Surfed Sunday at Queensie/Nth Steyne - I think given the often limited surfing capabilities of the crowd and the number in the crowd, that the 130 million new fans had all converged there.

I remember reading (possibly in Tracks) during the early 90s - "if someone says "this will be good for surfing" be very wary about what that actually means - good for who?"

Quote from Erik Logan "it’s in finding a way to harmonize this large contingency of avid surf fans and lovers and the professional side of our sport with these elite world-class athletes doing these super-human things."
Vomit

Wouldn’t trust the cnt as far as I could throw him. The flag bearer of everything wrong with modern surfing.

if looks define an era..it would be apparent that "the industry" has gone a long way from Bruce Raymond's "if you can't rock'n'roll don't fuck'n come" poster to this - chino's, a toothpaste commercial smile and nothing to add to HOL's observation on the quote from Logan..suffice to say the WSL's marketing strategy "doesn't speak to me".

I read the full interview and this pearl just jumped out at me.

"we’re going to have that world championship moment that our sport has never had in its history."

He's talking about the one day event at Trestles for the top five to decide a champ.
Like the world champ has never been decided on the final day at Pipeline which in turn showcases how awesome the sport can be at the professional level. 10 to 12 foot heaving pits versus head high air reverses and tail wafts on waves that can be totally dominated by the surfer.

In the end he's really selling something that surfing kind of isn't, competition (cue image of Rasta doing a styled out bottom turn to coverup followed with some dreamy carves to pull out).
Still its going to be interesting to see how the amazing media moment plays out on the day.

on the one hand it's fairly clear we need these guys (Ziff, ELO etc) for the world tour, on the other, literally everything they do is so far off the mark it's cringeworthy.
on a slightly unrelated note, he is such a perfect caricature of your wanker mate who works in marketing. your two bit business has had 10,000 people "engage" with the crappy business instagram account he made you get, THAT'S 10,000 NEW CUSTOMERS. yep that's how it works thanks mate

Read this and thought - "Do not participate - every view of a WSL comp is an endorsement of their corporate strategy..." Can relate to it, don't identify with it and wan nothing to do with it.

Point 1

Given that the major sponsor appears to be "stay tuned" (the ad breaks spread through the heats that have no advertiser wiling to pay anything for) who pays nothing to promote nothing, perhaps the "millions" of viewers are just a count of brief click throughs and page refreshes?

Point 2

The astounding blind spot of Grogon in his enthusiasm that gets the core surfers' backs up is that if he is successful in attracting millions or even hundreds of millions of new participants the surfing experience for all will deteriorate substantially. At some spots even another 5 or 10 people out can ruin the experience.

He just overlooks the fact (due to his pay packet depending on it) that the WSL's ambitious corporate goals are flirting with destroying something very precious in the core audience's lives. The more they push the more the core viewing audience will reject the vision.

Malibu like crowds at every spot seem to be the WSL goal. How can he get up each morning and pursue that??? He aims to "finding a way to harmonize this large contingency of avid surf fans and lovers and the professional side of our sport with these elite world-class athletes doing these super-human things." But the more he spells out his vision the more I am thinking of never watching another WSL event on principle - very easy to do cause 90% is boring anyway.

Fortunately, surfing can be tough and frustrating. Sharks are real and a fear that huge numbers of people cannot comprehend being exposed to, But most of all, the feedback loop of crowds seems to stop the disaster scenario from happening. Most beginners, for example, who shift from their first surf lesson to say the superbank crowds to get almost zero waves soon quietly thinks "this is not fun at all". As crowds grow frustration for beginners increases proportionally.

Surfing has a massive churn rate thankfully.

Even so, that interview was scary.

Remind me why we have to 'grow the sport' again and who it benefits. Surfers like you and me?
And who's steering surfing into the future? Surfers?? Doesn't seem so. How did these pricks hijack surfing?

