Sad surfing.
There was once a time, and not long ago, when parents who observed a flash of water talent in their young charges could easily imagine a gilded future just over the horizon. Watching, say, their little seven or eight year snag a pocket barrel, maybe even little air revo, and boom. A straight path to sponsorship riches. Incentives. Film and travel budgets.
Alas, that time not long ago but, also, an entirely different era. The surf fan has observed top-level World Surf League Championship Tour talent showing up to events with sticker-less noses. She has watched as the last remaining mega-brand, Authentic Brands Group x Bluestar Alliance, flexed its monopoly muscles and shredded contracts.
Things are, indeed, as bleak as they appear for our heroes and heroines. An industry insider with direct working knowledge of such matters informed me, yesterday, “I am seeing good money is now 25% of what it was for the elite of elite. Everyone else it’s zero.”
A whopping nothing.
How, then, can a World Surf League survive? It takes years of an expensive Qualifying Series campaign for any hopeful to reach the top. Will parents open up wallets for a hobby that maybe with extreme luck and talent and connections earns their budding surf star 75% less than Bede Durbidge once earned?
How will professional surfing, in general, endure? It is, also, costly to chase swell around the globe in order to produce fine YouTube shorts.
Will this sport of kings, thus, revert to just that? Only royalty being gifted the luxury of surfing for a “living?”
Will we, the long-suffering surf fan, only have footage of Will Smith’s surfing son Jaden to enjoy?
Can the exploding trans-women swimwear market save us all?
Thoughts?
Sad surfing, indeed.
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There will always be someone crowned world champ and there will always be surfers. Everything else is just economies of scale.
I don’t care if pros are going broke, no one is forcing them to compete. I can remember the 80s when all the guys on tour were living on the bones of their ass. It will end up like that, or maybe an annual “world title” with a few grand slam type events. Who cares.
anal bede
Good riddance!
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
It didn’t’ help that the surfing Olympics were won by a guy that attempted a half dozen FAILED airs unil he finally pulled one off. Trial and error do not belong in competitive judging. That’s called training.
Thank fuck for that , overpaid and underworked for decades , plenty of labouring jobs that need filling , building houses for cashed up new Australian migrants
Bad luck oki
Even though I haven’t been here long I’m a veteran of the downvote.ya just gotta move on or it will eat everything up like a cancer of the balls. Balls I tellz ya
i saw the ‘underworld’ to answer your question. it takes balz to enter. so i vote it down!
Great you broke my software
spyware?
I’m confident it’ll happen. The biggest issue won’t be the demise of the current, disheartened VAL, it’ll be the problem of the new VAL replacing them. Like some Wuhan concocted breed of half cockroach half mosquito, those VAL fucks will just keep coming and coming and coming.
As one fades out and returns to the cradle of mid-strength beer and pickleball, another will “pop up” in his/her/their/its place. We have to be so vigilant in our antipathy, nay disgust, towards them that when one surrendering VAL coming in at the beach passes a newby eager beaver VAL going out, he says, “it’s not worth the trouble bro. You’ll always be a scorned outsider.”
So much so that the VAL lines of communication shared over pop up parties and dimension dissemination dinners begin to frazzle so much that they blow up and the VALS all slink away. Arm yourself Jen See!
Can I say that to Bethany?
I’d pick they’ll be replaced by those younger Eastern Europeans currently making themselves at home in places like Canggu. The Daniill Medvedev looking type… lanky with seemingly no athletic prowess who seem better placed working in IT or as a hacker..
Do VALs even really know they’re VALs? Do they know that surfing is what it is to surfers & that what they’re doing is a joke, to the surfers that take themselves seriously.
& more to the point, do they care?
Val meets Val. Make a Vamily. End game is bleaker.
Rip curl don’t need surfers.
All they need is YouTube videos of Jaden Pinkhead Smith wrapped in a ripcurl towel.
The equal pay for unequal talent is proving to be a huge success.
endangered species are breeding in La Jolla Shores and on the restricted fishing areas on the local isles…and beaches…we colonize~
solar flares…https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-conte…
Pro Surfers Weeping is the Most Beautiful Noise I’ve ever Heard!
Barny downvotes everything for some reason. I think he might be Kelly.
Part of the brand goal was to bring surfing to middle of America – places with no beach, They were selling a lifestyle that only exists for the few of us that are fortunate to live near or on the coast. This was a success and we are seeing the results.
big fan of Bruce Brown. endless summer premiered in Wichita, Kansas in what ’64? in the snow…
I will most certainly send my thoughts and prayers in the general direction of those in this sad situation doing it tough as I make my way to work in the morning.
I will then sneak off for a few waves while on the clock, knowing full well I am being paid to surf more than those being paid to surf.
NonJohn will surf for booze drinks
bloody mary or bravo toro!
Swings and round abouts surfing like fashion will have its highs and lows but it aint goin anywhere, new management will pick up wsl and at worst revert to the previous model, authentic brands will try and be authentic and new surfing brands will emerrge from the flames that will need surfers that know how to surf. How about we develop a new narrative that supports free and competitive surfers that love surfing more than the grumps commenting on this site.
Two of the biggest grumps are DR and Chas. 45 plus and not young at all.
Medium age of BG commentators would be 50 I reckon?
Plenty of reasons why surfing is not ideally suited as a spectator sport, which makes it tough to attract non-industry sponsors. More reasons why money is tough to come by from industry sponsors, like the fact they just don’t generate that much revenue. Prediction – hydrofoiling replaces it. Growing stupid fast, you can ride shit waves and its still fun, or ride flat water, and the gear (unfortunately) is spendy – revenue. For better or for worse…
Just point all these homeschooled geniuses toward Silicon Valley. A new technology revolution awaits.