We live in the future!
We are officially living in the future, a vast Coronavirus pandemic erasing the entire past in just a few short weeks. When humanity emerges from its quarantine cocoon, things will be much different. 1 in 7 people won’t have jobs, professional basketball players will complete a shortened season in empty arenas, professional surfing will likely write off the 2020 tour and point toward 2021.
But does a tour make sense even then? Will sponsors be lining up to underwrite events that generate tens of thousands of views? Will co-Waterperson of the Year Dirk Ziff still have the money/desire to toss tens of millions after tens of millions holding onto some hope even after social distancing’s premier game couldn’t get ‘er done when it mattered?
Hmmmm.
And maybe professional surfing looks like a YouTube channel featuring fun, sun and parenting tips exactly like Jack Freestone and Alana Blanchard’s Happy Waves.
Oh it may sound like I’m fun making but I always sound like I’m fun making.
No.
Jack Freestone is handsome and winning. Alana Blanchard is beautiful and spirited. They both surf very fine, form an extremely cute family unit, speak YouTube fluently and generate more clicks and “engagement” in a month than Erik Logan’s World Surf League does all year even though Erik Logan is Oprah Winfrey’s prodigy and a Storyteller in Chief.
Hmmmm.
So?
Will the World Surf League transition to an agency representing “talent” and help “currate” surf-esque “shows” while rolling the tour back to “key events” that can hold much “ancillary content?”
David Lee Scales and I discuss this, Bill Gates and how much I go to bed, each night, hating myself. We broke quarantine to meet in San Clemente, in person, so this is back to being our best show yet.
When reached for comment World Surf League CEO Erik Logan said, “We are equally as aggressive in the development off-platform space as we are for the on-platform and even social space that you’re seeing. That is an area that obviously most people don’t see, and you only see the fruits of that development when deals are struck and when shows are announced, but the work is continuing at a very accelerated rate.”
Listen here!