What we have here is a snake oil salesman selling the fools gold theory. Going surfing is the most wonderful past time in the world, watching surfing has limitations ,especially when its over hyped by commentators and mostly advertising. I watched 15 minutes, then wondered what was the difference between a 6.80 and 7.20 score. being confused I went for a surf and had a great time.PS mate ...go back to Oprah .

I mean this in all honestly, over the course of the last 10 years I would say I've watched an average of 20-30mins per year of surf comps online/televised by the WSL. Yet surfing is my most favourite activity to do. "Grow the sport". Never has there been a greater divide between those who benefit from if the sport of surfing grows or if it doesn't than the divide between corporate surf brands and those who actually surf.

I find nothing more boring that watching a TV screen of surfers waiting for sets, often in average conditions, and listening to Joe Turpel gurgle on and on to fill in the time.

However on watching surfing in general, I do watch a lot of free-surf videos. Give me needessentials-like content all day long.

Everything that is wrong with surfing started with 'The Bronzed Aussies" (vomit in my own mouth just writing that ) and ends with this fake American wanker (who didnt even surf before taking the job on and now rides a sup???) Cunts trying to sell what wasn,t theirs to sell in the first place.
Fuck the wsl and fuck this guy

He and his kind only see money and opportunity make more money. For others ,surfing allows us to connect with nature. Enter the water and come feeling better than before.
Agree crowds lead to chaos .
I reckon Erik and his crew have the Wavepool resorts and leave the ocean to people who need it.

GOLD QUOTES FROM THAT INTERVIEW

"An average event for us in terms of our digital and also linear distributions is about 10 million".
TRANSLATION: Our surfers get 10 million likes on thier private instagrams during an event so we claim those

"...you get to a place where someone’s so far ahead that they can just run away with the world title...
And most of the time the person who wins the world title wins it while on the beach or in the locker room because somebody loses in the water and it’s mathematically over. It was hugely anticlimactic"

TRANSLATION: We want to give the title to someone who doesn't deserve it for a gamble at better ratings (and we got paid more to screw them over)

Is this an opportunity to hook a new generation into surfing?
"A thousand percent. One of the things a lot of people don’t know is that we also control the leagues below."
TRANSLATION: "We want to crowd out the lineups and control everything"

"We have a rookie out of Australia named Morgan Cibilic, and he’s a little bit brash, very young, always out every night living the life of a pro surfer and traveling the world."
TRANSLATION: I made this up cause it sounded cool

"Tyler Wright, who’s a two-time world champion, is openly gay and approached us to wear the progressive pride flag on her jersey. And so she did, and she’s a very outspoken activist."
TRANSLATION: Thanks Christ we finally have a diversity angle covered (and we'll claim we made it happen)

It's me!

What the fuck is a "large contingency of avid surf fans" I'm wondering??
Could it be the 379999999 of us waiting in the closet for Ultimate Surfer to air after which we will be transformed from an apathetic bunch of gronks into a rabid bunch of surf nuts.

My finger hovered over the link for the interview but I felt an overwhelming sense of unease.

I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t press the button.

Because I’m a surfer.

Seems Eric has come down from his epiphany at Toonalook. Question his rubbery numbers too - there's no such thing as one thousand percent.

Correction- seems you can have more than 100% if you are talking about something more than the whole..

The last thing surfing needed was Covid, it has been destroyed as most of us know it. Its never going back to what it was. Oh well, selfishly least I got a few good decades.

I surf basically every day and on average watch half an hour per year. I have several mates who are glued to the WSL broadcast yet I cant get them out of bed in the morning when it's 4 foot and offshore. Surfing and the WSL are simply not the same thing.

How did that cunt get a hold on my favourite thing in the world that I've been doing for over 4 decades and twist it into something that your worst surfing nightmares are made of???

I'm thinking about creating an organisation with the goal of shrinking the sport. The idea would be to discourage corporate and government sponsorship, foster an unhealthy image of surfing in the community and create barriers for entry for beginners.

