SOCIAL SURFING
by James Ogden
Professional athletes carry significant influence in society with respect to the role they play on social media. In the digital age, how they choose to spend their time and money directly influences how they are able to engage with their following audience. Professional surfers are unique in terms of the way that they embrace and share a more holistic approach to the way they live their life. When surfing debuts as an Olympic Sport in Tokyo 2020, it will combine the social media influence from its top athletes with the global audience of an Olympic Games in order to generate maximum visibility for the sport. If leveraged properly, this visibility can unlock doors to an untapped consumer base that remains desperate for unique and compelling live sports content, even in an over-saturated marketplace.
In 2020, surfing will join the global sports movement when it officially becomes an Olympic sport on the beaches of Shida, Japan. This debut is vital to the future growth of the league given the incredible opportunity to attract new sponsorship and advertising money. Professional surfing has a positive and progressive growth strategy to showcase, including the fact that it is the first U.S. based professional sports league to implement an equal pay structure to both their male and female athletes. They have an established an engaged digital audience who consumes their content across multiple distribution platforms, and their tour-based model allows them to spread their influence on a global level at each stop on the tour. Although the sports media landscape has become over-saturated with a wide spectrum of programming looking to satisfy current consumer habits, there remains a distinct opportunity for niche sports like surfing to leverage the power of their content as a tool for growth. With the right corporate sponsors, an established digital media strategy, and the proper incorporation of modern technology, professional surfing can springboard off its Olympic debut to grow in influence, and hopefully stoke the world into becoming more socially and environmentally responsible.
One critical dilemma surrounding surfing’s Olympic debut in 2020 is whether the competition should be executed to support the best interest of the athletes, the host country, or the audience, as each comes with a specific set of limitations. Organizers must consider whether to utilize machine-made wave technology in order to address the unpredictable risks of Mother Nature (i.e. wave size, wind, frequency of waves, etc.). Many of the athletes who are likely to compete in Tokyo have been vocal about the implementation of such technology in order to give their audience the best possible product. However, the Olympic Organizing Committee of Japan has a desire to showcase their natural beaches and coastline during the Games, and feel that hosting the first-ever Olympic surfing competition in a man-made pool would be a wasted opportunity to boost tourism. Regardless of their choice, it is clear that the sport possesses a unique potential both to entertain its audiences and to highlight the natural beauty and resources of its environment.
Surfing is in need of a strategic digital partner with an established linear audience in order for it to fully capitalize upon the dramatic shift in the attention span of the modern consumer. Surfing is uniquely positioned to exploit the digital sports marketplace because they are a digital-first league that exists primarily online and continues to benefit from the rapid growth of social media users worldwide, with 2.9 billion social media users projected by 2020 (Tableau). By embracing a more collaborative approach with a large distribution partner, the sport can align its established social presence with its unique and compelling content in order to engage with a much larger audience.
OBJECTIVES
The primary objective in our mission to grow the sport of surfing domestically/internationally starts with making a successful Olympic debut on a global stage. In order to maximize our reach and platform, we aim to activate new and old consumers of the sport to become more socially/environmentally responsible. The professional athletes on our championship tour (both male and female) set great examples of how to live a life filled with excitement while taking great care of the oceans and beaches around the world.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Surfing has been growing steadily around the world since the late 1980s, which means many surfers have made it their personal mission to find new wave breaks across every continent. The power of this movement is that it helps stimulate the tourism industry in developing countries, producing results such as the fact that of the “more than 350,000 U.S. tourists to visit El Salvador in 2015, around 38 percent came for the beaches.” (CORSATUR) (Iatarola, 2016). Surfing has a wide-ranging impact on the world. It can help boost tourism in developing countries whose beaches have rideable waves, while also promoting the long-term environmental interests of said beaches. Surfers as a whole are trained to respect the natural beauty of the places they visit, and this article helps to highlight the broad-ranging impact that a professional surf league can have on a developing country in Central America. The inherent culture of surfing encourages both a unique lifestyle as well as the element of competitive sport. What allows it to differentiate itself from other traditional sports is its components of fear, risk, and skill that blend with the unpredictability of nature. These attractive components make the product of surfing very appealing from a sponsorship perspective, which enhances its disruptive potential.
