Smoke and Mirrors

By Nick Carroll

Recently you’ll have read a bit about rumours of a new, super rich, elite pro surfing ultra-circuit in the offing.

What is it: $1.5 million a contest? Or was it $1.8 million? Were there 12 surfers gonna be involved? Or was it 16? Or 18? Eight events? Six?

Your correspondent thinks it’s time to throw some cold water on it all.

This extra Tour is pure smoke and mirrors.

Here’s how this sorta thing works: a bunch of hyped up go-getters at a US-based sports TV network, in this case ESPN, decide there’s a way in to a small-time pro sport. Maybe they’re tipped off that a major star is unhappy, or something else about the sport is looking shaky. So they work up a proposal, guarantee TV time on their network (but precious little else), and start beating the drums.

Salesmen call it a “float”. Chuck it out there and see if anybody bites.

Unfortunately for ESPN, they don’t have a buyer. Never did. Indeed, they’re trying to sell it to the surf industry.

Perhaps they are hoping the surf industry will respond thus: “Oh OK, here’s $40 million a year of money we don’t have so you can white-ant the world tour that we’ve just spent a decade and a half reshaping in our image.”

They’ve had a few bites, notably from Quiksilver. You can see why Quik might be a little more interested than others; their top young American star, Dane Reynolds, is struggling on the WCT, and their all time King, Kelly Slater, is off the 10th world title run he was expected to make in 2009. If Dane’s not there and Kelly’s bored, world tour-wise they’ve got nothing.

Plus of course Kelly’s energetic manager Terry Hardy has been a central figure in chucking the “float” out there like nobody else.

But otherwise? Huh.

Things like this have been “floated” before. One recalls the IS Tour idea of 1999, “floated” by Derek Hynd with the tacit support of Jack McCoy and a number of never-quite-named wealthy backers; the Super League of 1996, “floated” by Graham Cassidy as an alternative ASP; the stand-alone Triple Crown of 1983, which never quite “floated”, but managed to ruin the career of Hawaiian great Dane Kealoha in the process.

Something amazingly similar to this current proposal, in fact, was “floated” back in the dot-com days by a pro footballer manager named R J Kors, who was working in partnership with ESPN at the time.

Yet R J’s proposals vanished along with the rest. The only time a “float” has taken was in 1982, when Ian Cairns came to the surfers with the idea for the ASP. But the ASP had a backer, it was a full blown global improvement on the very thin-on-the-ground IPS, and every single pro surfer in the world wanted a major change in how things happened.

When these “floats” are chucked out there, it’s always wise to take a cool look at who stands to benefit; and in this case, other than those thrusting ESPN executives, it’s just the 12 surfers who happen to be invited. Or the 18. Or the 16. But how are they chosen? On the basis of popularity with the ESPN execs? And what happens to everyone else?

More dryly even than that: What happens to, err, the chicks?? (Don’t mention the chicks!)

Not a whole lot in it for anyone, in fact, except said TV execs and a small number of yet to be named professional surfers whose careers will no doubt have been long established by their appearances in, oh yeah, ASP WCT events.

One of the big reasons why “floats” generally blow away with the next strong breeze is because – guess what? – professional sports are a lot harder to organise and run than the floaters care to admit. They don’t spring into being out of thin air. Yet nobody outside ESPN has been approached except in the hope of money to fund it. There’s nobody working on a computer judging system. Nobody being employed to develop all the boring yet critical infrastructure that makes multi-event global sports tours function with sanity and credibility. No connections being made within the sport beyond the headline US surf corpos.

ESPN’s got TV time to burn, but other than that, they got nothin’. And until they get somethin’ – a lot more than somethin’, in fact – you can forget about it.

The only sense that’s been talked so far in the whole shemozzle has been by Kelly Slater back in J-Bay, after being encouraged to help the “float” by e-mailing the top 45 to try to get ‘em on side (and then rapidly backing away when he realised he’d suddenly become the floater du jour).

What Kelly said about ASP WCT event timing, about the uneven webcasting, the sluggish response to changing needs in the sport, is quite true. God knows the ASP hasn’t figured out how to work its media property rights. God knows the “Dream Tour” hasn’t changed in years and is beginning to look stagnant. God knows there could be a lot more money, life and energy injected into it. (For the latest ASP initiative click here)

But the best thing pro surfing has going for it is an unopposed, undiluted world championship. It’s what’s put the sport ahead of pretty much all the other supposedly “Xtreme” sports of the past three decades. It’s what has allowed the surf industry to build the global marketing platform it so fundamentally needed – and continues to need – in order to grow its businesses beyond its old Aussie/US base. It lets new surf nations in the door of the sport; gives their top surfers a clear goal.

If you’re going to white-ant that in favour of something else, you want to be damned sure you know why.

EDITOR'S NOTE: ASL has been in contact with Kelly Slater regarding the proposed tour since first reporting on it during the Billabong Pro in South Africa last month. Two days after we published this story, we recieved an email from Kelly which answers quite a few of the questions posed in the comments section below. You can click here for Kelly's thoughts on the proposed tour, and the coverage it's been getting.