Is this the beginning of a very significant resurgence in the "surf wear" industry ?

The gulf between what Clown World and his ilk think of as surfing and what the people around me think of as surfing is like night and day.

Old mate Gronk has been spoon fed the entire deal since he first pulled on his suit of neoprene armour to defend him from the ocean which previously made him piss his pants. He commenced riding a SUP in middle age and was getting Instagram photos of every session from day dot. It’s easy to assume that he’s never committed himself to any kind of independent surfing adventure off his own bat - learnt at a school, goes surfing amongst supportive corporate MAMILs every time and has yet to display any form of initiative or spirit to chase waves on his own volition. It’s all Surfline, surf guides and luxe catered experience.

He may very well think that his surfing experience is just as valid and legitimate as the surf world that I see when I look around me, but he’s wrong. It’s a watered down, soulless shadow and yet still there’s the motivation to compromise what’s left by selling it out for MOAR cash money.

There’s a special place in hell reserved for cnts like that.

"It’s going to be transformative for the sport of surfing."

This little ripper set me up for thinking about the whole circus in a different way. The main thing I take issue with is that the people making the money have almost always been the ones controlling any form of transformation in surfing. If we view professional surfing as one big clusterfark of vested interests, it becomes a bit easier to step back and take a more objective view of its net value and its embrace of profit.

When I say vested interests, I mean:
- the administrators and other hangers-on ie the WSL and to a lesser extent the state/national based surfing organisations
- the sponsors who stump up the $ or the goods to gain greater exposure and hopefully sell more stuff
- the "athletes" who surf on the various tours
- the local and state governments who throw resources at contests to bring in the visitors and the tourism coin
- and a few others I'm sure I've missed....perhaps surf schools and the like, too.

As you go down the list I think the level of culpability decreases, but I think the whole shebang is rotten to the core for the simple reason that the ultimate outcome is that surfing will increase in popularity to the extent that it's just not fun anymore to go for a paddle. He talks about the "ecosystem" somewhere there, but the only ecosystem I can see clearly is the parasitic - all sucking off the teat at once without giving a damn about their impact on what it means for the other 99% who surf for reasons other than money.

Maybe some of them don't get it? Or are they so caught up in the froth they can't see through it? I think it's one thing to work in the "sport" with a mindset that you're providing something for existing surfers, but it's completely another when you're working to actively grow participation in surfing.

I think it's that ELO is so brazen in his promotion of growing surfing that really gets my goat. In fact, I consider that he's effectively snaking the whole pack, including future generations of surfers, so I'd gladly partake in a global campaign to toast him if I see him in the water.

It seems like Elo is pretty onto it from a purely business/corporate perspective. After reading the interview, I think he'll very likely build something financially successful out of the sport of pro surfing, possibly take it to new levels, and likely create a valid "company" or "business" out of it. I'd say the odds seem to be in favour of that now.

The flip-side to this is further exploitation, commercialisation and corporatisation of the sport/art/lifestyle/culture of surfing, and a twisting of it into something it historically hasn't been and into something it's not to the many people who just "go surfing" every day.

This commercialisation goes against how I personally "participate with" surfing: just paddling out and surfing for an hour or two every morning and afternoon there's waves, and having little to nothing else to do with the larger commercial/corporate machine that the surfing industry and surfing media are - apart from when I need a new board or wetsuit, watching pro comps when they're at waves like Chopes, and using websites like swellnet for the cameras and then getting sucked into making the occasional comment in these forums...

I relate quite closely to surfing and most the people on swellnet, and to pro surfing as it was back in the 80s and 90s. But with the direction the Woz and pro surfing is going in general nowadays, I decided a while ago that I'll just have to accept that I'll no longer relate to what Elo is building and the direction he's taking things - that it's just the way life is and there's not much that can be done about it, so no use getting upset.

Like the world's population, surfing does not need growth.

Endless growth is unsustainable.