In a study conducted by the Sports Business Journal, it was found that consumer relationships with sponsors have been slowly diminishing over time as sports content has become oversaturated and advertisement less engaging. Specifically, “sports properties continually promote the breadth of their fan bases. However, for sponsors considering those properties, passion is far less important than how sympathetic those fan groups are to sponsor messages… from the sponsors’ side, [it equals] a math equation: receptivity > avidity” (Lefton, 2017). Millennials in particular are known to demand authenticity if they are going to provide an increase in brand engagement. This bodes well for potential sponsors of a niche sport like surfing due to the study’s finding that its fans are on average more receptive to sponsor activity. Furthermore, 50% of all surfing fans, 46% of all action sports fans, and 39% of endurance sports fans consider themselves “receptive” (Lefton, 2017) to relevant ad sponsors. This study continues to highlight that those properties are far more likely to be supported by powerful endemic brands that are “closely aligned with the lifestyle.” Similarly, emerging sports have high receptive scores: obstacle racing (49%), e-sports (47%) and MMA (36%) (Lefton, 2017).
The study also points to the fact that there is a substantial shift in social media consumption habits between two groups: 61% of receptive consumers said they “enjoy the access [they] get to athletes/artists through social media,” while just 34% of selective consumers agreed. While 46% of selectives said, “I get most of my sports news through social media,” only 24% of receptives said they do (Lefton, 2017). This shows how vital the power of a well-crafted social/digital media strategy can be, especially for a niche sport that delivers unique content with an authentic and captivating message like surfing.
According to Dawson, Hirt and Scanlan, the two primary sources of digital transformation and disruption include the making of new markets and the dynamics of hyperscaling platforms (Dawson; Hirt & Scanlan, 2016). What allows surfing to differentiate itself from other potential disruptors across the industry is that they are able to spread their content across social media and a growing digital landscape that accentuates the very best elements of the sport.
Currently, executives and key decision-makers across the sports industry are sleeping on the potential of what surfing has to offer, especially from a digitization perspective. Overall, it seems that “something of a mix of the fear of sharks and the thrill of big-wave surfing pervades executive suites… the feeling of not knowing when, or from which direction, an effective attack on a business might come creates a whole different level of concern” (Dawson; Hirt & Scanlan, 2016). However, professional surfing organizations like the WSL are poised to serve as a disruptive force in this trend because they can immediately capitalize on the digital content consumption model. Specifically, “thanks to [an] outsourced cloud infrastructure, mix-and-match technology components, and a steady flood of [sponsorship] money, start-ups (like the WSL) can bite before their victims even see the fin” (Dawson; Hirt & Scanlan, 2016). Regardless of whether it’s the game-winning catch in the Super Bowl or the largest wave ever ridden, social media provides a perfect platform for incredible athletic achievements to be captured and shared with the world. The very nature of surfing, both professional and freelance, offers an overabundance of these moments to be recorded and shared with the world, disrupting the more systemic consumption habits of the current digital consumer.
WSL ANALYSIS
POLITICAL
Surfing helps grow and develop communities in some of the more politically unstable places on tour (i.e. Brazil). When some of the best surfers in the world inevitably come from these underdeveloped countries, they are able to bring back some of their earnings and reinvest into the communities that raised them. These same influential figures are then able to share the importance of environmental awareness and accountability across their popular social media channels. By using these platforms to communicate positive and encouraging messages to their fans, they are trailblazers for modern-era athlete activism.
ENVIRONMENTAL
As previously mentioned in the political space, these elite athletes place a large focus on promoting pro-environmental awareness policies and activating those campaigns across social platforms due to the importance that the natural world has in the sport. By showcasing their activism to their fans, they hope to encourage them to get out in the world and help make a difference. Even if it is something as simple as picking up trash on the beach or showing the harm that pollution causes the animals inhabiting the ocean, surfers do a remarkable job of encouraging environmental awareness.
