Vividas Group PLCsaid it has signed an agreement with surf company, Rip Curl Pty Ltd, to stream the Rip Curl Pro surfing event all over the world.
The UK smallcap company added that the deal is part of an evaluation lisence agreement between the companies which will translate into a minimum annual revenue contract of 90,000 aud for Vividas.
Vividas said it believes that the contract will validate the scalability of the Vividas Live streaming technology and that the company will be ‘very well positioned’ to sign similar contracts within the surfing industry and for other live sports events.
The energy drink maker digs it claws in even deeper to the bare back of surfing with a new “series of documentary shorts that offers a 360-degree look at” ‘chopes.
The video, which bowed on Red Bull’s niche surfing site this week, amps up the vicarious thrills of surf footage by allowing fans to take control of the action. Using Immersive Media’s interactive video technology, viewers rotate perspective by manipulating the mouse to look to the right or left, up or down, back or front.
“We’ve always supported action sport athletes,” says Josh Kendrick, athlete marketing manager for Red Bull North America. Surfers “allow for more innovation, creativity and individualism than in baseball or football and we dig that.” In “Inside Tahiti,” Red Bull uses the new technology to tap into surfers’ passion for innovation and their love of surf footage-a cult genre that dates back to 1966 surf doc “The Endless Summer.”
Bob “Bubba” Haught made waves in the Colorado’s Summit County back in the late 70s because he was Snurfing all over the place. This caused him to be featured in The Rocky Mountain News on March 9, 1978 in a story titled “Snow surfer a curiosity in mountain community.”
“Apparently they didn’t think it was a real sport so they were all excited when they found me,” Haught said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the first person to get interviewed about snowboarding west of the Mississippi.”
We guess that all depends on what constitutes an interview. Winterstick founder Dimitrije Milovich was featured in a story in the March 1975 issue of Newsweek and that probably has a larger circulation than the Rocky Mountain News. But, hey, Bubba who’s really keeping track of this stuff. Happy 30th story day.
Filmmaker Britton Caillouette, has produced Sliding Liberia, an “unorthodox surf safari” film which follows Stanford University political science PhD Nicolai Lidow and three friends on a surf trip to Liberia according to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Shot on vintage 16mm film and digital video, Caillouette’s film captures the surreal dysfunction that sits at the heart of Liberia, a country crippled by war and founded on a lie. “Our national motto is ‘The love of liberty brought us here’,” one local notes, speaking of Liberia’s founding in 1822 by freed American slaves. “But me personally, it does not sound good. There were people on the land, so what about them?” . . . Unlike most surf films, Sliding Liberia makes no effort to keep its discovery secret. “Initially I was nervous about showing everybody where the waves were,” Lidow says. “Then I realised how selfish that was. The locals want tourists to come; they realise it might be good news for the local economy. So now we’re hoping that everyone goes! In a place like that, surfing really can change people’s lives.”
The film also reportedly captures Liberia’s “first surfer” a boy named Alfred (pictured right). For more info on the film visit the website at Sliding Liberia.
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer has formed a new joint venture with super agency IMG. Apparently, the new company is called Ari Fleischer Sports Communications.
The New York-based consultancy company will offer management advisory services, including media training and interview preparation, image management, crisis management and media relations to a wide range of athletes, coaches and high-profile sports industry executives. Fleischer will serve as the company’s President. Sandy Montag, Senior Corporate Vice President of IMG Sports & Entertainment, will serve as COO of the company.
Maybe Ari can teach IMG client Shaun White how to answer questions relating to fire extinguishers and chasing little girls around pool tables.
Planetout.com is on a man hunt for gay male surfers, but they’re having a rough time finding any. They even went so far as asking The Encyclopedia of Surfing author (and San Francisco resident) Matt Warshaw if he knows of any.
“If there was going to be a place where there would be openly gay surfers, this would be it,” says Matt Warshaw, the San Francisco-based author of “The Encyclopedia of Surfing”, “but you just don’t see it.” . . . Warshaw is straight, but he’s been writing about demographic trends in surfing for years and the ongoing invisibility of gay men confounds him. “I’m baffled as to whether it’s a sport that has happily or unhappily closeted surfers,” he admits, “or if it’s so staunchly hetero that it’s like a force-field to keep gays out.”
Yeah, Matt. We’re going to have to go with the anti-gay force-field.
According to the SnowSports Industries of America the SnowSports Industry is booming. Well of course it is. . . it snowed. As an old industry head once said: “We’re just snow farmers. When it snows we’re all geniuses and when it doesn’t snow, we blame the weather.”
For all the details from their recent press release, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
He’s a great guy and a great story and it seems that USA Today, just can’t get enough of skateboarding’s chairman of the board Tony Hawk. And Tony seems ever ready to do answer all the same old questions.
Hawk, like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, belongs to that rare breed of athlete-entrepreneurs whose names and brands have transcended their sports and become mainstream icons in the popular culture.
He is definitely a work-a-holic who keeps his empire rolling.
Quiksilver has not been having a great first quarter. Though their total revenue is up 14% over first quarter 2007, they are down nearly $20 million in profits compared to last year:
Consolidated income from continuing operations for the first quarter of fiscal 2008 was a loss of $14.7 million, or $0.12 per share, compared to income of $6.8 million, or $0.05 per share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2007. . . . Robert B. McKnight, Jr., Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President of Quiksilver, Inc., commented, “Although we are not satisfied with our financial results in general, we are pleased that our core apparel and footwear operations enabled us to partially offset the more difficult than expected results from our wintersports equipment business. As we go forward, we are energized to regain focus on our core opportunities. We are executing a variety of strategies to improve our gross margin, reduce our expense levels and generate cash flow to repay our indebtedness. We are resolved to continue to pursue strategic transactions to reduce or eliminate our exposure to our wintersports equipment business.”