Did this fucker go to the same school of economics as Morrison, and it seems, most of the dumb fucks running and ruining this planet?

There is NO Planet B

WE ARE ALL THE PROBLEM!

exactly, ELO is just a gold medal, five star smoke and mirrors guy with a first class Honours Degree in Corpo-speak.

It's more of a Shelbyville idea....

It’s going to be transformative for the sport of surfing. First and foremost — getting back to our prior point — is that when someone says surfing is going to be in the Olympics, there are people who will be like, “Wow, I didn’t even know surfing was a thing.”

That's a classic piece of ELO Grade One, Number One Bullshit.

Unless he's counting Russian speaking hillbillies in the Caucasians Mountains.

Erik Logan again, with his vomit worthy take it to the masses corporate wank speak, all the while flashing those fake gumby ultra white teeth veneers, geeky ken doll style. Well my desired dream vision, is Elo unwittingly dropping in with his SUP and running over Johnny Boy Gomes, then yelling at him to get the fuck out of the way, with the ensuing melee all caught at close range on Vistavision byTim Bonython .

"The exposure and the attention we’re now driving from a media perspective actually gives you what you need as a surfer to go get the media deals and sponsorship deals so you can make a living on the road just like every other professional athlete."

Fucking bollocks mate.

“We have a rookie out of Australia named Morgan Cibilic, and he’s a little bit brash, very young, always out every night living the life of a pro surfer and traveling the world."

As compared to Kong and RCJ smoking bongs in the Transit van before a heat

Wow, it's almost like there hasn't been 40 years of concerted effort for pro surfing to crack the American market.

helluva lot riding on the Olympics.
how many landlubbers will be hooked when it's 2-3ft Japanese beachbreaks and they have zero idea why that wave got a 6 and then next one got an 8.

Talk about getting thrown hangers over the middle of the plate. Did the WOZ's Executive Vice President of Public Engagement write the questions?

Shocked to discover no questions in there about the bottom line.

I don't suppose the claimed 'explosion in the digital ecology... linear distributions' and 'narratives outside of the jersey' are getting the WOZ closer to being in the black.

maybe channel some of fuckishimas waste water down there ....lovely fluro green colour

Please please please let the Olympic surfing 'comp' be plagued by gutless 1 to 2 foot onshore slop in filthy, polluted looking water where the main functional move is the Huntington Hop.

That should get that Logan turd's untapped masses busting their chops to start 'surfing' eh?

How come Surfer numbers are Exploding yet No One Watches?

Thats a great question dr-surf.

even for experienced surfers surf comps are mostly boring, sometimes incomprehensible. There's a very small number of rusted on fans.

new surfers just don't dig comps, they are in it for the "lifestyle."

If your a surfer , why would you want to grow the sport ? If your not , wealth and greed and fame by association.

yep pull the mid length out of the van/kombi tie the hair up in a bun and start dropin in....yep what more is there in life

I’ll just leave my handle here.

Everything that’s wrong with surfing is represented by the statement ‘growing the SPORT’

Surfing can be fucking boring to watch for surfers... let alone non surfers

The olympics never converted me into a skeet-shooter (although I was tempted by rhythmic dancing with a ribbon for a bit there)

I think wave pool growth will convert more fuckwits than onshore Japanese radioactive surf...

The "industry" in all its forms has always been about growth to the detriment of your experience and mine.

Eric Grogon raises heckles and stands out for spelling massive growth goals out so brazenly and having (for now), the deep pockets of ziffy to maybe get some traction, when the WSL should be collapsing.

I would be more worried if surfing contests were more than yawn material for most people and if I did not see the never ending massive drop out rate in surfing. For the average punter, the experience is often way worse than the dream.

Most of my peers barely surf any more. So many kids in their twenties drift away. Check out the Manly web cam. Often I am surprised more by the lack of surfers relative to the huge population of Sydney than by the crowds.