SOCIAL
The trickle-down effect is that athletes are so engaged within their local communities to “spread the stoke” of surfing and help improve environmental awareness on a global scale, that it helps encourage other professional athletes to use their elevated platforms with good intentions as well. The power and reach of social media in this digital age is that it allows athletes to connect with their core consumers at any time of day. The most business savvy athletes understand that this is an incredible personal marketing tool to showcase interactive marketing campaigns in creative and diverse ways. Surfers are often at the frontline of current consumer influence marketing that has become so popular given the visibility that these social applications offer.
TECHNOLOGICAL
By incorporating the latest technological capabilities to enhance the actual competitive product (machine made wave technology), as well as using new camera technology (GoPro) to improve the digital/linear broadcast, surfing is perfectly placed at the intersection of technology and sports. By using advanced camera technology, they are able to capture footage of what these athletes are capable of from both above the wave and underneath it. Furthermore, the new materials being used during the making of surfboards allows them to move faster and more dynamic in the water, which allows the athletes to accomplish more on the waves.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Surfing has already capitalized on its global digital platform with nearly 14M viewers for their WSL events held in the first year of the partnership with Facebook in 2017. They have been able to secure tour sponsors like JEEP, AirBNB, Corona, not to mention the individual athlete partnerships with the various apparel companies (Hurley, RVCA, Billabong, etc.) The current and future generation of surfers understand that their platform as a professional athlete provides them with unique opportunities to engage with their followers on social media. By continuously posting videos of their own surfing sessions, workout videos, and lifestyle video blogs (“VLOGS”), surfers have a competitive advantage over other professional athletes who are not able to live such a life of “luxury.” The opportunity for surfing content on social media to go viral (capture the attention of a massive portion of the internet) is incredibly strong given the backdrop of the sport and the unpredictable elements associated with that.
There is a specific example where a WSL video showing a surfer riding a wave during the sunset with dolphins surrounding him, shot near the organization’s annual Western Australia event, ended up being the most-watched video globally in 2017. With more than 121.4 Million views, the sport possesses a clear capacity to capture the international imagination. I recommend that the WSL find a broad digital/linear partner like ESPN and their OTT offering (ESPN+) because this strategy presents a win-win scenario for both parties. The WSL can continue to drive up their brand value for future distribution while finding a partner who can broaden their audience on both a linear and digital level. ESPN would be acquiring the distribution rights to a large amount of professionally produced and highly consumed digital content, as well as the opportunity to creatively market their live events in order to drive up subscription numbers.
DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGY
The top recommendation for the next digital partnership for the WSL is with ESPN’s OTT platform-ESPN+ given the global reach of the ESPN brand. The benefits of having a built-in subscriber base to complement the established & engaged WSL consumers will allow both parties to benefit from a partnership. The WSL can continue to utilize their presence on social media to serve as a promotional/marketing tool as well as a content distribution platform. They can leverage the reach of the ESPN/Disney brand by creating original content that showcases the unique character profiles of the athletes on tour (i.e. ALL IN: A Season on the WSL Tour — FB Watch Original Series; Surfer’s YouTube Channels + Social Media accounts).
Furthermore, a partnership with ESPN+ could allow the WSL to incorporate a custom-PPV model to capitalize on certain events as interest grows. By embracing the current UFC/ESPN+ model, it can help the league generate additional revenue that might supplement some of the costs of operating a global championship tour and boost the overall brand value of the league. Finally, the buyers in the content space are in constant demand of live sports programming / original sports content to diversify their overall content strategy. Surfing provides an opportunity to broadcast and stream unique and compelling content and is well positioned for life in the digital age.
