Rebel Tour Time?
A professional surfing tour is a business, and has to be able to pay the bills.
And initially, someone will have to stump up an extraordinary amount of cash.
I can't any financial upside to a second surfing tour, let alone the massive hurdles it'd face in becoming established.
An alternative tour that was run more like those big wave comps where it's more a strike mission, so the waves are of the highest quality possible would be cool.
Say six events with two month strike windows
-Kirra
-J-bay
-Kandui/Rifles
-Tahiti
-Fiji
-Pipe
Though it'd cost even more - staff on call ain't cheap - and booting local surfers off their own waves at late notice is fraught with all manner of problems.
In short, strike mission tour will never happen, nor will a rebel tour of any kind for that matter.
Choosing hypothetical locations for a global surf tour is very easy.
Finding a way to fund such a tour is much more difficult.
Although it would appease the core surfer audience for the WSL tour to remove all of the shitty spots and replace them with a bunch of A-grade reefs and points, I am pretty confident that their bottom line wouldn't improve at all. I'm doubtful that there'd be a significant increase in audience, which is currently minuscule compared to other sports. Hence why the WSL is more focused on other business channels to generate income, away from the tour.
Can you imagine the swell of the season is due to hit Pipe and then two days out the WSL announces it’s coming to take over the wave for the swell...
Ahhh yeah nah I don’t think so.
At lease with the current format the waiting period is smaller and defined
^^^ Yep, and similarly there'd be travellers getting pissed off too.
Say you've thrown down $4K on your annual surf trip, chosen Kandui, J'Bay, or Chopes, and your trip coincides with a CT so you can't surf the wave.
Happy punters? I think not.
Reckon it's a fast track to pissing off your core audience.
Make it a surfer-shaper tour, ala MR, MP, Simon Anderson, etc.
That's the best surfer sorted sorted right there, make 'em shape their own equipment.
Ditch the ski assist too.
I suggest an Aussies-only tour so that we can once again dominate world surfing.
D-Rex wrote:I suggest an Aussies-only tour so that we can once again dominate world surfing.
Ah, you mean like the way the Americans dominate World Series Baseball?
Something like that but without Canada.
Surely the better the waves the more viewers they would get?
Then the more viewers they get the more sponsors are willing to pay?
But i guess it seems it also comes down to governments/state governments or whatever coughing up money, places like Australia seem willing to cough up money but places with better waves expect wouldn't.
Prize money aside, just the amount of money thrown around to run these events does my head in, surely they could be run these events for a fraction of the cost, ive watched a few of those comps online in Indonesia and okay they are a little less professional, you dont get the drone shots and interviews on jet skis etc, but surely the budget for those comps is really low and you could pay a few people to do those bells a whistles.
Anyway its one of those things, its fun to watch and fun to dream about the dream tour, but at the same time we are also kind of happy to see it fail or not really take off.
So is anyone else, after watching another day of this machine made vanilla, rich getting richer, deviation from real surfing and its roots thinking it's time to go back...back when surfing was a mystical yet achievable escape, not for the conforming and their bleached white teeth, asnf certainly nott dared to be owned. We need another tour that teenagers can aspire to but also feel there's safety in imperfection, an alternative to the straight and narrow path. Isn't that what put surfing on the map in the first place,? Kelly even sounded defensive today during his interview about online comments calling the man made wave event "boring, repetitive" etc and his response was tin do many words hat we have to acquire this new taste. Hardly consumer driven strategy...anyway is it just me feeling this 'vibe' (said in my best Rosie Hodge accent).