It takes continual work on fitness, tactical and forecasting skills to find sessions of good surf as well as early mornings, tolerance for getting smashed around, maybe cold, often crowds, maybe sharks and a love for it to stay keen.

Sorry Grogon. I think you will fail due to a shit business model. Ziff, buy a baseball team please and leave us alone

You either love it or you don't.
I believe the ocean sorts those out who are only in it because its a trend at the time.
Being stuck in a box, working 12 hour days, thousands of k's from a young family for weeks at a time I'm grateful for the vision that allows me to feel the waves of the ocean I love and miss every moment. I dream of "working" in Surfing somehow, and have tried multiple times, only to end up broke and struggling to survive, not even being able to afford to get to the waves a few kms away. Good luck if you love it, you deserve to live it.

That was hard to read, and sad/embarrassing for surfing

I really like pro-surfing regardless of the way It's packaged. Those CT fuckers and tons of the QS guys are just amazing to watch and do things probs only 1% of 'surfers' can only dream of.

I don't reckon the WSL and the likes of ELO do much to increase numbers in the water.

I reckon we should thank them for the great entertainment and talking points they bring us. May not be everyones cup of tea but when someone is up and riding on the webcast. all is cast aside and sometimes our tiny little cohort can be witness to something that is truly spectacular.

PS- and then go back to our normal lives.

The only way I’ll be watching Olympic surfing is if Roy & HG are commentating.

Just read the interview with Elo and discovered that I now have even less respect for the man. Something I wouldn’t have believed possible half an hour ago.

The sheer volume of dung emanating from his lips makes my skin crawl. I wouldn’t give a rat’s if he wasn’t positioning himself as a direct threat to something I love. Thank Christ he appears to do everything possible to sabotage his stated mission.

Then again.....I might be underestimating the power of Ultimate Surfer to act as a clown magnet for surfing.

Pro surfing is fucking boring to watch and I've been giving it a nudge since WFH. I more than likely tune out after a few minutes of lulls and Turdpul talking shit and wait for the 5 minute recap on Youtube the next day. If it's boring to watch for a surfer, what's the appeal for the average footy watching guy/gal? Even Test cricket is more exciting to watch!

Plus, the final in Trestles?! GTFO. That's like having the skateboarding park final in the Olympics on a 3ft mini ramp.

Looks like it's not dying anytime soon though, but on the plus side, it can't get anymore crowded in the water since COVID!

or can it

:'(

“ Plus, the final in Trestles?! GTFO. That's like having the skateboarding park final in the Olympics on a 3ft mini ramp.”

Great call. It’s a throwback to the days of Hardman/Kong title deciders at Manly.

Fuck it, let it all collapse.
I like watching the odd comp, but at the end of the day if that comp is intrinsically tied to a corporate entity whose stated aim is to convince more people to surf - and of course it is, it always has been - then we're fools engineering our own destruction. We're not mountain biking, we can't build more tracks.
If it all tumbled - metaphorically - into the sea would it make an ounce of difference to the average Joe or Josephine who just wants a few waves every week to keep themselves sane? Nope. Not a bit. Fuck off Eric.

Personally ,I would have been a little more creative with the graphics added to his portrait at the top.

As for the man himself , Clarke Griswold sums it up nicely for me,,,

"The goal then is to bring surfing into the Mainstream?"
"Some of our recent distribution deals are doing just that...."

Why? TO what end? For what reason? Does it bring more stoke to people? Does it increase the rush? Does it improve the beauty of a pre-dawn paddle out? Does it make people more interested in life?
Its all about more money to a few with their hands in the honey pot. Wealth inequality is tearing our world apart and this all feeds into it.

Its painful to read someone who is obviously interested in just money or fame - framing everything as if he is mother Theresa. Just read the number of self-referencing power statements and the truth emerges..."We control....we crown world champions....we provide a pathway for young people (as if a frothing potential world champ would be stumbling around blind until they saw a WSL stream...)...we control....we control...we control....."

