For the upcoming Quik Pro France, the WSL has just announced that VIP tickets are now available. For the sum of €389.50 or $630 you get access the VIP deck, free food, beverages and beer, a 30-minute behind-the-scenes tour of the event and a VIP Welcome Pack with gifts from event sponsors and partners. This covers five days worth of event for the equivalent of $125 bucks per day. The questions are; is it worth it, and b) would you pay it?
Of course watching a surf event isn’t a particularly comfortable experience. Even at spectator friendly locations like Snapper, the lack of waves, the heat or the rain, the need to stand to see the surfing and how you always forget where your towel is makes surf spectating an affair only for the truly committed. The VIP area with its beanbags, lovely green fake grass, coffee machines, instant replays and shade is therefore an inviting proposition. The free beer too has piqued my interest. Is it possible to drink $125 worth of lager in a day? I’ve plenty of mates who’d be willing to test the theory.
Fresh from the Surf Ranch experience the WSL think there is a market for the VIP experience. You see for over 40 years surf events have been unable to monetize their footfall. They have remained probably the only sporting events where crowds of more than 10,000 have gathered to watch their favourite athletes and not shell out a brass razoo. Imagine, if you will, free entry to a NRL game or if they removed the turnstiles for a Big Bash match at the SCG?
Now the Rip Curl Pro at Bells has had a minor jab at recouping some of the huge expense that goes into putting it on. This year an adult day pass cost 10 bucks, kids a fiver and a festival pass $25. That always caused a little friction, even if these days you can’t get a coffee in Torquay for less than an Ayrton Senna. Yet that now comes in as ashtray change compared to the VIP passes in France.
As ever the stakeholders are trying to figure out how to make professional surfing pay. With free beaches and free internet webcasts, surfing events have always been unable to tax their fans. The invention of wave pool technology has, yet again, turned that theory upside down. If you can make surfers pay to surf, you can make them pay to watch.
The Surf Ranch Open saw one day tickets going for a $US100 and a three day VIP pass for half a grand. It was the first ever ticketed surf event. Then last weekend Stab ran an airshow at Waco and charged punters $US20 to watch the webcast. They reported that 20,000 pay per view subscriptions were taken up; no small number given it was the first of its kind.
In the last month then surf fans have crossed the rubicon for paying to watch surfing. That now exists. It’s a thing. And I don’t think it’s going away soon. Ponder that while I do the maths on that free beer conundrum. Maybe there is a way for surf fans to come out on top.
