Elo looks solid, on the right side of cancel culture and a ballsy decision that, even within the space of a twelve-hour day, looks to have shown the wisdom of Solomon.
May have been no surprise but it’s still one of the ballsiest moves in World Sport to cancel the opening event of the 2020 CT season.
A very, very bold move from Elo, considering the backing at the highest levels of the Australian Government, which is a major under-writer of the Pro Tour in Australia. The chief reason Australia can sustain three coastal CT events and the USA cannot sustain a single oceanic event.
Crazy, crazy day.
This article has had to be rewritten three times to keep up with this horrendous black swan which carried away Snapper and possibly the entire year.
As of last night Australian time, our Prime Minister was still urging Aussie (surf) fans to whip out and attend major sporting events.
Nothing to see, go about your business as usual.
At approx 9.45 AEST WSL dropped the statement on its website cancelling the March events, an event which according to John Shimooka commentating the Sydney Pro immediately went “global and viral.”
According to Shmoo, “Every stakeholder would have known about it”.
A phone call to the QLD Tourism Minister’s office, one of the main stakeholders of the Gold Coast event at 10.42am revealed that they had no knowledge the WSL had pulled the pin on one of the Gold Coast’s premier sporting events.
Fatal comms fail?
Of course, the dominoes have fallen and are falling quickly.
Formula One cancelled as fans were lining up to enter.
Like the WSL, the taxpayer is a major under-writer of the event, to the tune of around 60 million. Unlike the WSL, sports like Formula One also have serious revenue streams from gate receipts (over a hundred thousand people expected to attend), huge broadcast deals, food and bev, merch etc etc. They are legitimate global sports, not “enablement platforms”.
Wozzle is much more dependent on government underwriting, as we learned from the Fijian event, which was deemed unviable by then CEO Sophie Goldschmidt due to a lack of support from Fiji’s Government, despite a three-year deal with Kelly Slater’s OuterKnown clothing company.
Those deals, deemed valuable by Australian tourism promotion authorities in three states are now shredded, at least for this year.
At three pm AEST Australia’s nominal head of state, Scott Morrison, or ScoMo, effectively killed the Australian leg by banning all public gatherings over five hundred people.
Chances of events running minus spectators defeat all principles of government tourism funding and will result in contract terms being reneged on all over the shop.
A twenty-million dollar deal with Facebook does not keep the deep fryers going at Rainbow Bay. Who pays for dishonoured contract terms in an act of God is yet to be determined.
Calls to Tourism and Events QLD, who administer the funding for the Gold Coast event, were not answered.
Money has gone down the drain big-time and the whole year may yet be written off.
It’s not all bad news of course.
The WSL is likely to keep its pledge to be Carbon Neutral by 2019 now, a year later, and in a canter, if the 2020 calendar is voided.
Organisers of the Tokyo Olympics are putting on a brave face and staring down the virus.
The country’s Olympics minister, Seiko Hashimoto, said Tokyo 2020 organisers would continue to plan for a “safe and secure” Games, due to open on 24 July.
That was an hour ago.
If a truncated tour does go ahead comparisons will be made with CJ Hopgood’s 2001 Title, cut short by the Sep 11 attacks in NYC, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
It’s a very different world now and those comparisons will be largely meaningless.
Webcasts were in their infancy; we largely consumed surf contests via heavily curated surf media content. A savvy, web-educated fan base, as minuscule as it is (1200 people watching the Sydney Surf Pro live on Facebook) will not tolerate an uncredible champ if the Tour haemmorhages contests due to pandemic.
Biggest losers?
Well, me of course.
And other hacks.
Can’t write about a comp that don’t run.
Plus, I’m down a face mask invested in in case I rubbed shoulders with virus carriers in the steamy Snapper cauldron.
Dirk Ziff will take a massive bath, billions of paper money wiped off due to the market crash.
Owen Wright and his wife, pop singer, Kita Alexander both lose big. Owen a minimum of ten grand, which is the purse for a last place finish at a CT event. Kita, who was booked to play the Drop Festival, run concurrently with the Aussie leg, also loses gigs as they get cancelled.
Owen’s extensive real estate book, focussed on Air BnB and boutique hotel development will take a haircut, at best. At worst, assets will need to be liquidated.
The days of windfall gains from real estate speculation are probably over, at least for now.
Elo looks solid, on the right side of cancel culture and a ballsy decision that, even within the space of a twelve-hour day, looks to have shown the wisdom of Solomon.
Pro surfing itself?
That depends on the largesse of its two greatest benefactors, Dirk Ziff and the taxpayer. Both show no signs of blinking, as yet, in this highly fluid scenario.
Me, I’m prepped to the eyeballs.
How’s about you?
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Good call. Why pass up an opportunity to stay ignorant.
See, you might have been right suspecting a conspiracy. It’s just the details were off https://www.npr.org/2020/03…
Yes, there’s always a few winners. But statistically, the gap between the richest and the poorest grows narrower.
Of course you did. In your 2 page long, “all praise to the dear leader” essay, that you have now redacted. Frankly, all your posturing and silly insults are a bit disappointing. But yes, governments have often used crisis to push unpopular measurements*. Which is why you might want to support a strong balance and separation of power among the various branches of government. You might be stoked on how things are going ATM, but that doesn’t mean it’ll keep going like that. Just ask the Cubans.
*No need to look at the extremes or that far into the past. You might remember “The Patriot Act” from 2001.
😂😂😂
Agenda 21 and depopulation and like Star Wars a global “republic” ???
