Workers nervously rub hands together!
Oh it has been so quite up Santa Monica way since Dear General Secretary Sophie Goldschmidt, released a stirring propaganda video and I suppose that I assumed it was business as usual, preparing for the upcoming season, sending detractors to re-education camps, morning hymns to the Father of Modern Professional Surfing Comrade Dirk Ziff etc.
BUT a hot new rumor straight from a highly placed source in the High Tower suggests there is turmoil behind the beaming facade. That the Father of Modern Professional Surfing Comrade Dirk Ziff is running out of patience. That owning professional surfing was maybe not as fun and/or profitable as suggested by wife and/or friends.
First, it has been alleged that Terry Hardy, one of the architects of the Association of Surfing Professionals re-brand into the World Surf League and Kelly Slater’s longtime manager is leaving the organization. Whether jump or push is unclear. Mr. Hardy had a very hands-on role for many years, apparently, and would certainly have been one of the more, if not most, knowledgable people in any WSL room. Did he leave for another opportunity or another “opportunity” (in Siberia)?
We shall see.
Second, there has been cost-cutting and belt-tightening across the board. Freezes etc. The Father of Modern Professional Surfing Comrade Dirk Ziff has never made himself available for interviews with the surf media so any guess as to what he is thinking is simply that. It has been assumed that he has enough money to dump down professional surfing’s gaping maw forever but exceedingly rich people don’t become exceedingly rich via unsound financial moves.
Will Surf Ranches be hustled out posthaste? Will tour events be trimmed and/or professional surfers? Will the non-surfing masses finally turn on and tune in, creating a cornucopia of opportunity?
We shall see.
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How dare you?! I want to hear about god damn water filters in remote parts of the world! Shame on you!
Mate the figure is complete fantasy. It’s been repeatedly re-invented over the years by people whose jobs, etc depend on an artificial inflating of global and national surfing numbers. It can be torn apart in any number of ways, via surf hardgoods retail numbers, social-media surf product engagement, or even just simple observation. For instance, currently the Fantasy Figure for Australia is 3.8 million. This is the number now cited by organisations like Surfing Oz and the WSL etc. Australia’s population recently passed the 25-million mark. Just over five million them live in my own city, Sydney’s greater metropolitan area. Now let’s practice some teen arithmetic on this. If the number of 3.8mil is correct, then simply on population averages, Sydney should have one fifth of that number in residence, that is, 760,000 surfers. (Of course since it is a coastal city in a temperate zone, it would have a higher percentage, but let’s brush past that.) Now there are 40 surf beaches in Sydney. Some are much bigger than others but let’s also ignore that for now. The point is, if the 3.8m figure is accurate, then every single Sydney surf beach would have a consistent surf population of 19,000 people.
In fact, Surfing Oz’s underlying membership figures paint a far more accurate picture. SA has a membership of about 22,000. That includes every surfer who belongs to a board riding club in Australia plus every surfer who competes in any event run by SA or its state affiliates (some, but not many, of whom wouldn’t belong to a club). Now various surveys to which I’ve been privy over the past 25 years or so show that around 10% of Australian surfers compete or have competed in some sort of contest. Extrapolate that and it makes around 220,000 surfers around the country. This is an extraordinary match with the figure Brutus quoted above, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimate of surfer (as opposed to beachgoer) numbers in 2012, which was 226,000. That would mean Sydney had about 45,000 surfers, or an average of just over 1000 cycling through every beach. In a micro level, at my lil beach at Newport, this works almost right on the bell: there’s about 100 members of the board rider’s club, which would make 10% of the number of people who would surf at some time or other at Newport through a year. So, 1000.
Now I bet that number in Australia overall has risen a bit since 2012, there’s been a wave of grommets in the past 3-4yrs and a distinct increase in women and girls, and adult learners too!! But it’s not even one tenth of that 3.8mil — a figure that also oddly coincides with the number of Australian people who go to the beach each year. Could it be the Fantasists are counting as surfers anyone who watches a surfer ride a wave in the flesh?
Spectrum cable in Hawaii has channel OC16, which has a bunch of different sports stuff like high school football, but they are focus heavily on ocean sports programs like Lets Go Fishing and Hawaii Skin Diver and outrigger canoe paddling, SUP programs the Latronics Board Stories surf show. And we have channel 20 which is a 24 hour surf channel usually replaying the latest WCT contest until the next contest happens. Now in off season, they keep replaying different contests. And each contest plays from round one till the finals, so it takes 8- 15 hours to finish playing the entire contest. Maybe longer, there’s a lot of heats.
