Since its inception in the 70s, the World Surf League (formerly the ASP), has longed for prominence on the level of professional basketball or football. Professional surfing has experienced numerous ups and downs, but even at its peak, pro surfing’s fan base primarily consisted of surfers. It’s been nearly 60 years, and the WSL still hasn’t had its big break. 

The last five years were an exceptionally down period. Coming of the tails of the pandemic, former CEO Erik Logan attempted for the umpteenth time to corporatize the tour and attract mainstream audiences. His tenure was seen as a catastrophic disappointment, failing to attract new viewers and alienating the core fanbase. Ryan Crosby, a former Activision and Netflix exec, took the reins last year. Crosby’s objectives have been restorative – trying to win back and strengthen the core fan base. This repair work was necessary because Logan made two big bets that didn’t pan out. 

First, Logan bought Kelly Slater’s wave pool for a whopping $60 million dollars.  Introducing the wave pool as a stop on the tour seemed like a fool proof way to eliminate the variables that can make surf contests a tough watch: no downtime between sets, no inconsistencies in quality, and a concrete contest schedule with no off-days. To Logan and his crew of corporate sponsors, the wave pool was a license to print money. However, the wave pool turned out to be soulless. The appeal of surfing is the open ocean. Watching the pros take on the same wave and perform the same maneuvers took the fun out of contests. The key to any good sport’s product is unpredictability. The wave pool was predictable and fell flat.

Second, Logan introduced the “final five” format to crown the world champion. Historically, the world champion was crowned at Pipeline, awarded to the surfer who had accumulated the most points over the course of the season. Logan introduced a new, single elimination format where the top five surfers competed in a single-day event. The winner of the event was crowned world champion. This new format was controversial, the 5^thranked surfer could walk away from the event world champion even if they were significantly behind in the points rankings. The event took place at Trestles, a wave which rewards a completely different style of surfing than Pipeline – which is often considered the crown jewel of surf breaks. This new format did little to bring in new fans and further alienated existing fans. 

Crosby restored the traditional finals format and ditched the wave pool (however, he did retain the Abu Dhabi wave pool – a controversial place to hold a surfing competition). Crosby has brought order back to the world of professional surfing, but the question remains: how can professional surfing appeal to the masses?

Enter Dana White. Rumors of Dana either buying the WSL or taking on some form of leadership role have been swirling for some time. Dana was an executive producer on The Ultimate Surfer (cancelled after one season), he’s friends with Kelly Slater, and his kids are in with the surf crowd in Southern California. Love him or hate him, there is no denying what he has done to turn the UFC into a billion-dollar business. Once dubbed “human cockfighting,” the UFC now attracts millions of viewers every week and has produced global celebrities like Connor McGreggor and Chuck Lidell. Just watch UFC 1 to see how far he’s brought the sport (it’s absolutely insane to watch a sumo wrestler get kicked in the face by a proto-UFC fighter). 

If the WSL wants to attract viewers, it needs a sports promoter. Activision execs and studio reps may know the nuts and bolts of running a corporation, but they don’t know sports and they sure as hell don’t know surfing. Dana White may not know surfing, but he knows how to make an entertainment product. The key to the UFC’s success was producing stars. The WSL has not produced a household name since Kelly Slater, who remains the only surfer to ever cross-over into mainstream popularity. 

Surfing is in dire need of a superstar, someone who can bring eyeballs to events. It can be tough to promote surfers, many of them simply lack the outgoing personality necessary to make a splash with the public. When surfing was at its peak during the 90’s and early 2000’s, it benefitted from the popularity of action sports. The X-Games era put a premium on the radical, bad-boy aesthetic. Surfing felt punk, it felt extreme. Characters like Andy Irons, Christian Fletcher, and Andy Irons were promotable and fit into the archetypal surfer mold that was highly marketable at the time. Inherent in the appeal of this aesthetic is a sense of grime, a current of danger associated with controversy. Today’s surfers simply lack this. They are either too corporate or too vanilla. There is still a contingent of surfers who exude this aesthetic, but they feel as if they are imitating rather than embodying. 

I think Dana could help bring this counterculture back. Dana has a proven track-record of promoting fighters even if they are extremely problematic. A fight between a known asshole and a robot-like Eastern European is a lot more entertaining than a fight between two media-trained corporate billboards. I know there are plenty of characters on tour who would make fascinating viewing if they were only given the opportunity to shine. 

Surfers will always watch pro surfing for the surfing itself, just like baseball fans will watch baseball for baseball. However, for the casual fan, there needs to be something else, something more. People are why people watch anything. It’s the narratives and drama that keep casual people watching. The NBA is a prime example of promoting people. Many people consider themselves NBA “fans” despite never watching the actual games. It’s the constant trades, player feuds, and continued drama that make the NBA a fascinating entertainment product. The WSL needs to focus more on the drama, the human element of surfing. People who have never surfed will never find surfing entertaining. The key to surfing’s growth is emphasizing everything that occurs outside of the water, the human aspect of surfing.