If Elo can't turn the Wozzle into something like Redbull Media house and lay down some black ink how much longer before the WSL slips sweetly into unconsciousness?
I feel a bit sad Sophie has left the building: Farewell Soph, we barely knew ye.
It can be hard to decipher the denseness of the wozzle corpo-speak but what we know is Ziff called Soph in for a little chat and the upshot was “we mutually agreed it was time to make a change.”
That, if I’m not mistaken, is just a very polite way of saying our Soph got the sack, that the three-year experiment in making pro surfing work as a (mainstream) sport under Sophie’s reign has failed.
An objective analysis of her time at the top is warranted, I think. An office farewell party with spritzers and pu-pus and maybe a bare arse on the photocopier if things get out of hand.
The origin story is compelling: former tennis pro, come Adidas, Rugby Union and tennis marketing exec. gets headhunted by a WSL recruiting arm while holidaying in Bali.
Has barely heard of the sport. Knows none of the surfers.
Wozzle were explicit in their desire that Sophie G would continue the Quixotic quest to mainstream the sport of professional surfing, saying in an opening presser that
“Goldschmidt will advance a range of athlete development programs to help grow interest in the sport, while creating tailored fan experiences through new formats, live content and other media.”
She claimed that the sport was in “audience growth mode.”
The shiny new contraption that Sophie was headhunted to sit astride and ride into the glorious future of mainstream sporting success, was of course, the recently acquired Kelly Slater wavepool. Sophie gestated and birthed the contest debuts of the Slater tub, first behind closed doors with the Future Classic, in September 2017, then the Founders Cup in May 2018 and first CT event September 2018.
It was the highpoint of her tenure as CEO, a time of unlimited possibility and purple prose.
“We’re only scratching the surface of how this technology can be applied,” said Sophie, “and it is completely game-changing for the sport. If you can imagine in future, we’ll have world-class waves, ten-foot-plus waves, coming towards an audience with a stadium coming up out of the water, with amazing broadcast and camera angles, just an electric atmosphere, it can be floodlit at night – it’s just a beautiful thing and it’s so interactive.”
Her assessment that “I think the fan experience was significantly enhanced” was strangely out of touch with the brutal assessments being made in the real world by the real fans of the sport.
The bigger problem for her captaincy was losing momentum with the tub build-outs as the timeline got away from her.
Early 2018 with the Tokyo Olympics looming on the radar and it still appeared that the WSL would be able to take total control by holding the event in a Slater tub.
“We are trying to get a wave facility built in Tokyo in time,” said Sophie in February of that year. “Hopefully, if we can get it built, there’s a good chance that the Olympics would take place in one of our facilities.”
Wishing and hoping wasn’t good enough and surfing in the Olympics will take place in Mother Ocean, at least through Paris 2024.
The roll-out of the tubs and the whole promised revolution in pro surfing that was built around that vision looked moribund by the end of Freshwater Pro 2019.
Strangely, it was the release of the Mic’ed up Slater Ep from that contest – with it’s solipsistic atmosphere-less atmosphere – that seemed to kill it.
The closing shot of Slater addressing what looked to be 50 people meandering in front of a stage where Jack White was about to play was a whack with a cold spoon to any pretense of surfing ever being a mainstream sport.
It couldn’t even be a mainstream sideshow.
With all her eggs in the wave systems basket Goldschmidt lost Cloudbreak and Trestles from the roster in her first full year of stewardship. The loss of Cloudbreak she blamed on a lack of Fijian Govt support despite Kelly Slater’s Outerknown company inking a three-year deal to support the event just the year before.
The loss of Trestles was never explained.
Despite an incredibly successful, for fans anyhow, Keramas/Ulu double after the Margaret River cancellation in 2018, she was not able to cement that obvious Bali leg as a permanent part of the Tour schedule.
Keramas has been lost from the 2020 Tour. Grajagan has been gained.
Soph bobbled a bigger ball at the start of her reign when a proposed Tour revamp threatened to go horribly wrong. The paperwork for a proposed Feb Pipeline contest to start season 2019, with a play-off style ending proposed for the Mentawais to decide the World Title went tits-up when Honolulu refused to sign off.
Hastily jettisoning the radical restructured Tour idea, Soph resurrected the original December Pipeline permits to finish the Tour.
End result: a shaky status quo maintained.
Growing the sport via growing the audience looked like it was going to get a filip with a two-year exclusive deal with Facebook proposed in 2018.