AAgghhhhh!!! I am just SOOOOO grateful that its a hard sport to learn and pick up - could you imagine if it was like cycling. All it takes is a lycra suit and two wheels and you are allowed to take up a whole cafe with your mates on a saturday - pretending you're on Le Tour with your little peaked cap. Sure in small surf you get punters who are having a crack and crowding it out but at least when its double overhead you actually have to know what you're doing. Theres no shortcut - thanks god otherwise we would have the "380 million" sitting in a pool of humanity killing each there for a set.....

Perhaps there is a simple counter narrative we can all easily promote to fend off Elo's vision and the masses from actually entering the water (they may still watch a bit of WSL content) and to steer them onto their apps, bikes, into gyms, playing soccer, watching netflix etc.

We should all endlessly discuss the booming Great White Shark population and post stories and links about sightings, bumps and drone footage of cruising GWs on beaches. Tell stories to work colleagues, relatives- spread the word. We all underestimate how much shark fears discourage new participants

We sort of do it anyway and freak ourselves out. But there are benefits to our growing fears - fewer newbies and more boards staying in the garage.

Elo can't fix that little growth inhibitor with his corporate mumbo jumbo.

Here goes.

Crikey - check this shark out - they are everywhere ... No wonder the WSL has boats and jet skis out patrolling at contests watching for sharks.

I suspect Elo rides a SUP to avoid all the GWs in California by only putting his paddle in the water. And the ultimate surfer is probably held at the Surf Ranch to avoid all the sharks.

Elo's growth vision for surfing is just irresponsible with GW sharks on the increase. Some journalist needs to take that up with him. He is just not fulfilling his duty of care to all those mums and dads.

One day maybe there might even be a class action taken against the WSL?

This story is just starting.

Article on popular ezine beachsh*t !

WORLD SURF LEAGUE CEO ERIK LOGAN ADMITS THAT SURFERS MIGHT GET EATEN

Mr Logan recently admitted to the dangers of surfing as a sport.

"But what’s so different about surfing than every other sport is that the golf courses aren’t moving, and the tennis courts aren’t moving. There’s nothing that’s going to eat you. We’re surfing in the raw, open ocean."

Many parents are concerned about his cavalier attitude to a serious matter in the light of increasing shark attacks around the world given his position of influence.

Questions remain regarding the WSL's legal exposure and culpability in any shark attacks on competitors during WSL events or upon youth attracted to surfing by WSL content.

Requests for comment from Mr Logan or the WSL on this matter have yet to receive a response.

When did "grow the sport" become a synonym for "get me a bigger bonus". What a flog.

surfings future is coming.....this is a futuristic super bank or lenno.....

can we make roller blading cool again, so that only surfers surf

The Bronzed Aussies vision is now complete.

This guy can only get hard when there is a mirror around

trending story:

"SURFING'S GROWTH AMBITIONS STRUGGLE FOR TAKEOFF DUE TO POPULARITY OF TWERKING"

High profile surfing CEO E. Grogon admits massive growth ambitions for surfing and his league of surf may struggle whilst twerking "is still a thing". Twerking surged into vogue just prior to the launch of the League in 2013 and has since remained cheek to cheek with "surfing" as a search term on Google Trends for the past five years - despite the millions of dollars spent by the League dedicated to changing the world through the inspirational power of surfing.

"Of course I love twerking too", Mr Grogon confided. "I often twerk privately whilst doing my ablutions in the morning for its health benefits" he said earnestly.

But, he went on to say "It is the noble goal of monetising surfing for the good of people-kind by creating authentic surfing events, experiences, and storytelling to inspire a growing, global community to live with purpose, originality, and stoke" keeps me up at night. "I want every surf break in the world filled with surf people from dawn to dusk. Waves should not be wasted just on one rider. Just imagine how many people will be stoked by that?" he said.

When asked if somehow twerking and surfing could join forces and grow together rather than competing as a force for good, Grogon just smiled and said mysteriously "That may just be in the Pipeline".