8 million fans (and counting) can't be wrong!
The United States of America and Australia both met the same fate at yesterday’s World Cup of Soccer proceedings, namely knocked right out. The once-every-four-years extravaganza, hosted in this time in the migrant workers’ paradise of Qatar, has featured some dominant performances from traditional powerhouses Brazil, France, Portugal, a shock early exit by traditional powerhouse Germany and the US plus Australian teams making it out of group play.
While national media attempted to cover the various matches, citizens didn’t really care and only went along with the “hype” due pressure.
Now that the teams have been relegated to where they belong, i.e. not playing soccer, those aforementioned citizens can mercifully turn their full attentions to the upcoming World Surf League season.
As you know, there has been an explosion of surf fans making the WSL one of the most watched sports on earth, bigger than basketball, tennis and hugely bigger than soccer. Over 8 million, and counting, tuning into finals day with lots more vectors for growth according to CEO Erik Logan.
As you also know, the Haleiwa Challenger, just-wrapped, has introduced ten exciting new male surfers and five exciting new female surfers onto the 2023 Championship Tour.
Men: Leonardo Fioravanti, Ryan Callinan, Rio Waida, Ramzi Boukhaim, Ian Gentil, Ezekiel Lau, Michael Rodrigues, Liam O’Brien, Joao Chianca, Maxime Huscenot.
Women: Macy Callaghan, Molly Picklum, Caitlin Simmers, Bettylou Sakura Johnson, Sophie McCulloch.
It will be wonderful to see them all paddle out at Pipeline though very sad to see them all pack their bags after Margaret River to go home, or at least all of the men.
Who will you be most sad to see go?
Me too.
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I find this to be highly suspect your numbers here on viewing of the WSL as compared to W.C. 23. With the W.C. I mean whole nations were tuning in but many games were happening, time differences and what not. The semis and finals will draw way more than your WSL so your article jumped the gun by about 2 weeks still BOSS. The reason so many people will watch is cause way more people have a closer connection to soccer, I prefer football you do use your feet and not your hands well 2 players out of 22. Surfing is SO SPECTACULAR but mom’s and grandma and uncle Joe don’t have anyone close to them that surfs but in Europe and South America, Africa almost everyone has someone close to them that plays, played soccer. On these other continents the only sport that gets you out is football and it gets you out when we are talking over a $100 mill euros for 19 year olds. That isn’t happening in the WSL.
Hahaha niiiiiice
So according to ELo’s fuzzy math the World Cup and WSL audience is pretty much equal, ok doofus.
re: FIFA and WSL
title: fun facts
1- Qatar’s last minute decision to ban booze in the stadiums was met with this reply by Budweiser: “Tourney winner gets all the beer stored in Qatari warehouse…” Aussies & Americans are grateful for the loss.
2- Haleiwa Challenger Contest had a peak of nearly 25k boob-tube watchers during the men’s final…at the start of the women’s final, that number dropped by one-half.
3- When the minor leagues of the WSL are more captivating than the CT events and eventually The Truffles Finals…some cages are gonna get rattled!
4- Comparing Steph and Serena as sexual beings is just plain wrong.
5- The WSL in Hawaii aka, The Triple Crown Presented by Beachgrit.
6- The comment section for Haleiwa should win a Golden Globe Award for excellence.
6- Start a GoFund for me. Goal of 1M puka beads
A goog for – brazil football surf
Top two results are links to BG
It’s working, Chas !
Edit: me and ya took a wild punt on Senegal to make quarters 2 weeks ago.
It’s looking sad at halftime ….
I was listening to a podcast today where one of the two hosts stated that beach grit was 20 times more popular than Stab. If the host was none other than Chas Smith I might have spit my tea out in disbelief!