A huge propaganda programme preceded the roll out, scheduled to start at J-Bay. Exclusive, which meant all fans were now harvested in the Facebook ecosystem. It was a debacle, with a massive fan backlash forcing a public apology and a retreat from the exclusive nature of the deal.
No word on an extension of the deal as it expires this year.
Soph went hard on pushing the Wozzle as a friend, even defender of the environment, especially Mother Ocean. It relaunched WSL Pure as an activist organisation and made pledges to be carbon neutral by the end of 2019.
Silence about whether they achieved the goal is probably a good indication they failed to reach it.
Greenwashing looks even more hypocritical when the proposed Coolum wave ranch is tied in with a massive canal estate development on coastal floodplain. The QS, with a massive footprint which dwarfs the CT, was left out of the pledge to be carbon neutral, with no roadmap to include it.
Our outgoing CEO had a low-key style. Sophie spotting at events, usually scurrying around in the background, or last person on the stage to deliver something just as the broadcast was about to be skyhooked, was a small but culturally significant sub-genre of hardcore surf fan activity over the last three years. It’s peculiar delights will be missed by connoisseurs.
Her press strategy was the by now familiar route of backdooring the surf media and talking straight to the business mags, effectively in the process treating the surf fans she held in such high esteem like shit on her shoe.
No-one has yet been able to demonstrate how this strategy leads to the kind of “it’s all about the fan” outcome so earnestly touted. Surely you’d go straight to the surf media, booze up and make pals with some editors/journos and bask in the eternal sunshine of positive coverage.
No? Not the way to win friends and influence?
She didn’t give us much to swing for. Elo promises to be far more “our guy” in that respect. More fun. More fan interaction. The teeth, the hair, the tan. You could build a league on those teeth alone.
But that dream’s dead.
Whether Sophie killed it or just happened to be holding the baby when it stopped breathing will be determined by the historians of tomorrow. We’re in the post-sport, story-telling world now.
For how much longer, who knows.
Sophie let slip that the owners (Ziffs) were in it for “business reasons” for the long haul.
How long is a long haul?
“Five-to-ten years,”she said.
Well, we are past the five and trucking towards the ten.
If Elo can’t turn the Wozzle into something like Redbull Media house and lay down some black ink how much longer before the WSL slips sweetly into unconsciousness?
Sophie will be remembered most for her push to gender equality. Whether her hand was forced by the publication of a podium shot featuring male and female winners with different size cheques or had the intent all along is irrelevant. She made it happen.
From top to bottom of the WSL, guys and gals now get equal pay.
For equal work?
Debatable, especially in the big wave realm.
Still, Sophie bequeathed a WSL with blue sky everywhere you look for female athletes.
With utmost fairness, what grade should we write at the bottom of her report card, after a less than three-year spell with her hands on the tiller.
She kept the lights on and the broadcasts free.
For that alone I give a C.
Too generous?
Howbout a C-minus?
What say you surf fan?
Sophie is like Brexit. They tried it to see how it would go. She did okay. The tour ran smoothly, for the most part, with glitches, but there’s always glitches.
As for making surfing appeal to the mainstream – that has never happened in the past and isn’t going to happen now.
So what we are getting with the WSL is how well these contests can be run and broadcast with a pretty much open checkbook.
The webcasts and coverage are first rate.
The commentary has high and low points, but it’s the 50/50 rule – no matter what you do, 50% of the people will like it, 50% won’t.
This is all an experment – throwing a lot of money and expertise at pro surfing – hoisting it up the flag to see if anyone salutes it.
The answer seems to be – not matter how you dress it up, most people don’t care – unless Mick Fanning is getting attacked by a shark.
What we are learning is that shark attacks have more appeal that surfing.
Sophie did the best she could. The tour ran okay.
You dingalings can whinge from the sideline all you want – it don’t make no never mind.
and yet here you are, commenting on a dead story.
“Errand boys sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.”
Not a bad epitaph for your career eh Ben?
At least now we have independence from the brands and don’t exist like the de facto marketing arm for the industry like your generation did. Talk about paid shills, a habit it seems you find hard to break.
Derek’s the best, no doubt about that.Friend of mine who I hold in the highest esteem. Brilliant mind.
Might as well aim high.
and yet here you are, commenting on a dead story.
Some people are allergic to BS and crass, semi-literate sensationaliism and must speak out. WSL does an expensively fine job of putting on contests and broadcasting them to the world. There are glitches, but no matter what you do, 50% of the people will like it, and 50% won’t.
