Tio Nick, sempre alerta

By contrast, here’s how the ASP deals with its webcast rights:

It leases the rights to each WCT event franchisee for US$20,000 an event.

It then adds another US$20,000 surcharge which gives the event people the right to flog extra ad space.

That’s US$400,000 per year, which sounds a lot. Truth is, it’s still only a drop in the bucket.

ASP and event sources consistently claim figures of up to a million unique users per event, more at times when an event hits a peak or bungs on something special for the punters. This puts the webcasts at the top of the surf web media heap, roughly equal with the USA-based Surfline.com.

Think about that for a moment. If Surfline.com made only $400,000 a year from its operation, do ya reckon it’d still be in business? Hell no! Its turnover – from advertisers and paid subscriptions – is well into the millions.

It makes you wonder just how much money the events are generating from the webcasts.

E nos comentarios, mais lenha pra queimar -

The events really dont cost the surf brand host anything. Let's take this years rip curl pro as an example.it was co-sponsored by ford, snickers, 'melbourne', and many other smaller brands (chiko roll etc). they probably put in 300g's each... at the moment the only way ford or snickers can get into the surf market is via the event sponsor - not the asp. so it's the surf brands making money from the big corpo's - not the surfers!

E ainda, aproveitando a quinta feira chuvosa, Fred Prawle ataca novamente - desta vez sem muito a dizer

One of the most contentious aspects of the current tour is the number of athletes - 45 - being too many. In an interview with The Australian while passing through Sydney this week, ASP CEO Brodie Carr said the number will be reduced, probably to 32 or 36, but not next year.

"We've got guys who are now qualifying for next year," he said. "It would be unfair of us to turn around and say, you're off. But I think definitely numbers will be smaller in 2011."