SCENES FROM THE REBUILD
A week before the WCT kicks off, how far is the ASP along in reinventing the pro surfing wheel?
By Nick Carroll
It's all happening at Snapper Rocks right now, folks! The Quiksilver Pro event site is close to complete and bigger than ever, straddling the beach like the avatar of modern surf sport it is.
Its, errr, erection matches the blizzard of public activity emerging from ASP circles over the past few weeks. A new global sponsor is on board in the sleek shape of electronics giant Samsung.
New employees have been announced, a new website has been launched, and a new live commentary team has been announced, led by ESPN sports caller Pat Parnell and the surf-familiar Joe Turpel.
And it seems like there's more money than ever: The Quik Pro, like all the men's WCTs in 2014, has a prize boost to half a million dollars, while the accompanying Roxy Pro jumps to $250,000.
Like we said, it's all happening. But what is "it"? How far along is ZoSea Media in its effort to re-invent the pro surfing wheel?
Trying to get a picture of this can be difficult. Aside from its recent PR blitz, the new ASP can feel amazingly opaque. Emails and phone calls go unanswered, and in the space left, uncertainty and gossip can arise. Jeez, check out Facebook.
But a big part of it is that the ASP staff has been close to overwhelmed. Re-invention has turned every detail of the world tour's operation into a massive reconstruction exercise. One of Tour Commissioner Kieren Perrow's first agenda items, for instance, was a re-jig of the hoary old ASP Rule Book. He assembled a small team, including Renato Hickel and Al Hunt, and began combing through the document.
"I thought it'd take a couple of days at most," he says. In fact it took over three weeks of continuous effort, during which the team discovered rules dating back to the 1980s, including one describing how you're supposed to paddle around a priority buoy. (Yep, that's what the surfers used to have to do.)
So what do we know about 2014? First up: there's more contests. Aside from committing to 11 men's events, the ASP is investing heavily in the women's tour, re-setting three new events in Fiji, Trestles and Maui and bringing the overall number to 10, just one off the men's. It's made what seems like an eminently smart move in bringing the Big Wave World Tour under its care.
It's also invested a considerable sum in two ex-surf industry names: Rod Brooks, former Quiksilver head of WCT events and now ASP's event consultant, and Graham Stapelberg, former Billabong marketing VP and now ASP's head of strategy. (A hallmark of the new ASP is awesome job titles, by the way; we asked Perrow if he had a card with "Commissioner" printed on it. He confirmed that he did.)
A lot of stuff around these events won't change, at least on the surface. The judging panel remains pretty much the same, though a specialist priority judge will be part of every WCT in 2014, perhaps a response to several gnarly disputed calls in 2013.
Other things have been tweaked. The rulebook is full of changes, which though subtle, will for sure affect competition through 2014. Injury wildcard Owen Wright, for instance, gets a gift seeding at 13th, despite not having competed since less than halfway through 2013. He's the first to benefit from a rule change that gives a high ranked injury wildcard a boost toward his earlier ranking (O was ranked 10th at the end of 2012, when he suffered his back injury). If Owen is fully recovered and in form, he'll face a lot easier draw from 13th than from 35th.
Another rule change involves priority blocking - a seemingly arcane area of pro surfing law, until you realize that every pro uses it to stop an opponent catching a winning wave. From now on, they'll effectively only get to use it once. But the rule is phrased so trickily that Commissioner Perrow was bracing himself to explain it to the surfers' meeting this coming Wednesday. Fans should brace themselves for some dummy-spitting around this rule, we suspect.
More seriously, the ASP's drug policy is now clearly worded and out front. No professional surfer can be in any doubt about the policy or the drugs involved: a full list of banned substances is included in the rulebook. Testing will be carried out at random and while the ASP will not reveal on whom and when, the organization is committed to making public any positive testing and penalties that result.
You can access the new rulebook on the ASP's freshly re-minted website. While most of the historical info has gone (we've been told it will be re-loaded when the staff has time), the site is clean and sharp, complete with the ASP's new logo, and with a much clearer focus on the athletes.
It's a clear message to the pro surfing fan-base, and perhaps also to potential sponsors: We're new, and we've got a new act. It's also been the scene of the organization's finest public glitch so far - the rebirth, then sudden removal of surf writer Lewis Samuel's Power Rankings.
