With the stability of their financial empire in question and their plans to move and/or sell the Sacramento Kings NBA team it would seem that the Maloofs would have bigger things than skateboarding on their minds. But when the whole novelty of their skateboarding event hinges on “money”, then the prize purse is pretty important.
On Tuesday, April 12, 2011 the Maloofs announced that they were adding a fourth stop to the Maloof Money Cup and upping the prize purse to $2 million.
“The skating population has grown tremendously in Washington D.C. and right now it lacks the number of skate parks needed to support this growth,” said Joe Maloof, founder of Maloof Money Cup and owner of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. “Our intent is to build a skate park for the community like we did in New York City. We’ve been in talks with a number of cities to host Maloof Money Cup and figured what better place to expand in 2011 than our nation’s capital.”
It didn’t take The Street League’s Rob Dyrdek long to respond to the Maloof ante up with a prize purse boost of his own pushing TSL’s purse up to $1.6 million, according to a story on MSNBC.com.
“You have to understand that despite what it looks like from the outside looking in, street skateboarding is 80 percent of action sports,” Dyrdek said. “There’s 15 million participants in action sports, and 10 million of them are street skaters. It has its own self-sustaining market where it never really needed mainstream contests. But now it’s sort of this dance, which really comes between Street League and Maloof Money Cup, where they came in as I was developing this, and then that just sort of drove it up, which I think is incredible for the sport.
Incredible for the sport? We’re not so sure. Seems what would be better for skateboarding would be for everyone to work together toward one unified street skateboarding title. But then, Dyrdek and the Maloofs would have to work together. And it doesn’t seem that either enjoy sitting back while someone else makes the decisions–especially with so much money on the line.
I’m no math major, but I think Dyrdek needs to hire some help to count all his money.
Last time I checked 10mil of 15mil = 2/3 = 66%, not 80%.
Hahahahaha. Don’t quit your day job, Rob…
be careful what you wish for…
is it just me, or is the hubris hanging over this entire thing beginning to smell?
Dyrdek is all about $.
Maloofs are all about $.
Perfect combo…..money chasing dudes that are lost.
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