World Surf League: Conclusion

In professional surfing’s first year under the World Surf League name, the state of the sport has been in limbo. The first two events of the year produced lack luster surf, which contributed to below average viewership numbers. People simply are not interested in watching the best surfer’s in the world surf in sub par waves. Good waves equals high performance surfing, entertainment and ultimately, higher viewership numbers. Having low viewership numbers is detrimental to the WSL. If the WSL wants retain the sponsorships they have, as well as attract new sponsorships, which they need in order to become a profitable entity, they will need to increase viewership numbers. The WSL has taken steps to increase viewership numbers with their new web series “Priority,” which will create an emotional connection with viewers and hopefully get them to cheer on their favorite surfers, even if the waves aren’t good. The WSL has also cut a deal with ABC to show one hour highlight packages of the events, which will expose surfing to more fans and hopefully interest them in the competitive nature of surfing.

New sponsorship deals with credible brands such as, Jeep and GoPro will also be extremely beneficial to the WSL in the future. Having big and credible companies as partners gives the WSL validity and will hopefully attract more lucrative sponsorship deals. The WSL will always have a large fan base as long as the most exciting surfer’s in the world remain on tour and the contest venues remain at the best waves in the world. However, sponsorships and partnerships will ultimately determine the faith of professional surfing. As long as the WSL can continue to increase viewership numbers the sponsorships will come and they will stay, but for now the state of professional surfing is unknown.

 

New Global Partnership with Jeep

 

The World Surf League just announced that they have entered into a global partnership with the Jeep brand. This partnership will make Jeep the exclusive and official automobile partner of the World Surf League. According to the WSL, Jeep will own the naming rights to the Men’s and Women’s World Championship Tour rankings. They will now be referred to as the “Jeep Leaderboard.”

The Jeep brand has been involved in several partnerships with other sports, but Jeep’s partnership with the WSL is their first partnership that will be recognized on a global scale. The Jeep brand will be exposed throughout venues in the USA, Fiji, Brazil, China, Japan, Australia, France and Spain.

This partnership appears to be a great fit for both partners. Surfer’s love Jeeps. They have the ability to fit our surfboards and allow us to drive on beaches using their 4-wheel drive capabilities. The WSL will be a great platform for Jeep to advertise and hit their target market dead on. The Jeep lifestyle directly aligns with the adventurous surfing lifestyle. “The sport embodies the passion we have for breaking personal boundaries and making the most out of every day,” said Mike Manley, president and CEO of the Jeep brand.

GoPro Challenge

The GoPro challenge is a very exciting contest between the surfer’s competing in the WSL events. The GoPro challenge allows surfer’s to take videos with GoPro cameras during the event waiting period and submit them to a public judging panel. The GoPro clips are judged online by viewers and individually voted on. The surfer with the most votes receives $10,000 from GoPro. These clips are great to show between gaps in waves and keep viewers intrigued during the webcast. GoPro also gets amazing and unique surf footage from these professionals using their cameras and shows the public what their product is capable of on a large platform.

“Priority” The WSL’s New Web Series

The World Surf League just released a new web series called “Priority.” Priority goes behind the scenes with three world tour surfer’s before each event and gives insight into their personal lives. Being a professional surfer is not all fun, traveling the world and surfing the best waves in the world. There are various pressures that exist when competing on surfing’s biggest stage. These professionals need to manage family, travel, training and much more. Priority takes us inside the lives of several surfer’s on the World Championship Tour and gives a prospective of these athletes that is often reserved for friends or family. This web series is essential to the WSL in order to create an emotional connection between surf fans and their favorite surfing professionals. Before this series many dedicated surf fans knew the top 10 surfers in the world and could most likely could describe to you their style and their pros and cons in the water, but people knew absolutely nothing about their personal life. This series opens up the athletes to the world, so we can learn more about them and see who we like as a “person” and not just who surfs well. This series will keep fans loyal to the sport of surfing and also create many new fans through an emotional connection and appreciation of surfing’s top athletes.

GoPro Break Breakdown

GoPro Break Breakdown

GoPro has recently partnered with the World Surf League to sponsor the “Break Breakdown.” At the beginning of each event GoPro will film various angles of the contest venue such as, aerial coverage via drone, the underwater landscape of the reef and point of view clips of the competitors surfing at the contest surf break. GoPro commentates this footage and packages it as an exciting introduction to the contest venue. The partnership benefits both parties. For GoPro it shows the high quality, durability and versatility of their cameras. For the World Surf League it gets fans familiar with the contest venue and creates and emotional attachment to most venues. Fans become infatuated with the beauty of these surf destinations and become intrigued to see the worlds best surfers compete at them.