Lewis was one of several journalists approached by the ASP, including Chas Smith, Matt Warshaw, and Australia's Steve Shearer, with a view to getting them involved in the website. All but Lewis politely declined.
Lewis says he was "pretty surprised" by the contact, seeing as how his original Power Rankings feature here on Surfline almost drove some of the pros insane with fury. Indeed, it's hard to know what anyone involved was thinking. "I kept wondering if they really understood what they were asking for," he told us. "But I got sucked in by the irony of it all, and I've never been that good with conservative decision making."
Stunned readers were directed to the first chunk of his ASP-commissioned Power Rankings in mid-February, to find Lewis had lost none of his renowned sting. This reporter understands several pros immediately responded with pissed-off emails to CEO Paul Speaker and other ASP staff. The Rankings were swiftly pulled, but not swiftly enough; nothing ever quite dies on the Internet.
Horses are also being spooked in the surf media arena by the wording of conditions attached to the new ASP media credentials. Put simply, if you're a photographer or videographer who shoots footage of anything around the event, the ASP claims full usage rights to what you shoot.
This contradicts Australian law in a couple of areas, and you can bet it'll be tested at Snapper. In keeping with the new ASP's philosophy of fan-centrism, the vast event site has been opened wide to viewers; the old surfers' deck, which blocked passing fans' sight of the action, has been removed and public space restored. It's a nice move, but how 5,000 people with camera-phones can be prevented from snapping Instagrams remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, a couple of big issues still face the new ASP. One is profitability. On the face of it, the Samsung announcement is a move exactly in the direction ZoSea had planned - a big name non-endemic backer in a key consumer area. But the income stream from the deal is unclear, and to cover the spread, it'd need to be titanic.
The organization is known to have a considerable financial backbone and has told the surfers there was enough in the kitty to support at least two years of endorsement-free operation. It's no longer facing that level of financial pressure. But the math right now is still gnarly. Of the 21 events in the men's and women's WCT, only 12 have naming rights sponsors. At least two surf industry companies - Volcom and Oakley - have pulled out, despite deals being offered to them and other potential naming-rights sponsors; Surfline understands that rather than the $1 million figure per event proposed originally by ZoSea, companies who've signed on for multiple events have been given a discount on the first year of operation.
Contrast this with the true cost of running a WCT - somewhere between $2 million and $3 million for a men's and half that for a women's - and it doesn't take long to work out that there's a very big gap between spending and income.
Another major issue for the ASP to address is the World Qualifying Series. The WCT and WQS rankings have again been split, reverting to the old two-tier system and clarifying who's who in the pro universe. It's a useful and practical move. But while the WCT events are being shored up financially, the WQS tour has shrunk alarmingly. From a base of over 40 contests five years ago, it's now hovering at 27, as recession-hit Europe in particular has shed events like leaves in autumn. Apart from anything else, this limits the recruitment of new surfers to the pro pool; its effects may not be properly seen for years.
But the fact is that it's early days yet for a group who six months ago, had almost no news for us at all. "Compared to where things were late last year, a lot has happened in a short time," one source told Surfline. The same source points out that until a media distribution base had been set in place, the tour didn't have anything to sell - and most of that didn't happen until late 2013.
Even as this article was being finalized, things kept happening. The men's WCT at Keramas in Bali, pioneered last year by ex-sponsor Oakley, vanished overnight, to be replaced by one in Jeffreys Bay. No naming rights sponsor has yet been announced for the J-Bay event.
Kelly Slater, the surfer closest to the ZoSea crew, says he's happy with their progress. "Some people are going to feel like they're being left out," he says. "That's natural when you have a change happening... But I think they (ZoSea) are doing OK so far."
Either way, 2014's gonna be a balancing act par excellence for the ASP and professional surfing.
More than ever, they'll be relying on the talent to pull out a huge year. Excellent waves and dramatic competition has always been pro surfing's real deal. If that happens, especially through the coming summer, ZoSea might well have what they need to get the sports market's attention.
Ted the Kiwi
> 9 months ago, 21 Jan 2014
