfers 🙂
rick kane worked all summer just to buy his drawing tools for $150
and with a $500 prize was able to take a trip to Hawaii from AZ. He somehow managed to take his board on the plane without a boardbag, or box in those days, and didn’t even get a ding?? And then he is dropping $20 for a glass of Champagne??? He really wasn’t very smart.
I’m a die hard crusty kook who gleefully paid $15 USD to watch the disjointed but highly entertaining antics. I didn’t plan on it, but the morning of the event I couldn’t resist. As Chas mentioned, the acid drop was a flop, but other than that I ain’t complaining.
Maybe these numbers are truth and Backwards Fin Beth is jumping ship!
She would know these statistics better than anyone!
Chas, I’d pay $1 to watch you personally paste up another billboard.
When was the last time you saw someone flash the WSL camera?
WSL for 50 year old surfers, by 50 year old surfers
This is utter bullshit.
I do hope you’re going to expand on this train of thought…
How do you mean?
I think viewership for the J-Bay Finals topped 20K. That might be what he’s referencing.
Imnsho – pay/view for surfing is a guaranteed fail.
Good luck pursuing that model on any sustainable basis.
A one off event ? Maaayybeee, like Peahi. Yep I can see that. How much ? $0 from me.
Regulation event water sitting ? Nope. Doomed.
The tubs ? Novelty/idiot factor right now. Long term – yawn.
20,000 Foolish Sheep 🐑 & why are we still acting like Wavepools are this new thing they’ve been around for quite sometime.
How can I watch it for free?
Can someone familiar with marketing speak please explain to minions like me how this was a raging success, $500k cost and $200k returns.
Likes are the new currency et all
Where did the half-mill number come from?
They dropped it in one of their articles…
Please don’t make me go find it, will be harder to find than that sand bottom right
So super easy.
Yep, I remember reading it on Stab also, half a mil. to put it together
Hey Derek did you see this vid yesterday of ScoMo repping Hurley.. Surprised. I would have pegged him a Bong man.
If this guy is sporting Hurley, you know that Hurley group is not a friend on the common man. But hell look who owns Hurley! Obvious.
Yes! Jazzy P sent it to me!
Wrong. As you’d have to pay tax on those returns right? Who knows.
I meant EBITDA
Yeah-but it’s eyeballs. 20,000 purchases, likely translates to something like 100K (pulled outta’ ma ass) glued eyeballs. And so, all that media, sponsors on boards etc etc got pretty good value for money.
Still seems like stab came up about 200k short of breaking even
The sponsors (Vans etc) probably picked up a good part of the tab.
& folks are still forking out coin for it as we spleak. C.S’s lean to appraisal almost bought a tear. Props.
I doubt the event costed $500K, but you guys do know that there was a substantial entry fee per surfer, right? Most likely paid by the brands. Also they sold tickets. So they’re probably slightly in the black. Pretty damn good for a first time pay per view event.
Pool rental 3.5k per day
Factor in the cost of running and broadcasting of the event.
The entrants all paid 10k each(?) to enter and there was 45k up for grabs plus 200k in viewership revenue…
It’s a fkn riddle within a rhyme wrapped in a Rubix cube like wrapping I tell ya..