It Begins

[DucksNuts]

http://www.aspworldtour.com/2014/

[el rancho]

shit website.
did someone get their 17 year old kid to knock that up?

[steve shearer]

Mick Fanning looks like he just escaped from Auschwitz.

[crabmeat thompson]

I do like the new logo though. As someone who's done 2 design subjects and barely passed by the width of a pube ... I appreciate the logo.

Round logos are the new black.

Anyway, good luck to 'em. They may need it.

[steve shearer]

the new logo does have a third reich feel to it.....

[alakaboo]

Mick Fanning looks like he just escaped from Auschwitz.

Maybe Chas supplied the photo.

[Nick Carroll]

My .o2c

http://www.surfinglife.com.au/news/worl ... -the-money

that logo is rubbish.

[pinhead]

Hmm. The logo will be pretty much illegible when shrunk down for website footers etc. Anyway Nick asks the question where is the money?

Youtube - if youtube is the exclusive supplier for webcasts and all ASP video is aggregated into one channel - there could be some money there.

If you look at Youtube now you'll see contest footage is strewn across Youtube from multiple sources. If I do a search on "Kelly Slater Air New York" Theres about 1 million views spread across hundreds of clips.

$2.00 per 1000 views is a reasonable revenue expectation. So one big dramatic moment is worth about
$2000. Not that great but with a bit of work they should be able to bump up the ad return and number of views up. Say 2m views and around $6.00 per 1000 ad revenue. So 12 k for a big dramatic moment.
In a contest you might get 10 of those. Then there will be the long tail of heats, top scores, daily highlights and interviews. So they may be able to wring a couple of 100K out of youtube ads from each event.

The long tail will get longer if they can use the social media following of the surfers to generate more traffic to ASP ad inventory.

This is where I can see some tension emerging. The surfers use social media to promote their own individual brands. Someone like Julian Wilson will spend a lot of time posting to keep his following engaged. No doubt he's getting some ad revenue for this as well as increasing his value to his major sponsors. Social media like instagram, Youtube and Vimeo give surfers a channel to promote themselves outside of the competitive realm. So if the ASP starts to insert itself in between the surfers and their followers i can see some conflict.

[crabmeat thompson]

That link is broken NC

[alakaboo]

Works for me?

[crabmeat thompson]

Don't mind me NC... it was my browser. I shut her down & reloaded it. Got the article now.

[Nick Carroll]

thanks pinhead for the insight.

I think scepticism is probably the stance with all this right now. Here is a company that got the ASP for zero, they're running off a billionaire's seed money, there's a lot of Employment and not much Revenue. Yet. They're very US-centric, which has its ups and downs; how many global sports are run from the USA? Do they get that pro surfing's modern fan base is in Brazil and Europe and here as much or more than in America? Meanwhile half the surf industry is pissed off and likely to stay that way for a while, and much of the other half is backing the tour but reserving judgement. It'll be years before we know the outcome of this game switch.

Meanwhile, they need money. Like the old saying goes, money talks, bullshit walks.

[pinhead]

My youtube numbers would be rubbery to say the least, but bringing all the contest footage into an ASP channel is a good move. I'm most interested in how the social media part of the media plan is going to play out. Are the pro's going to be press ganged into interacting with fans via the ASP's social assets during the events when they'd rather be using social media to build their own personal brands?

[crabmeat thompson]

thanks pinhead for the insight.

I think scepticism is probably the stance with all this right now. Here is a company that got the ASP for zero, they're running off a billionaire's seed money, there's a lot of Employment and not much Revenue. Yet. They're very US-centric, which has its ups and downs; how many global sports are run from the USA? Do they get that pro surfing's modern fan base is in Brazil and Europe and here as much or more than in America? Meanwhile half the surf industry is pissed off and likely to stay that way for a while, and much of the other half is backing the tour but reserving judgement. It'll be years before we know the outcome of this game switch.

Meanwhile, they need money. Like the old saying goes, money talks, bullshit walks.

As long as we agree that is one sweet little logo they got goin' on, all is good, Nick. The rest will fall into place.

[steve shearer]

These are hardly media rights deals......hard to know without looking under the hood but You-tube and facey are just giveaways, looking like lost puppies for some ad revenue.

ESPN showing highlights packages? That smells like a contra deal as well.

They got free distribution of the content, hurrah.

Now where's an actual broadcast rights deal.

Maybe thats a bridge too far, and as NIck alluded to they will try and leverage the distribution into per event sponsors deals. Thats hard graft nickel and diming though.

[el rancho]

the press release openly brags about surf fans being the most loyal to surfbrands, that's why you should become a sponsor.

in other words, surf fans are dumb sheep and will buy whatever shit your peddling.

[Nick Carroll]

well Reup.com or whomever, "social media experts", might have figures you can massage into making surf fans look like God's gift to some international soft drink corpo, but bluntly, it's all bullshit.

follow the money. wherever the money is, there is the juice. God damn! I want to talk with Dirk Ziff! He's the money. Why is he doing this? What is he hoping for? This is a guy who from a distance has some of the sharpest advisers in the USA. He has turned $1.6 billion into $4.4 billion in just under 20 years. This is a sign of cool calm investing without wastage. Is he just rolling it with $25mill of spare cash? I doubt it. His advisors wouldn't let him do that. They might smile and say "yeah have fun, invest in this surfing gig", but they will make sure he doesn't get burned.

ZoSea has been busy with that cash. They've been employing a bunch of salesmen and they've built a flashy new HQ in Santa Monica, complete with tv production facilities. But can they sell pro surfing to people who've never heard of it?

I am sceptical of Mr Speaker too. He has a history of jumping in and out of warm seats. His CV claims all sorts of shit that didn't quite happen on his watch. Despite numerous requests, he has spoken to the surf media once, via a conference call during which he answered every question except the one about the money. He didn't like that question.

What I sense, they're running this somewhat like you run a film production that's trying to get funded. You fly by the seat of your pants. Find the opportunity points and press the buttons. Try to put together a picture of something that's on a roll, and beaver away like mad in the background, trying to bring in the money. And I don't reckon they have the money yet. The thing is, you can't tell how close or far off they might be.

I might like these guys ... if they admitted that was their ploy. I just don't like their secrecy. Surfing's a bigger deal than them.

[Karlos]

The new logo is shit. The old one is way better & way more striking, though there is an airport shuttle service on the northern beaches whose logo is very similar.