Nike team rider Julian Wilson flashes his fins for the Huntington faithful.

Global sportswear giant Nike and its action sports brand Hurley have called time on their four-year sponsorship of the US Open ASP prime surfing event. Starting from 2013, the pair have decided to commit those event funds to a more athlete focused marketing strategy.

Here is the news as reported this morning by Transworld Business along with snippet of their interview with Hurley’s Evan Slater.

“After four years of serving as the main sponsors of The US Open of Surfing, Nike and Hurley will no longer sponsor the Huntington Beach-based event beginning in 2013.

Over the last several years, Hurley had the opportunity to takeover its Huntington Beach backyard and birthplace with an all-out, two-week marketing blitz. During that time, Hurley and parent company Nike, have become synonymous with the event, and the team feels it met the goals it began the sponsorship with and that it’s time to refocus its efforts, and a budgetary line item that accounted for nearly half of Hurley’s events spend, in other areas.

We caught up with Hurley Senior Vice President of Marketing Evan Slater to learn more about the decision and where he and his team will be focusing their marketing efforts going forward.

The US Open has become synonymous with Nike and Hurley over the last several years and is definitely the sport’s largest venue. What lead you to sever ties with the event going forward?

We sponsored the US Open in 2009 with a goal: to work with the city of Huntington Beach, IMG, and the athletes to make the ultimate action sports happening of the summer. We wanted to change the way the world sees action sports events and re-establish Huntington Beach as the center of the surfing universe. In a lot of ways we felt we achieved those goals in four years. Close to a million people attended the event in 2012. Thirty of the top 32 surfers competed and brought surfing to unseen levels at the Pier. We were able to turn the beach into one 14-acre digital connectivity center. So much magic happened during our time at the US Open and we’re confident that magic will continue. But we also strive to constantly innovate and evolve. For us, we’ve decided to export what we created at the US Open and invest it into other aspects of our business, like a renewed athlete focus and new and exciting ways of connecting with millions of kids.

What portion of your marketing budget did the Open account for and how do you plan to reallocate those funds going forward?

The US Open was about half of our overall events spend. Our opportunity is our ability to have a dialogue with millions of kids. Will it be in the form of a US Open somewhere else? Probably not. This isn’t about moving our investment in Huntington Beach to a similar event somewhere else. It’s about looking at new and innovative ways to connect with the next generation.”

For complete interview visit their website: business.transworld.net