Online traffic to quiksilverpro.com.au, the first event of the 2010 ASP World Tour has shown significant levels of viewers, according to results from online traffic analysis Alexa. Marking a triumphant start to the new year, viewing of the Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast hit estimated “219,000 daily users” according to comments made by on air commentators. Whilst it was an impressive start to the year, traffic did not top that of the most watched contest last year, the Billabong Pipeline Masters, but managed to just nudge in above the second highest rating contest, the Rip Curl Search by a whisker.
It appears that the Triple Crown of Surfing, more directly, the Pipeline Masters, has been the most viewed online contest to date, an approx. 27% growth on previous highs, according to ratings calculated via online data analysis using Alexa.
A world title on the line, massive swells throughout the series of events, and an ever growing world wide audience has spiked at an all time high. Exact numbers are still not a widely publicized thing, but these charts look positive.
THE NEXT BEST THING….
They say winning the Triple Crown is the next best thing from winning the World Title, well the numbers would agree. Online interest in not only the WCT Pipeline Masters was of significant notice, but the WQS events at Haliewa and Sunset brought a significant girth to the chart above compared to other top ranking events.
JOINING THE DOTS
So word is there will be a new common domain / platform / website in which we view online surfing next year. What will it look like? And how can they join the dots with these peaks in traffic? …To maintain this audience between the topline events, and a casual browsing audiences, who are online every day. Less than 3 months now until the Quiksilver Pro kicks off, I wonder who has been commissioned to develop such a project?
Can’t wait to see it.
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Results from Alexa.com
The Rip Curl Pro Portugal 2009 looks to have set a new high of online traffic, according to results published via online monitoring tool Alexa. Comparisons of the primary events URL’s used by the major event broadcasters, billabongpro.com, quiksilverlive.com, hurley.com, aspworltour.com and ripcurl.com, shows a significant spike in traffic to the now famed Search event.
Locals Always Rule The Line Up
The Portuguese have not only showed up in numbers at the event site, but more so online, jumping to the second highest geographic logging in to watch the live action. Usually ranking in the later part of the top 10, Portuguese traffic to ripcurl.com has muscled it’s way into the 2nd top spot, accounting 12.8% of total traffic, second only to the mighty stars and stripes.
Notable mention must go to Brazil, moving into 3rd place. Adriano is certainly flying that flag high.
Learning To Let Go.
We’ve heard quite a bit about the ownership of the media rights as of late, the sponsors own it. ASP doesn’t. So it’s understandable the sponsors have been reluctant to let go of their baby. So it’s been interesting / long over due / refreshing to have the addition of media partners such as FuelTV (TV and Web), and Hurley’s flirtation with Facebook (which was a real winner as they have more friends than all of us combined). Web rankings will be diluted with the extra fingers in the pie, but as long as they start getting the numbers to attract more viewers, then who’s complaining. As long the extra numbers don’t turn up in the line up.
The Only Way Is Up
The webcasts and viewing options are slowly getting better, the online viewers is growing, everything is moving in the right direction. Let’s see this new website. The numbers are starting to add up.
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Results from alexa.com show the spike in traffic to billabongpro.com, plus aspworldtour.com
Online traffic to the Billabong Pro at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa looks to have set a whole new level of viewers, higher then that of any other ASP Event in 2009, according to analysis of online reach using Alexa. Using the online traffic monitoring tool, the graph above shows the worldwide users peaking over the final 2 days of competition at a new level not seen all year.
Indepth statistics from official sources for all contests are not widely available, but a search using the Alexa tool, cross-referencing the ASP, Billabong, Rip Curl, Quiksilver and Boost Mobile Pro events would suggest that the amount of traffic to billabongpro.com could be an all time high for the webcast productions of professional surfing.
Alexa analysis of the major webcast platforms over past 2 years. The red line against the right hand side of the graph represents the Billabong Pro J-Bay. The Boost Mobile Pro and Rip Curl Search are right up there too.