 

New Condensed Heat Analyzer

This year the World Surf League introduced a condensed heat analyzer. For non-surf fans, a heat takes place over a 35 minute period. Two or three surfers(depending on the round) surf against each other with the objective of scoring a higher two wave heat score (out of 20 points) then their competitor. In that 35 minute period a total of approximately 1 minute of actual surfing takes place! In the past the WSL has had issues holding surf fan’s attention through several heats because of the long lulls between waves and the high action surfing. Also, due to the global popularity of the league many fans would not be able to view certain heats or even full days of action because the event was taking place in the middle of the night within their time zone.The new condensed heat analyzer allows surf fans to log on at anytime during the event window and view any heat they desire at full length. The analyzer also allows fans to get straight to the point by marking points in the video where waves were caught by the competitors. This allows fans to skip right to the action and not have to watch all the down time in between that is mostly filled with bad commentating. The condensed heat analyzer is the future for watching professional surfing contests.

Here is the heat analyzer for Semifinal heat #1 (John John Florence Vs. Nat Young)
http://www.worldsurfleague.com/posts/111653/margaret-river-results-videos?itemId=113888

World Surf League App

The WSL has just released its first app! The app is available on Google play and the iTunes app store. This app is essential to WSL fans for various reasons. First off, the events are very unpredictable. Forecasting swells and tides is extremely fickle, not to mention many fans are viewing from a different time zone. There is never an exact day or an exact time for an event to start or stop. The WSL app will now send push notifications straight to your phone alerting you when an event goes live. The app also allows you to track only your favorite surfers and receive their results directly to your mobile device. In addition, you will now be able to set and adjust your fantasy surfer team through the mobile app, so you have the ability to make key last minute decisions from anywhere. This app will surely generate more viewers for the World Surf League, especially on a mobile platform.

Sponsorship Conflicts

Jordy Smith, who is a World Surf League competitor recently won The Hurley Pro Trestles event that took place in Southern California. After winning an event it is customary to wear your main sponsor’s hat on the podium while receiving your trophy in front of the crowd so everyone can see who is supporting you. Jordy Smith’s main sponsor is Red Bull, but the main energy drink sponsor of the World Surf League is Monster Energy. This means that any branding seen at the contest site, especially on the podium has to feature the Monster Energy logo. Monster and Red Bull are rivals within the energy drink industry. En route to the stage to accept his trophy Jordy was approached by a WSL executive who stated, that Jordy would receive a major fine if he wore his Red Bull hat on stage, or something along those lines. Jordy went up on stage wearing his Red Bull hat anyway and proudly celebrated his win. The fine was issued, but almost immediately withdrawn. Did this threat come as a result of the bad blood between the WSL and Red Bull? Was this fine due to a branding conflict between companies? If so, how can this issue be resolved?  Many of the competitors on tour have conflicting sponsors with the WSL. This is a major issue the WSL needs to resolve if it wants to attract and keep major sponsors, but also have the best surfers in the world competing at their events.

 

Is Competitive Surfing Profitable?

The World Surf League has reportedly been operating at a 30 million dollar loss, according to Stab Magazine insiders. The League is primarily funded through sponsorship deals. However, the WSL hasn’t been able to attract any major sponsors, who are willing to contribute major dollars to the World Tour. The estimated cost to run a full World Tour season, which consists of 11 events taking place in different areas of the world, is 45 million dollars. This price tag includes wages, logistics and webcasting costs. The non-profitability of the World Surf League is mainly due to a deal falling apart with Red Bull. Red Bull was supposed to become the title sponsor of the World Tour, as well as, receive media rights and be involved in a network television deal with NBC sports, starting in 2015. Unfortunately, this deal never went through because of faulty business practices on the WSL’s behalf. This cost the league a reported, 25 million dollar title sponsor and arguably many more sponsors who would have jumped on board after realizing a company like Red Bull was backing the league. The deterioration of the Red Bull deal stained the league’s reputation and they were only able to land minor sponsorship deals that weren’t enough to cover their major costs. They did manage to ink a naming rights deal with Samsung, but that deal only costs Samsung a measly 1 million dollars per year. Hopefully, viewership keeps increasing and the WSL can attract bigger sponsors to keep the sport of surfing alive, but for now the league is in limbo.