“Errand boys sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.”
That’s from Apocalypse Now – Kurtz to Willard. Good line. Did I tell you about the time I flew out to the USS Indy to hang with Milius?
Not a bad epitaph for your career eh Ben?
I can’t believe I had a career. I can’t believe I got to work at Surfer for 10 years and do what we did. So lucky. It was a blast. In retrospect, I punchd my way out of there at the right time, because it’s all gone into the shitter since. Our decade was pretty danged good. Which is why you lot are copying it. Although Surfer was lighter on the self-referential first person. That was considered bad form then. It still is.
At least now we have independence from the brands and don’t exist like the de facto marketing arm for the industry like your generation did.
There are no brands. They all died.
Surfer was as critical of the industry and pro surfing then as bitchgripe.com is now. The difference is, Surfer Magazine was smarter, and it mattered.
Talk about paid shills, a habit it seems you find hard to break.
At least I got paid.
You guys should monetize bitchgripe.com and see where your numbers go. Would people pay for it? Highly unlikely, ergo you have to give it away. And post a lot of dumb shark stories to keep the numbers up.
I smell blood in the water. How much longer can this last?
Derek’s the best, no doubt about that.
Repetition is the sincerest form of flattery? It’s all been done, and better, in the past. Forced eloquence is not eloquent.
Friend of mine who I hold in the highest esteem. Brilliant mind.
Might as well aim high.
Some people are just allergic to BS and must speak out.
I know where the line comes from.
It was the hilarious the way you misused it.
Allergic to BS?
The whole WSL premise: that surfing is some kind of huge mainstream sport in the making is BS.
Thats why Sophie failed so miserably, as did Paul Speaker, and probably why Ziff will sell it for pennies on the dollar when it becomes perfectly apparent that he can “buy” pro surfers for Natasha to hang out with without having to own the sport.
It’s amazing how your BS detector doesn’t seem to register that, or what a flop holding pro surfing in Slaters pool has turned out to be.
I know where the line comes from.
It was the hilarious the way you misused it.
I just wrote a college paper for a girl on Apocalypse Now. And when he was shooting Flight of the Intruder I told Milius personally that in the history of inspired lightbulbs, morphing Heart of Darkness into a Vietnam parable is Top 10. That was the kind of stuff we got to do when we were doing Surfer Magazine – fly out to aircraft carriers and hang out with John Milius. It was a blast.
Which is probably why I’m depressed and listless now. That’s gonna be hard to top. Ten years of unbridled creative freedom, read intently by a couple hundred thousand people every month.
Allergic to BS?
The whole WSL premise: that surfing is some kind of huge mainstream sport in the making is BS.
Oh well, it’s worth a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The mainstream has never really cared about surfing and never will. Surfing is about as interesting to non-surfers as wake boarding is to us – not that interesting.
But pro surfing has never had this kind of money or machinery behind it, and it’s run smoother than ever. The webcasts are pretty good, although they should put helmets with GoPros on some of the lovely lads at Teahupoo and Pipe.
Sideline-sitters have been bitching about pro surfing since day one: Blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. It is what it is. Kinda interesting, but not really.
Thats why Sophie failed so miserably, as did Paul Speaker,
Well selling surfing to the mainstream was never going to work, so they didn’t fail because it never had a chance of success. They are running a smooth tour however, and that’s appreciated in some quarters.
and probably why Ziff will sell it for pennies on the dollar when it becomes perfectly apparent that he can “buy” pro surfers for Natasha to hang out with without having to own the sport.
Too bad Dirk’s name isn’t Boris, and I don’t think he threw down a hundred million or whatever just to please his wife.
That guy and his brothers turned $1.4 billion into $14 billion which suggests they are very good at business and who knows what the outcome of this will be? If it’s all just a nine-figure-fling: Oh well, they had fun. Apparently surfing sells well in Brazil. That is a surf-crazed country.
It’s amazing how your BS detector doesn’t seem to register that, or what a flop holding pro surfing in Slaters pool has turned out to be.
It was fun if you were there. I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my time but that contest is in the Top 10. And the wave itself is an engineeing achievement. They are making bank renting it out for $50,000 a day and have hundreds of days a year leased. That’s a success and a smart business model.
The contest is a curiosity and way more fun if you are actually there.
So stop whingeing.
You stop whinging.
You’re like that drunk Uncle at Christmas who won’t stop rabbiting on about the good old days, whilst boring everyone shitless and witless.
