Although surfing may not be as popular as Football is, it
has an enormous fan base that is rapidly growing. An example of this is on
October 15, 2013 when the ASP announced a media and distribution agreement with
various companies including ESPN, YouTube, and Facebook. The ASP hosts the most
prestigious and anticipated surfing events each year, and each December, at
Pipeline, a champion is crowned. This new deal with the ASP events enhanced by
the media deals include the 26 elite tour events across men’s, women’s and big
wave arenas in Australia, Brazil, Fiji, Indonesia, Tahiti, USA, France, Portugal,
Chile, Peru, South Africa, Spain and Mexico. This will allow the newly
redesigned ASP will be televised with ESPN and promoted socially via Facebook.
I am personally very happy that this is happening. Watching
the ASP events now are great, but it is hard to stream a 9 hour long webcast on
your laptop. Hopefully along with these changes will come more efficient ways
to view them. The only thing I hope is that the WCT events don’t lose any of
the activity or the great commentary from announcers like Joe Trupel and the
occasional Rob Machado.
Matthew you bring up a good point about the difference between Social Media Streaming and streaming on the website of an event sponsor.
ReplyDeleteThe UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) has been streaming their events on Facebook for years with a lot of success.
I think the ASP will best use Facebook and Youtube if they live stream each of the events on the same Youtube Channel or Facebook page so that you and I, as fans, have a centralized place on line to look for event coverage, without having to shift between different event sponsors web pages every event.