The large spike in traffic is an extremely positive result for Billabong and all the sponsors, the ASP, the surfers and the wider surfing community; a well earnt justification that the time, money and effort invested into the webcasts continue to reach new levels and set new benchmarks in online sports broadcasting.
The J-Bay Cocktail
The combination of the Clash Of The Icons social experiementation, the best swell we’ve seen on tour all year, a giant slaying local hero, a resurgent world champion and a new king in the making, gelled together by Billabong’s interactive media prowess, were all the ingredients required in setting a new benchmark for the webcasts. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s no longer just a webcast, it’s an interactive experience. And it continues to get better each contest.
South African’s Come Out To Play
In the biggest result of the contest, more surprising than the early eliminations of Kelly, Mick, Adriano and Taj, is that online traffic from South Africa was greater than any other country, making up 29% off all traffic, 6% more than the might of the USA, and more than 3 times that of Australian traffic. The results below show a healthy mix of the top surfing nations logging in to watch the action take place.
Demographic Analysis of Worldwide Users
I can’t wait for Trestles…
Results from web metrics company Alexa.com
International online traffic surrounding the ASP Word Tour event #4, the Hang Loose Pro, Santa Catarina, Brazil, has peaked at levels above the first 3 events on the 2009 schedule. Results published by web metrics site Alexa ranking traffic over a 6 month period from January to July 2009 to the aspworldtour.com website, clearly show the spikes in traffic levels surrounding each of the 4 ASP World Tour Events this year, with the final day of competition pushing traffic levels to the ASP website to a new high for the 2009 year.
New Contest Schedule = Winner
The move by the ASP to bring the event to the opposite end of the competition schedule has proved to be a winner, with Kelly Slater’s fight back to the winner podium from an uncharacteristically bad start to the year, no doubt driving renewed interest to the contest that has in past years, drifted off the priority scale.
Slater back in the eye of the spotlight, though he never actually left
What’s In A URL?
Whilst traffic to the ASP during the Brazil contest has peaked above the more digitally savy contest sponsors such Quiksilver, Rip Curl & Billabong, it is not a conclusive result as the more memorable URL’s used by those sponsors make it easy for the to receive traffic direct. This does raise questions about the URL in which we view the broadcasts. The unmemorable, long and unattractive URL http://www.clicrbs.com.br/especial/wct/html/painel2.html doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, which in turn, dictated that users go via the ASP website for the link. Couldn’t they have just registered http://www.hangloosepro.com/ ? No one else has.
Does Size Really Matter?
Whilst reach was high, engagement is questionable. Criticism over the quality of the webcast made viewing for the hard core only. Heat after heat of unplanned and ‘whoever just happened to be standing around’ commentary, cameramen more concerned with filming girls on the beach than a surfer paddling, lack of instant wave replays, and generally below par interactive heat by heat stimulus we’ve come to expect from the webcasts. Could you last 6 hours of that? Some did, some just couldn’t, given some of the comments being posted to Twitter.
Oh, and don’t even get me started about the 3 ‘Pro Ho’s’ doing the back stage content. Thrusting a mic and big boobs into the faces of well known (married) surfers live on air, come on, haven’t we moved passed that? Even ladies man TB looked uncomfortable.
This to me further highlighted the need for a unified webcast platform, a common URL, surfings’ own online TV channel.
Don't Throw Your TV Out Yet
Don’t Be Bagging Out Brazil.
It would be easy to make the contest organisers in Brazil the scapegoat of the poor standards of the broadcast, but given that each sponsor controls the broadcast quality and direction, it’s time for the ASP to step in and take back the media ownership of professional surfing. The ASP, and sponsors need to come together on a common platform in which we watch surfing for the good of the sport, and not just to provide a better webcast then the competitor.
Kelly Slater in a recent interview with ESPN
SLATER SAYS: “START FROM SCRATCH”
“The new governing body should own and run the events, own the media, do the marketing, bring in sponsors. Right now, the ASP doesn’t own any of those things, because it didn’t do the groundwork in the beginning. Sponsors own, run and market the events. That needs to change.”