I agree on the use of Heart of Darkness as allegory for Vietnam .
Sophie staked her career and the success of the WSL on the tubs, and failed.
It works as an expensive plaything for corporate kooks, yes.
You stop whinging.
I think it’s whingeing, isn’t it? That’s how we spelled it, at Surfer, in the 90s, when Surfer was great, and the world was just better. So there.
You’re like that drunk Uncle at Christmas who won’t stop rabbiting on about the good old days, whilst boring everyone shitless and witless.
I think I am being engaging.
I agree on the use of Heart of Darkness as allegory for Vietnam .
Kramer vs Kramer beat it for Best Picture. Wrong! How many Clash songs did Kramer vs Kramer inspire? How many Charlie Daniels’ songs.
Milius is doing poorly these days, and Busey don’t look too good either.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Nope, whinging. no e.
getting old is a bitch.
The voice of reason. bahahahahhahahahahahah.
You come across as the perfect exemplar of the kind of pointless bitching you moan against.
try looking in a mirror before you post.
It’s called projection.
$5 to anyone who can tell me who originated the expression “Nattering nabobs of negativism.”
nah mate, no-one gives a fuck.
Something I’ve never really understood with this site — everybody in the comments does nothing but shit on pro surfing, but then also demands coverage of it. What gives? Weird as hell. Just ignore pro surfing your life will be just fine.
Here here, well spoken Bruce.
This whole website is a tiramisu of neuroses.
People obsessed with something they don’t do, have nothing to do with.
The WSL does a solid, professional job of presenting pro surfing.
It’s probably never been done better.
The announcing is a little off, but the production is first rate – every wave is covered from multiple angles, by land, sea and air.
People just want to whinge and whine and rant and think their voices are being heard.
But then the world is full of people who aren’t so bright, innit?
you really can’t understand that?
not involved with any other sport, hobby, politics, art?: basically anything humans do. You’ll find exactly the same responses.
Maybe you’re spending too much time in Facebook bubbles?
I find American credulity far more intriguing.
I don’t know. I enjoy things I actually like, give little air time to things I don’t.
you’re on Twitter aren’t you?
touché
why so bitter?
just quit with good grace and move on.
accentuate the positive?
why not take your own advice, you’re the biggest ball ache on here.
apart from deepthroating Elon musk and the wavepool it’s a constant barrage of negativity.
Darn tootin!!!
She’s just a human being, doing the best she can.
They should put you in that position if you really want to see it fucked up.
All I can see is “cultural Marxist identitarianism” which are words that could only come from a vaping, vapid, stoned pseudo-philosopher. The commentary wasn’t all bad. Turpel’s SoCal whine is grating and the Aussie guy sounds like the Outback Steakhouse Guy, but Barton was good, Strider is enthusiastic and sincere. Potter is a little awkward.
If you listened carefully to Barton, he says good things, speaks from experience.
If Slater retires, he should be the commentator. He’s great.
“Cultural Marxist identitarianism:” I defy you to define that.
(My great great grandfather was best friends with Marx by the way. Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier. He burned all their correspondence. Ooops)
it ran smooth?
are you on crack?
I figured you for a shill but at least one with some kind of brain.
Sophie fumbled the ball all over the place.
It was a woeful performance.
Viva la corporation? Fuck that- just returned from my local with 100+ out at dawn. The Wozzle wants/needs to double that to survive. Sink you bastards!
Re: The Kelly Slater Wave Co in Lemoore.
Re: Her assessment that “I think the fan experience was significantly enhanced” was strangely out of touch with the brutal assessments being made in the real world by the real fans of the sport.
Whose brutal assessments? The dorks on bitchgripe.com?
If you actually attend the event, it’s fun and weird and cool – to see a surf contest out in the sticks like that.
If you watch it on your computer – well you’re a wanker for not going to the actual event and no one cares what you think anyway.
The Kelly Slater Wave Co tank in Lemoore is an accoplishment. A triumph.
numbers were down Ben.
almost unanimous feedback it sucked.
the people have spoken.
Bullsh, If you were there, it was fun. It is fun. It’s weird. Spectators enjoyed the surfing and the social rumble. Online probably doesn’t look like much, but Pipe is diminished by online also.
You’re all a bunch of nattering nabobs of negativism.
Unanimous feedback on bitchgripe.com?
Who cares what that peanut gallery thinks?
That wave is a major, major accomplishment.
