It just got a whole lot easier to bet the farm on your favourite pro surfer!

You ever get the feeling ol Dirky Ziff, who leveraged his friendship with super-producer Harvey Weinstein to launch the new-look world tour over ‘hot summer cocktails’ in 2014, feels like the one-dollar he paid for the ASP in 2012 was a little too much?

In the company’s latest bid to raise cash, it’s turned to ALT Sports Data to “unlock new markets in the world of regulated sports betting” or as ATL calls it, “empowering their massive global audience to have a stake in the outcome of WSL events.”

I ain’t a huge fan of gambling, personally, worked the tables in casinos and saw the misery it brings. The excited kid who snatched five-hundred out of the five-dollar blackjack table at seven is wide-eyed and desperate at three am as he attempts to recoup his rent and savings.

Nobody gets out of a casino alive. Yeah, you hear stories. But they’re stories. Nobody wins.

Howevs. I get sports gambling and often wet the toes to make a grim day of low-tide Portugal closeouts interesting. And the WSL’s pivot into the world of online gambling will make it easier to throw the family house on, say, Jackson Baker scoring a nine-point right at three-foot Winki.

What are the odds! A thousand to one?

According to the WSL’s chief revenue officer Cherie Cohen, “Working with ALTLT (sic) Sports Data to advance our position in the global gaming marketplace is a great opportunity for the WSL. We know that legal sports betting drives fan engagement. We are excited to scale our offering by partnering with a company who knows our sport well and has deep relationships with global operators.”

What bets do you wanna see? Pip to catch a set at Teahupoo? A Brazilian or mainland American to reference the helping hand of God in a post-heat interview?

Blue skies ahead.

Huey has a vengeance for them.

Our moms came up with a great plan to get rid of us for four hours on a Saturday afternoon. We were thrilled.

KCOP had a sound studio near our home that filmed all the Roller Derby and Pro Wrestling shows that peppered their programming. These shows were very popular, especially to us ten-year-old boys.

Jumping out of my skin, we entered the studio and there it was!

Not as glamorous as I had imagined, or large for that matter, just a roped-out square ring with five levels of bench seating surrounding it. Pretty ghetto considering OSHA standards.

An hour of over violence ends as John Tolos, the Golden Greek, pulls out a metal object from the waistline of his tights and nearly decapitates Freddie Blassie’s head. Blood everywhere.

I was too young to think about whether there was medical attention nearby.

Remember Jordy dislocating a shoulder at Chopes with no medical crew in the channel and an hour away from any hospital during a tour event?

It’s like promoting challenge and risk without staffing contingencies to respond.

Very Republican.

The iconic Pink’s Hot Dogs was just a block away on La Brea from the studio and we could score chilli dogs on the break between 2 shows.

Score!

We would miss the drama of the Blassie’s ambulance rescue to eat delicious poison!

Cake and eat it too.

Perfect Saturday and we’re walking back to the studio for the second filming, we show our arm bands to the gate security and I look over to see John Tolos smoking cigarettes with Freddie Blassie in the corner of the parking lot.

What?

Shouldn’t Freddie be getting surgery to reattach his head right now?

I never watched wrestling or roller derby again. Santa Claus was revealed to be your drunken dad. It’s all a ruse. Fuck you for believing us.

Think about that?

“Fuck you for believing us.”

In surfing, the signs have all been there for years.

The distance the WSL has made to their only inherent market, surfers, grows more distant every day.

Huey has a vengeance for them.

The WSL is a marketing company desperately scratching to break even. Sophie left the bar so low.

Truth told, Rabbit’s bar was low too. He was the latest surfer submissive to the clothing elite. Pig bottom.

Jackson Baker is so solid. Dude is of the highest floors.

It wasn’t that long ago that Wade Carmichael occupied his position on tour. Wade had more spice, but Jackson is rock solid, for sure.

He is also incapable of a nine in head-high soft point break.

Correct score from my seat? 7.2

Ok, generous, 7.5.

Considering most heats were won with sixes.

Nine?

But this is the challenge when a business focuses more on image than its product.

Objectivity loses to self-interest.

Or influenced by an overt claim?

Oh the horror.

That wasn’t the only judging anomaly.

Ethan can win without gifts. No push required.

But the show must go on.

“Make or Break” episode 325 airing this weekend, tune in, like and subscribe!

Between the homer announcing booth (incompetence) and the homer judging, I had seen enough. I shut my computer down.

I had just recalled John Tolos smoking cigarettes with Freddie Blassie in the parking lot of a Hollywood Sound Studio.

Fool me twice.