But until (if) that happens, it’s interactive game on! Bring J-Bay.
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A Billabong model, popular with most walks of life. Just keep your distance from the footy players love
Billabong has topped the list of Australia’s most familiar sports sponsors, out-performing a whole host of mainstream brands, according to the latest report from research consultancy Sweeney Sports. Despite declining slightly from 32% sponsorship awareness to 30% from the previous survey, Billabong ranked equal 1st place with Kellog’s Nutri Grain breakfast cereal.
Rip Curl took out 8th place with 20% brand awareness, coming in behind powerhouses Nike, Ford and Adidas, whilst Quiksilver placed equal 14th alongside VB (Australia’s most popular beer), Fosters and Kia.
Results 1st published on Mumbrella, report the survey involved 1000 telephone interviews carried out late blast year and early this year. The previous survey covered 2006-2007.
Will Parko become the next Ricky Ponting? Australia's Most Marketable Sports Star
Results from the Sweeney Sports survey:
1 Billabong - 30% awareness;
1 Nutri-Grain - 30% +4
3 Nike - 28% -5
4 Ford - 26% -1
4 Uncle Tobys - 26% -1
6 Speedo - 22% +8
7 Adidas - 20% -3
8 Rip Curl - 19% +1
9 Holden/GMH - 18% -1
10 Toyota - 17% +2
10 Emirates - 17% 0
12 Telstra/ Telstra/Big Pond - 16% -8
12 Kellogg - 16% +1
14 VB (Victoria Bitter) - 13% -2
14 Foster’s - 13% -6 ?14 Kia - 13% -2
14 Quiksilver- 13% 0
18 KFC - 12% +10
18 3/three.com - 12%
20 Gatorade - 7% 0
The Revolution Will Be Webcast
This accomplishment is all the more impressive considering sports media coverage in Australia is heavily dominated by Cricket, Australian Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Soccor (the real football!), all of whom are broadcast live on prime time television. This should add fuel to the fire that the marketing dollars spent online producing the webcasts, have been justified.
Statistics talk. Bullshit walks.
The footy and cricket reap lucrative TV broadcast deals leveraged from official figures measuring viewing audiences. The big question in my books, when will we seen an official body tracking, monitoring and reporting online audience figures for the ASP World Tour Webcast?
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Media Consumption Is Moving Online - Who Needs TV Ratings?
Nielsen Online have released figures showing overall online video usage has increased 49%, year on year as of May 2009, according to analysis of unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer. YouTube was far and away the top online destination by video streams, with more than 6 billion total streams during the month, and more than 95 million unique viewers. Hulu, Yahoo!, Fox Interactive Media and ABC.com rounded out the top five.
What Does This Mean For Surfing?
Whilst this isn’t revolutionary news given current consumer trends shifting further and further online, this is no doubt excellent news for brands, sponsors, professional surfers and people like me, who probably watch more surfing online, than they actually do in the water.
Branded Content At ASP Events Will Keep Getting Better
Yes, I’ll have an ice cold Carona whilst twittering on my new LG Mobile on the back of a Honda Aquatrax PWC. I think it’s working?! The relationship of corporate brands and the surfing world where we chillax and watch some subliminal videos together, better known as ‘Backstage Content’ will continue to grow, and become more interactive.
Quiksilver’s ‘Backstage With Hoyo’ series on the Gold Coast was a tidy partnership, broadcast from “where I’d rather be”. Loads of little episodes catering to us surfers with short attention spans. Spot on.
The Billabong Pro paved new ground with their ‘Island Time’ live broadcast, and the popular ‘Say What?’ sponsored by their own Von Zipper brand which took one interactive step further in 2009 to incorporate user generate video questions.
Backstage With Hoy @ The Quiksilver Pro. Matt Hoy's Job Description. Be Matt Hoy.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It Will Be Webcast, 24/7
I predict that within a few years, the webcast for ASP events will be broadcast live, 24 / 7 through the however many days waiting period. How many times have you logged onto a contest and it’s not? Yeah, me too. The audience is there, keep them clicking through on lay-days, and through different time zones.