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
BROADCAST RIGHTS:
Digital Partner- FACEBOOK
Deal: 2 years/ $30M (signed in 2017; expires 2019)
Linear Partner- FOX SPORTS
Deal: signed in February 2019- to be digital & linear provider beginning with the start of the 2019 season (financials withheld)
Future Value:
N= 10
Present Value= $30,000,000 Interest Rate: 4% Future Value = ~$44,408,529 (and rising)
The growth of the league’s overall value is only going to rise as the audience becomes larger and they successfully activate their subscription-based model. One primary reason why a partnership with a company like ESPN makes sense is due to the fact that they have established their OTT offering (ESPN + — $4.99/month), which could be included in a bundle with a wide variety of sports/alternative content offerings. The market has proven that there is a demand for action/adventure sports being shared with consumers in unique and compelling ways and ESPN/ABC have witnessed this first hand with the success of the X Games.
Surfing is a way of life as well as an Olympic sport. It allows people to take a break from the chaos of their daily routines and find a balance with waves of Mother Nature. The significance of this digital age and the impact of an Olympic platform, allows surfing to continue to spread as a sport around the world. By placing a primary focus on how to offer enhanced content/streaming options for consumers with a powerful sports media partner, surfing will grow from being a niche brand into a global force.
STRATEGIC ANALYSIS
The professional sport of surfing has witnessed a significant amount of growth, both financially and with regard to the number of competitors on the tour and amount of events held each year, since the inception of the World Surf League in 1976. One of the biggest challenges facing the future growth of the sport is removing the niche-sport stigma, which makes the surfing world generally less relatable and intriguing to a larger global audience.
SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS
One key strength of the league is that it is star-driven, meaning that many up and coming stars and a few established legends of the sport are competing on tour. These athletes grew up building their brands on social media- more socially responsible than the typical professional athlete. The enhanced digital product of surf content leads to greater engagement with a global audience, which is evidenced by the deal signed (2 years, $30M) with Facebook to be exclusive digital partner in 2017. The content is so visually captivating (size of waves, beautiful backdrops, attractive participants) that young consumers spend a vast majority of their time streaming surf videos or watching replays of all-time classic heats. The WSL’s willingness to incorporate new technology to enhance their broadcasts, competitions, etc. allows them to separate themselves from the rest. The final strength of the WSL first U.S. based professional sports league to mandate equal pay to both its male/female competitors on tour.
WEAKNESSES
One key weakness of surfing is the unpredictable nature of competitions make for difficult live content, which has led to limited national exposure on a linear distribution channel. The difficult live-action programming creates a serious lack of major sponsorship funding, which forces them to find creative alternatives in order to finance the expensive destinations of the tour. While Mother Nature does create a difficult viewing experience, it also provides beautiful backdrops for these athletes to compete.
OPPORTUNITIES
The primary future opportunity for surfing is the validation that will come as an Olympic sport coming in 2020 (Tokyo, Japan). Not only will this provide the sport with a global audience during one of the most popular mega sporting events in world history, it will also allow the athletes on tour to share their stories with the world and attract new fans. The current sustained growth of the league’s digital/social presence equates to new sponsorship opportunities with exciting potential partners.
THREATS
One major threat to the sport is the oversaturated sports marketplace that includes various niche/growing professional sports leagues that compete for digital engagement. While it is difficult for other surf leagues to compete with the WSL, it is not difficult for more established sports to dominate the limited consumer attention spans. To make things more challenging for the sport, the semi-uncooperative natural conditions inherent to the sport can lead to a lack of consumer interest given the difficult viewing experience that follows a lull in action during a heat.