Between these two channels, I barely watch anything else on TV. And these two channels are included in the basic digital cable package. You don’t have to pay extra for these sports channels.
I love it.
Big mess. All waterfowl shit like racehorses with diarrhea.
why is my avatar a penis ? mines slightly thicker than this imposter and my left nut sits a bit higher in the bag
I think the Ziffs and the WSL are doing a pretty good job in tough times , have you folks had a look at how many athletes are listed on the QS trying to break into the CT freaking heaps , the only thing I see holding back progress is the older generation from the late 1970s into the 1980s that are hanging around trying to work out how to get a slice of the pie , Kelly Slater was right when he said he was shocked at the amount of kooks on the tour when he joined the top 16.
He also called Gary Elkerton’s contest strategy “gay” but we don’t mention that anymore.
“exceedingly rich people don’t become exceedingly rich via unsound financial moves.”
No, but there are plenty of kids who burn through a massive inheritance from daddy.
Would WSL pay parity (an expense that generates no incremental revenue) be considered an “unsound financial move”?
What about “Da Keen” 🙂
Anybody glanced at the Wsl website lately, aside from Jeep, it kinda looks devoid of sponsors–advertisers. Can anybody tell me where or how the Wsl makes any money__aside from advertisers?
Terry Harder, Slater’s manager, possibly stepping down, hmmm, doesnt sound encouraging….
I get 2 hunting channels so you would think a surf channel could make it
more hunters in the world? and hunters are used to paying for shit? Surfers are cheap as fuck till they get to be 40
doesnt sound like Dirk, buying up a company, running it into the ground, then winding it up or flogging it off, ziff doesnt want to play in the sandpit no more, hes just going to go home and wank all over his gibsons
doesn’t matter. this is the year kelly takes surfing mainstream. yeah, i hear you doubters. but the time wasn’t right when he was young, handsome and dating the most famous woman in the world. the time is now. when he is bald, sun damaged, poo-stancing and irrelevant. this will be the time and kelly will finally be famous beyond the beach car park. let’s ignore his cringe JRE podcast appearance. his desperation for approval from a c-list comedian (which wasn’t forthcoming). yep. this is the year. our saviour!
Is this cost cutting part of the reason we have almost no footage available of the Sunset Open? Can’t find it anywhere other than competitors’ instagram
WSL has forgotten the ‘core’ of this sport. New surfers, esp. adults, don’t really give two shits about the WSL. They cannot surf like that and most never will – they simply cannot relate. Surfing, like golf, is hard to do even at a low level, let alone at an advanced or pro level. Just my .02 having been very close to it all over the years… CJ had some pretty interesting comments re WSL during the recent FL Pro, first or second day if you want to dig it up, and if you can stand listening to bro brah lingo. Love the guy but listening to him speak can be painful…
interesting to see their methodology….in Australia there were under 300K surfers in the last census , surfing was described practicing once a week!
more surfers over 55 than between the ages of 13 – 23….but Surfing Australia claims 3 m…will check out Surf Research Center and get back to ya!
So Qik/Bong/Volcom/Hurley are thriving??
trouble is there’s about 3-4 m surfers including longboarders, boogers, shortboarders , and old mans sport now where the WSL has created a product for non-surfers alienating it’s core base…..and I hate to say it but there are surfers running the WSL …on the gravy train!
They’re not mistakes, they’re ‘features’.
Dirk I’ve got a few ideas.
Clear the event sites of judges and commentators. Just athlete management and sponsor cladding.
Put the commentators in a sports central in one of your offices in LA. Core commentary team live in the area. Save money flying them and the brown panelling and blue couches to the locations. Don’t fly commentators in and out of events and pay them travel and per diems for the entire waiting period. Same place, live nearby. You want to commentate you have to live within a commute of WSL headquarters in California or Poland or whichever in between is cheapest. It make no difference to the broadcast.
Find a pool of 10-15 judges and they judge from their homes using the WSL webcast screens same as we the people at home. Biggest frustration is always if the judges aren’t getting the same view of the surfing as the webcast viewers. They judge off the screen. Have more judges than you need, keep them apart so they don’t talk and get too close, 10 people judge each event though only 5 count for each heat or even wave. Scores are randomly selected from any 5 of the 10. They never know if their score will be used. Get rid of the head judge and consensus. Add some varied characters with different definitions of what good surfing is. They’re not at the beach, not mingling and being friends with athletes or hearing the beach commentary.
Saved you at least $10m.
You’re welcome.