Professional Free Surfers Will Become More Free
Where's Rasta's blog? I'm sure his eco adventures would be well followed.
This new generation of professional free surfers, slab hunters, air punters and eco-recyclable soul surfers have the most to gain from online video, powered by social media. Finally surfers are catching up with the likes of ‘Power Moms’ and getting their blog on, and we are starting to see a very healthy online community.
5 Surfers Riding The Online Video Surge
Chippa Wilson - Rising star and ariel punter emerges from Stab & Billabong’s Little Weeds incentive shot to instant internet mini-fame after submitting this 3 minute assault.
Josh Kerr - Just how long Josh Kerr will last on tour is anyone’s guess given his seemingly casual approach to the tour, but as long as he keeps surfing, and someone’s filming, he’ll have a long lasting career.
Adam Robertson & Nic Muscroft – The Thelma and Louise of Victorian surfing recently sent their new blog live, teaming up for double the goodness.
Wade Goodall - Working with Runamuk Visuals, the Creative Destruction videos follow one of Australia’s hot WQS contenders.
The Hobgoods – What kind of list like this would be complete with out The Goodss. If you’re not a regular on the Hobgood’s blog. Then do it now.
5 Of The Most Viewed Surf Clips on Youtube
# 1 : “Stuck in tsunami” 20 Million Views!
#2 : ” Laird Hamilton – The greatest big wave surfer to have lived? 4.5 Million Views
# 3 Quiksilver dynamite surfing viral 3 Million Views
#4 BILLABONG BIG WAVES TEAHUPOO TAHITI 2 Million Views
#5 BILLABONG XXL (Biggest wave of the year) Contest 1.5 Million Views
***Please note that these videos have been posted by more than 1 user and these figures quoted have been accumulated from multiple users***
Recommended Reading
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Very interesting, Occy just dropped the comment that there have been 3 million people tune in to the Billabong Pro Tahiti. As much as I REALLY want to believe it, I don’t. But, down the line, it’s not out of the question.
Whilst I try do a little investigating into finding out some more accurate figures, here’s something that definitely drove mainstream awareness through the roof.
Channel 7’s new ‘Sunday Night’ current affairs program ran a big feature on Mitch Parkinson and a bunch of grommets dream trip to Tahiti. Whilst it wasn’t quite a Guthy Renker commercial, the PR & Media team at Billabong definitely earnt their keep with this piece, not to mention Channel 10’s daily Sports Tonight updates.
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Stop, collaborate and listen. Stab & Billabong are back with a brand new invention. A user generated content promotion that goes above and beyond the usual ‘send us ya home made snaps’.
OK. UGC driven by public voting isn’t a new concept, but the Little Weeds program has all the trimmings and incentives to get even a dry stonewall frothing. And better yet, opened themselves up to a younger, more creative, digitally savvy demographic, that attracts the young female market. When was the last time you heard of a 13 year old girl wanting to be the next Miss ‘Can Of Brut Deodorant’ Tracks?
If you’re not familiar with the concept by now. “The Little Weed Project exists to free you from the mundane. To set you on the righteous path. This is your best and last chance to live a surf-based dream in one of five ways: as surfer, writer, model, photographer or filmmaker. Stab and Billabong are providing you with a platform in which you will compete against fellow dreamers by tossing your wares on the internet. There will be three six-week heats where the online community votes for your product, be it a quality backside gouge or a hot little pose or a stellar photograph or an interesting turn of phrase.”
Since the introduction of Online Editor Jed Smith earlier in the year, and the launch of the Little Weeds promotion earlier in the year, traffic to Stabmag.com has almost tripled (according to Compete.com).
Whilst Jed’s somewhat car crash (I can’t look, but I can’t look away) video posts from Tahiti no doubt drove page impressions heavily through the month of May, the new users from Little Weeds extends beyond the realm of grumpy bearded men posting anonymous comments on the message boards. Check this out.
Stab Magazine Monthly Online Traffic. Courtesy of compete.com