World Surf League coverage of the Championship Tour is awesome.

thewhale
Apr 26, 2016
3 min read

thewhale is a great fan of the World Surf League. Over the past couple of years their web-televised productions of all the major CT events has been getting better and better. The increased professionalism of the presenters, the multiple camera angles: from above, in the water and from the shore makes for awesome viewing. It is now just like watching any sport on television; you have expert pundits offering great insights and opinions and occasionally they get some of the greats of the sport into the box to discuss all manner of surf related issues, as in the recent case of Barton Lynch at the Rip Curl Bells Beach event. The in-water commentaries and interviews are a stroke of genius and it is always great to see the winner of the event in the throes of ecstasy having just won. All in all it makes for a very slick production.

WSL Logo

Perhaps the thing thewhale loves about it, above all, is the fact that it brings high quality live streamed surfing into your living room. The fact that the heats are live and unedited is important, because it makes you realise that pro surfers are human. The glossy shots and polished videos we are used to seeing make you think that they find it all too easy, which of course they do, but watching a pro get owned by a set when paddling out, or getting a maneuver wrong makes us mere mortals feel it is okay that it sometimes takes us half an hour to paddle out through endless lines of white water!

Beyond the trivial, the WSL broadcasts have helped build a bridge between the world of surfing as a pastime and surfing as a professional sport. In the case of almost all other sports, we can go and play it in the park then buy a ticket to see the heroes of our sport in a stadium or we can switch on the TV, crack a tinny and watch it with our friends; this keeps us connected and engaged with the sport in its professional guise. In the case of surfing it is only now that we are beginning to be able to do this, which allows us as a tribe to connect, learn about and enjoy our sport all the more.

The WSL productions have allowed us to develop an appreciation of professional surfing and individual surfers themselves. Prior to tuning in it was hard to gauge what sort of people they were, but the post heat interviews conducted by Pete Mel and Rosie Hodge give us real insight into their personalities, passions and their sheer dedication to the sport.

Furthermore, I would go further and suggest that the WSL's coverage is more intimate than that of many sports. The nature of the CT 'family' on tour, living and breathing together for days waiting for swell makes it an even more engaging broadcast. The fact that the presenters, pundits, interviewers and athletes all know each other pretty well means that the pros are able to open up more on camera, thus making the insights the viewer gets all the more interesting and emotive. Of course, we are only seeing their public persona and not the private individual, but you feel as if you are getting a piece of them, which is important.

Any production, be it televised, theatrical, or cinematographic is at its best when it engages with its audience and the WSL productions have this in abundance; one feels that they are letting you into their world, the world of the Dream Tour and it makes you feel stoked!

http://www.worldsurfleague.com/