DREAM TOUR?
EDITOR’S BLOG
(This column featured in the August 2013 issue of Windsurf Magazine. To read more opinion features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 10 x issues a year!)
I feel like sticking up for the PWA a little bit. They seem to come under some pretty harsh criticism on beaches and message boards. I’ll admit I’m biased. I used to work on tour and still have friends on the crew, but perhaps the less informed who seem to slate the powers-that-be might be grateful of another viewpoint?
So far this [2013] season there’s been outrage at wind minimums, prize money and the cutting down of the men’s pro wave fleet to a 32-man format. I guess hanging around in windless Gran Canaria got a few tempers flaring that even a reliable stop on the ‘port-tack jumping-biased tour’ is vulnerable to no result – and in a way has left the tour with it’s pants down?
IT’S ALL IN THE NAME, MORONS
Let’s clear up a few facts to start with. Firstly, the thing that annoys me the most when I hear the holier-than-thou bleating on about the PWA’s shortcomings, is that people seem to think ‘The Management’ involves some lazy former suit-wearing marketing luvvies lauding it up in boardies at a beachside boardroom somewhere.
Well they are incorporated in Maui – and they do wear flip flops of course – but the biggest clue is in the organisation’s name: ‘The Professional Windsurfers’ Association’. As in theirs. Nobody else’s. The sailors’ own body. A Trade Union of sorts if you like.
Basically ‘they’ are one bloke, Tour Manager Rich Page – and a handful of part-timers working on behalf of the riders. So you when you’re slagging them off and feeling sorry for the hard-done-by pros, remember it’s actually them [the members] that vote for these rules and decide these things collectively. (Often against the advice of the appointed management, as it happens.)
‘What about the tour structure?’ I hear you cry. Sure. Let’s all got to Fiji, get someone on the [PWA] staff to wrangle the local licenses, insurance and get a mainstream sponsor to cough up the prize money, sort out the pricy satellite webcasting technology and repeat the process in any other number of perfect locations.
The surf tour does it, so it must be easy, surely? Think again. The surf tour relies on core industry sponsorship to get those events off the ground. That’s not going to happen in windsurfing. And even less likely to continue the way surfwear’s fading in High Street popularity.
But the point is even the ASP doesn’t get massive outside support. No windsurfing pro’s going to fork out to take themselves – and a tonne of gear – to the South Pacific if the prize money’s at anything at or below the current level.
Suddenly those low-cost flights to the reliable Canary Islands look more attractive. It’s true the PWA put most of the onus to raise sponsorship funds on the local organisers, but they also guide new organisers, who include 4 past and present pros, through the process on how to make a profitable, recurring contest happen and have actually grown the tour in this difficult financial climate.
OK, there’s a lot of slalom on the calendar, but sponsors like the ‘first-past-the-post’, clear winner format and lower wind requirements, which is of course bad news for skinny young freestylers and hard-core waveheads.
MMMMM, BEER
I’ll give you some brief perspective on the numbers – there’s not enough space to go more in-depth here and now. Plus I might get into trouble for divulging too much. But, a few seasons ago, the ASP tour had an overall tour sponsorship from a major Australian beer brand.
They paid peanuts really (think five figures US$) compared to the clothing title sponsorships for individual events.
A rival beer brand, with windsurfing-mad marketing men incidentally, then approached the PWA and asked for a quotation to take over the whole tour. (Effectively buy out long-standing contracts with current organisers in established locations and fund new and exciting locations.)
They were given a moderate value and breakdown in return. A low seven-figure figure that didn’t undersell the tour and the riders and ‘the show’, but enough to realistically fund it all to happen without being in excess.
They agreed it was a good price. But were then offered the chance to be the official beverage of a very, very, very, very, very, very well known football club – for just a high six-figure sum. Guess which one they chose? A no-brainer for them really.
So where does that leave us? With a stable tour year-in-year out that’s what. A gem in these difficult times. We see action. Of course we’ll always want more – and we might get it in Chile or Cape Town later this year. (Both long-haul destinations cancelled since this was published in print but the way, Ed.)
And I for one must say that, although Pozo can get a bit repetitive, I really missed all the aerial insanity this year.
Next time you hear the PWA getting a hard time, remember who ‘they’ are and, before you wade in on the argument, think if you’ve got some contacts with the spondoolies to make the difference?
I bet through the ‘six degrees of separation’ our community has the wherewithal to connect the right people with the right sport! Davidoff Cool Water Tour anyone? BM