It’s a feeding frenzy for Alex Jones!
how am I prepping? stocking up on tin foil to make expensive protective hats for fat westy bogans. if they are dumb enough to panic buy bog roll this should be easy money.
no dunny paper in Ballina. boo hoo.
Did somebody leave a god damn Jumanji game open?!
hahahahah
really? people going to start running outside and dragging arse around the lawn after dump?
Am I the only one to notice the events sponsored by corona got cancelled while the others are merely postponed.
The corona guys must be shitting bricks having their name sound like the virus.
There’ll be postponed events and some dubious end of year placings in the aftermath but life will go on.
I wanna know what happens if the world surfing games gets shit canned. Does Kelly get the mythical and elusive third entry in the us team for the Olympics?
Ja, the “global government” has a great track record of working together efficiently and without quarrel to seamlessly execute complex deliverables.
Feels more life a global clusterfuck-fumbing-incompetence combo than a global conspiracy.
Let’s always remember that Ayn Rand died on social security and Medicare. Those tax cuts are pretty nice though; if you are leveraging zero interest loans from the fed!
Social security is not voluntary, it is forced through payroll taxes…..that sort of harm would only be compounded on someone who retired and didn’t collect what was taken from them.
Hit the nail Square on the head. Fascist governments cannot wait to quell each and everyone of us of our freedoms. Enter the herd mentality, mush minds of the average human and voila…..seems normal here, rich ass cunts and skinny tradies. All contributing to the so called “global economy” through consumption. Can we all just fuck off. Humans are the worst….
where would we fuck off to?
Got it. Global conspiracy and only Trump can save you. Good luck with that. Keep me posted how it goes.
i was living in los angeles in 2008 and got the swine flu, i never knew what it was until after i was already cured. i worked in a restaurant busy one in beverly hills, i don’t remember business being affected much or even people talking about the disease . the flu was gnarly i thought it was a regular flu, but i kept getting worst and i remember my all body hurted. i was in bed for 3 weeks and for 3 months i felt sick like the first or second day of a bad cold. since i did not have health insurance i never went to the doctor. I know work in a resort four seasons here in Oahu, we only had 2 cases in Oahu and all functions got cancelled in the hotel starting next week, occupation went from 98% to 11 % as of today, i went to cotsco now and there is no more meat of any kind, my neighbor said the containers are not going to arrive for t next 3 weeks, toilet paper can’t be found anywhere, crazy times we live in now with our phones and clickbait news, by the way in 2009 no store run out of anything neither people stayed home to slow down the infection. there is inly one solution to speed up the process let us all young people catch it. self quarantine anyone above 65 with underlying conditions at home on lockdown, eventually we will develop antibodies against t disease and the old and sick will survive, dont think that this will go away becouse in china and korea the numbers are down, the reason for that is because this people are on lockdown as soon as the go back to work in their factories the new wave of the virus will hit again, the shot is at least 18 months away best case scenario. I know it sounds fatalistic but its very likely this will stick around for at least a year.
Preach brother…couldn’t agree more. In the end (like in a month), Nancy Pelosi, media, Soros, etc. will lose. This virus will abate after relatively few US deaths, and the world will see what liars they are. Market will soar, Trump reelected in a route. Repatriation of US industry from China accelerates including of course Pharmaceutical and medical device companies. As Buchanan wrote yesterday, this could be the death knell for globalism. Return of the nation state. Freedom!
Nitro circus Adelaide oval sat 14th
Nitro Circus – Yes the show is still going ahead.
Following the Australian Government’s recommendations this afternoon in relation to the Coronavirus (COVID-19), we are confirming that the Nitro Circus show in Adelaide will proceed as planned tomorrow. However, the remaining four shows on the tour being Port Macquarie, Bundaberg, Sunshine Coast and Mackay will all be rescheduled. Details of these rescheduled shows will follow next week.
Anyway what ever the reasoning was for the wosl to cancel Piha three days out when the whole place had been setup for it andmost competitors and staff were (still are) there.
The facts are the surfs been pumping, still is, and will be next week. Whereas, Manly was pathetic and a pack of shit. They just didn’t want the world to see NZ pissing on them again…
It’s called CYA– ‘covering your arse’– potential lawsuits, litigations, attorneys, lawsuits, etc.–its also called– ‘playing it safe’…….
Yes of course, and I guess they’ve had to balance that out with the potential lawsuits etc that will surely be presented by those who had already paid to have the site infastructure prepared and their actual losses.
It just seems that NZ (and Piha in particular as it’s not at all like the huge international tourist metropolis that the Gold Coast is) would have been a very safe place to continue with the event, especially as from what I’ve been told the 10000 point QS comps are the only money maker for the WSL.
Apparently the surf is pumping and the local boardriders club is going to “unofficially” run the Pro Junior that was to preface the main contest, and the surf is expected to continue pumping into the main contest waiting period with a lot of competitors staying around to freesurf anyway…
Global government resetting the global economy by crashing it. Got it.
The wish of Soros and his ilk is to remove Trump by whatever means as he’s the great impediment to Globalism; A real thorn in their side. I think it’s likely they’ve been responsible for these huge unprecedented market drops the last few weeks. Soros has done this to other countries in the past and in fact is how he got rich.
LOL. And don’t forget those swangin’ Italian ICU doctors cashing in on all that overtime to make a pretty profit. If they’re not dead yet. Bastardos!
There needs to be an investigation. What did Carissa Moore know?
China, endangering every human on the planet and killing the WSL tour to boot…..well done. How about giving me and the pangolins a break, huh?