Interesting to see someone succeed where every one else has failed – like Tesla.
That wave is long, and strong, and down to get the friction on.
It’s repetitive, but this is KSWCO 1.0.
The coming iterations will be better.
People love to ride it.
They pay a ton of money and drive to the middle of nowhere to ride it.
It’s a big deal.
If you were at the contest, you had fun.
It’s one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World.
Nikolai Dee.
Is the D for Dennis the Peasant?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
You talk like him except he’s a parody.
You’re for real.
“Cultural Marxist identitarianism” you win the prize for being completely, pretentiously full of shit.
You’re why Sophie got out.
She’s tired of catering to brainless, pseudo-intellectual, know-nothing, whiney, sideline-sitting, vaping, vapid hipster nabobs of negativism.
Oh my God, did you really use the words ” Cultural Marxist identitarianism” and not in jest? Really? Who was it that said surfers were pretentious idiots?
Oh and what’s this: “Zionist media.”
You think the WSL is Zionist?
Cannabis is too strong these days.
Look what it has done to you.
that would be great if she did read it BM.
did you think an unfair summation of Sophie’s reign as CEO?
what grade would you give her?
A nice synopsis that you fucked up with your last two paragraphs. What’s your problem?
If surfing was a rock band you’d think you were Mick Jagger. Hate to break it to you but you were just the editor of a fanzine and anyone could do that in boom times. Just print some more photos of Willy Morris and write the same articles over and over again.
Who gives a fuck what you think, you miserable prick.
You apparently care.
And Surfer was great when we did it.
There’s just too much media now.
Too many writers.
Too many photographers.
Too much snide smartassery.
It’s all over-saturated and over-exposed so nothing is special.
IMHO the last great thing surfer did was the split b&w / colour cover with Shaun Munro on it. If I’m not mistaken that was a David Carson design.
I don’t know if you were there then. It was a long time ago now.
Since then it’s waned and Todd would want to pull his finger out or he’ll be a former editor of surfer too. That would be sad.
Yep that was the Roaring 90s.
Carson had a lot of good moments.
Although I once called his work “Carsonogenic” and he didnt like that,.
I don’t think Shaun Munro was that split cover though.
Surfer was a good magazine in the 90s: Smart, funny, on top of it.
Momentum Generation, Mavericks, tow surfing, Foo/Solomon/Chesser/Moriarity.
There was a lot going on, and we covered it well.
Volume 32 number 10. 1991. Riding a town and country board and peak wetsuit. Natural foot. Not sure who else it could be.
You know, that’s a no BS response that I have got to respect. It certainly is a valid perspective given the history (ups & downs) of pro surfing and one thing you are 100% spot on about is the many other high speed distractions of the modern world. I am admittedly less objective and more hopeful given the effort I’d put into the whole thing for so many years. And at this point you and I agree about the Ziffs for sure. You just said it much more efficiently. Time will tell. Respect. Aloha, RG
WSL isn’t at all a failure organizationally. They do a very polished, professional job of covering pro surfing, under hard circumstances and from all angles. The announcing is annoying and that’s a shame. But the WSL does a good job of structuring anf organizing pro surfing – it’s just that people don’t care. It’s not all that interesting to anyone but surfers – and maybe not even to them.
Perhaps pro surfing has run its course and is done?
Maybe the personalities being featured are not that interesting?
Are these guys as coloful and real as Kong? Gerlach?
Nope.
If that’s all they intended to do, that would be fair enough, but clearly that’s not. At the time the ASP did a pretty good job at covering and organizing comps too, if I remember correctly. With the arrival of Big Dirk, the organization became an investment. And as every investor, Dirk wants to make big money out of it, so he needs the market to grow. To become “global”. In other words, they need kooks, loads and loads of kooks, and they’ll do everything it takes to do so: Ultimate Surfer, becoming a “media platform”, cutting the costs of the BWWT, selling “athlete jerseys”, signing shitty deals with facebook, market themselves as “representatives of the sport”, bet on wavepools, etc. What they didn’t understand is that surfing is much more than just competition, and much more than just a sport. Surf fans are first and foremost surfers, and surf competitions are hard to watch if you aren’t a (real) surfer. All their efforts to bypass this reality were meant to fail, and so they did.
making their goal to be like Red Bull Media House? Create a massive media content hub that looses tens of millions to support a mad billionaires ego…..nailed it! Thank god for those billionaires that prop up our hobbies and passions and don’t waste their money on politics!