OLYMPIC IMPACT
There has recently been a hot topic of debate regarding whether surfing in the Olympics should be a natural experience (on the beach) or the mechanical experience (machine-made waves). The natural experience creates a more authentic approach to competitive surfing where those athletes involved are dependent upon and subjected to the conditions that nature provides. A mechanical experience would utilize newly developed machine-made wave technology, which is now featured at competitive events like the Surf Ranch Pro, which is held once a year at the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch in California. In a recent BBC Radio 1 interview with Zane Lowe, Slater was asked what he thought regarding this dilemma and answered, “that’s a tough one. It’s the middle of summer there [Tokyo] and will either be too small or have a typhoon roll through and be too big. I have a biased opinion obviously, because I have created my own wave technology. But going to Japan is like the off-season with the casual storm” (Slater, 2019). In Kelly’s opinion, snowboarding is an apt comparison to explain why holding a competition like the Olympics in a wave pool makes more sense than scheduling at an inconsistent beach break. He compares it to “watching halfpipe snowboarding in the Olympics and they built a 6-foot halfpipe when we all know there are 22-footers now. The best way to focus on the skill of an athlete is to have everyone on the same field. That would be a more interesting platform for the average Olympic fan than seeing a guy catch a waist-high wave [at Tsurigasaki Beach]” (Roenigk, 2018). Furthermore, Slater is not the only tour champion who is advocating for machine waves to be made the Olympic standard going forward. Six-time world champ Stephanie Gilmore (Australia) has been adamant about seeing the Olympics follow suit. “I think they need to start it in a wave pool and keep it going through future Olympics,” Gilmore said earlier this summer, referring to the 2020 Games. “It would be terrible if you worked for four years and then there was no surf” (Roenigk, 2018). Surfing man-made waves should be viewed as a supplement to surfing in the ocean according to Slater. He believes it is additive to the overall experience and insists it is not meant to supplant the natural experience (Roenigk, 2018). While the world championship race requires its winner to perform consistently over a 10-month period in a variety of waves and conditions in breaks around the world, the Olympic champion will win but one event while at the mercy of nature’s whims.
A repeatable, world-class wave gives surfers the ability to practice complex maneuvers possibly hundreds of times a session and test multiple boards in identical wave conditions, something impossible to do in the unpredictable ocean. Kelly Slater has stated that he “strongly believe[s] that if surfing maintains its place in the Olympics, it is going to be via man-made wave technology”(Roenigk, 2018). Surfing needs all of the positive momentum it can possibly generate before heading into Tokyo in 2020 because as the Olympic sport portfolio grows, the audience for these events becomes displaced. Another hurdle for surfing the natural route is that the unpredictable nature of the ocean will force them to complete their event within a seventeen-day window. This means that they cannot properly market and promote the event because they do not know exactly when it will be taking place. This is an issue that could have been alleviated if Kelly Slater would have been allowed to implement his technology. As he states, “in Japan you want to make a good first impression and put on the best possible event. We want to make it interesting, fair, exciting, and I was under the opinion with wave technology we could make that more consistent. I was thinking with Japan, since they’re forward thinking with their technology it would be a perfect fit” (Slater, 2019).
While Slater might be suffering from an inherent bias toward his wave technology, he is not wrong about wanting to maximize the viewer experience for an entire sports Olympic debut. Many individuals at the International Surfing Association (ISA) have been fighting for the sport to be included into the Summer Olympics for many years and consider it an achievement in the fact that they have finally accomplished their dream. Former competitive surfer Rob Machado noted that, “it’s a great achievement (for the sport) and whether or not they get waves, it’s a toss up.. It’s a toss up anywhere really. Kelly at least wanted to open up the talks for something that is a guarantee and more into the “Olympic vibe.” To be able to appreciate all of the hard work that goes into something that is only held every four years” (Machado, 2019).
What makes surfing so unique is that it appeals to such a broad global audience, and its future will inevitably be shaped by a progressive and technologically savvy growth strategy. In an interview conducted with Australian Sports Business, World Surf League CEO Sophie Goldschmidt opined that the success of the league is largely centered around the athletes, stating that “they are some of the best athletes in the world putting themselves literally on the line. Their bravery and athletic talent I think should be heralded around the world. One of our goals is to try and help make them become even more household names, they should be celebrated much more broadly” (Goldschmidt, 2017). The impact that these athletes could generate in the future stems directly from the “new technology that’s coming in whether it’s surf ranch whether it’s some of the broadcast technology. Surfing is really innovative and the Olympic opportunity is a hugely exciting one that can really take the sport to new markets”(Goldschmidt, 2017). The direct-to-consumer digital content model would offer fans the opportunity to watch any of the WSL events for free, and would coincide perfectly with the digital strategy of ESPN+. By focusing on growing the social profiles of the WSL athletes, Goldschmidt could simultaneously expose some of the intriguing storylines that make up a season on tour. She believes strongly that athlete stories are a driving force in the sport, and that “in certain markets they’re hugely popular than others, there is an opportunity for further development and I’m not sure there’s anything that can help grow the sport faster than building stronger emotional connections with those athletes around the world”(Goldschmidt, 2017).
As the demand and revenue streams for the WSL grows, the league and their ownership group are still investing in key long-term growth areas, which “will make the sport sustainable and help it develop in the most strategic way possible.” Viewership across the WSL digital channels has been enormous, and per Goldschmidt, “a lot of the audience that follows….skews pretty young. I think a lot of sports would love to have the kind of demographic profile that we have”(Goldschmidt, 2017). This showcases how the WSL has capitalized on a digital engagement strategy that targets a key demographic who spend the vast majority of their day consuming digital content on one of their mobile devices. Overall, the 2020 Olympics is a massive opportunity for the sport of surfing. In Goldschmidt’s opinion, “it allows us to become relevant in markets that maybe aren’t to date and I know it’ll be here before all before we know it. How we embrace a broader audience potentially through also broaching a little bit more into the lifestyle areas as well as being obviously very focused on elite competitions as well” (Goldschmidt, 2017). In regard to social media, it is by far the best way to connect with fans, especially the next generation of consumers. As a result, the WSL will continue to be a “digital-first company,” and with that strategy will come more innovation.
INTERVIEW w/ WSL VP, Business Development- NICK CARTAN
What impact will the inclusion of surfing as an Olympic sport have on the financial growth potential of leagues around the world?
Surfing’s inclusion in the Olympics will be a major boost to the global awareness level surrounding the sport. While the debut in Tokyo might not provide an immediate financial return for the sport, it will help the best surfers in the world share their story with the whole world watching. These athletes rely on personal brand-building strategies through social media campaigns and sponsorship opportunities to provide for the majority of their earnings each year. By allowing them to use this skill set with distribution partner like NBC and their coverage of the Olympics, it will only boost the casual fans’ awareness surrounding these athletes and the sport. Overall, being included in the Olympics is more about the exposure and less about the actual performance of the event… for now at least.
How concerned should current/future partners of the sport be at the very real possibility that the conditions will not cooperate during the short window to have the event?
The dilemma highlighted in this paper includes the very real possibility that the wave conditions where the competition will be taking place in Shida, will not be conducive to an optimal competitive showcase. Many of the best athletes on tour have been outspoken about the possibility that they face early elimination given unpredictable wave size and consistency and they can only hope that they get lucky all the way through the finals. Quite frankly, multiple scheduled tour events are subjected to similar circumstances where the waves do not cooperate with the window to host the competition. The athletes are forced to paddle out and compete nonetheless and eventually a champion is crowned. Regardless of how bad (or good) the conditions are in Shida in 2020, the significance of the moment will far out shine any lull in the competition.
Will there be any significant impact following the debut of the sport, which will affect the future negotiations of the WSL’s distribution rights?
The impact that the league is hoping the Olympics will generate is directly tied to our future marketing capabilities and long-term growth strategy. By converting some of the casual fans into more avid consumers, we hope to attract larger offers from potential distribution partners and corporate sponsors. While the performance of the athletes and the event will affect the timing and manifestation of this hope, ultimately the growth of the league seems stable regardless of which corporate partners align themselves with the brand. The content being distributed across the various digital and social channels for surfing is still being consumed at a very large rate and the core younger audience means that consumption will persist over time.
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