ASP EUROPE HISTORY
WHAT IS IT ?
Founded in 1989 by François Payot, the Association of Surfing Professionals in Europe was created to promote and develop professional surfing on the continent. It is dedicated to showcasing the world's best surfing talents in a variety of progressive formats at Europe’s finest surfing locations. From the Canary Islands’ world class reefbreaks to Hossegor’s perfect barreling beachbreaks, the best of the best gather every year in Europe to battle for dollars and points. Its goals and targets were and remain to equally benefit european surfers, sponsors and event promoters.
The ASP Europe is the regional governing body of the sport. Crowning european surfing’s champions since 1989, it sanctions an average of 20 events every year including Men and Women Pro Surf Tours, Pro Junior Tours and Longboard Tours. Being a mandatory stop over for all the best surfers in the world on their path to the elite Foster’s ASP World Tour, the tour offers over a $ 1 000 000 of prizepurse and priceless points for both regional and international ratings.
HOW DOES IT WORK ?
All regional rules, media plans, financial managment are made by the ASP Europe board of Directors, elected every 5 years. Every year are held general meetings where all organisers meet and discuss about ASP Europe’s orientations and guidance.
Being the official label for any professional event, every organiser pays a sanction fee to the ASP, and gets official worldwide scoring systems, website and webcast facilities, sports and media managment.
Every surfer willing to compete in ASP Europe sanctionned events must pay a yearly membership and specific entry fees, and follow all rules and administrative obligations that come along with being a professional surfer.
WHERE IS IT ?
The ASP Europe office is based in Capbreton, France. The office is located in the heart of Europe’s surfing industry and remains close to surfing’s fast and daily evolution.
WHAT DOES IT SANCTION ?
The ASP Europe sanctions all World Qualifying Series events, World Longboard Tour events, and Pro Junior Tour events that run in Europe.
WHAT’S NEW IN EUROPE ?
The 2008 Men’s European Pro Surf Tour will determine our champion based on the best results on all WQS 1 Star to 6 Star and Super Series events. The best european on all these events will be the champion.
ASP Europe has a NEW MEDIA CENTER on www.aspeurope.com
ASP Europe provides HIGH QUALITY LIVE WEBCAST at all main events on www.aspeurope.com.
EUROPEAN TOURS
MEN’S EUROPEAN PRO SURF TOUR
Being the most important leg in the world, ASP Europe offers to its regional surfers the best opportunity possible to surf against the best on Earth. The european title has become a much anticipated race for medias and surfers, and with this year’s changes, the sport led by european surfers will for sure take another step on its developping path.
With top leading surfers Eric Rebière (Fra), Miky Picon (Fra) and Jérémy Flores (Fra) who showed the way to a whole new floor of rising talents, Europe is on its way to becoming one of the biggest surfing regions of the planet. 2008 will be another decisive year as four europeans are already running on the elite ASP World Tour, and will hit our shores as soon as the season starts!WOMEN’S EUROPEAN PRO SURF TOUR
Women’s surfing has grown a lot since his start at a professional level. With an average of 3 events every year, the best regional women and rising girls have the opportunity to gather and train together for the regional title, before giving a try on the interntaional tour.
MEN’S EUROPEAN PRO JUNIOR TOUR
The pro junior tour has been revealling our best hopes towards the Foster’s ASP World Tour. Tiago Pires (Prt), Michel Bourez (Pyf), Jérémy Flores (Fra), Tim Boal (Fra), Miky Picon (Fra), Patrick Beven (Fra) are some of the current european leaders that all went through the Pro Junior events.
With an average of 5 events a year, the tour remains solid and organisers have faith in promoting the next generation of european stars. From Algarve to Ericeira, including Hossegor, Sopelana and Lacanau, under-21 surfers from around the world gather in Europe and offer amazing levels of surfing to convince sponsors, public and future opponents they are about to catch up with the best.
The Top 4 of the year added to 1 wildcard are eventually invited to the World Junior Championships in Australia every January. On top of this, the Pro Junior champion will be offered a wild card in all european WQS events the year following his title.
WOMEN’S EUROPEAN PRO JUNIOR TOUR
The women’s Junior division started two years ago, in Portugal. With more and more girls coming to the sport on the european shores, the tour naturally came to its birth, relying on rising and promissing stars Pauline Ado (Fra) or Lee Ann Curren (Fra).
In two years, the number of under-21 surfing girls has reached thirty and looks very positive for the future. With a global comitment from surfing’s authorities to develop and see the women’s divisions grow, Europe is once again one of the main actors of the future, and the events confirmed for 2008 is another positive sign.
The Top 2 of the year are invited to the Women’s World Junior Championships in Australia every January.
MEN & WOMEN LONGBOARD TOUR
The longboard division is on the right path back to success. After some years of rest, another worldwide effort brought sponsors and organisers to look back on surfing’s history and remember how the roots of the sport must be kept alive.
And Europe is once again a leading region. With both men and women World Longboard Championships held on the Southwest coast of France in 2008, the division keeps alive the roots of surfing and offers classic style along with new school spectacular longboarding
ASP INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
Back in the '60s when the first structured competitions were introduced to the sport, the guys and gals all did it for love and ego. There was no sponsorship, certainly no surfing industry, just a bunch of teenagers who gathered intermittently and pitted their respective skills against each other.
This was truly the amateur era. It is hard to think of greats such as Midget Farrelly, Joey Cabell, Mike Doyle and Bob McTavish as amateurs, but the truth of it is that after winning their respective National Championships and various international meets, there wasn't much else for them.
While the camaraderie and spirit were rich, there was very little in the way of monetary compensation from endorsements, and certainly no prize money. The rewards were personal achievement, and in line with all amateur sport of the era, time at the top was limited.
As we went from the swinging, counter culture '60s into the '70s, isolated pockets of structured competition surfing began to emerge. Hawaii was already well along the road to professionalism, with events such as the Smirnoff Pro, The Duke Kahanamoku Classic, and the Pipeline Masters offering around $10,000 in prize money.
The new superstars of the sport were Jeff Hakman, Reno Abellera and Gerry Lopez. These surfers, along with Nat Young and David Nuuiwa, were supplementing their prize money with endorsement contracts.
While the surfing industry was in its formative stages in Australia, Hawaii and Japan, and not even on the distant horizon in Europe and South America, it was well established in California. Riding on the coat tails of Gidget, the beach boys and the surf craze of the '60s, labels had established themselves and were turning to the heroes of the day to identify the public to their branding.
By the mid 70s events had popped up from Sydney to Rio, from Florida to Durban. This loose knit belt of tournaments was strung together in 1976 in what would prove to be the embryonic stage of ASP. The very first pro surfing governing body IPS crowned Peter Townend the very first pro surfing world champion and he was followed by Shaun Tomson (ZAF), Wayne Bartholomew and of course the legendary four time world champion Mark Richards. Between the four of them they ushered in the new era, and by 1984 the tour had expanded to in excess of 20 internationally rated events.
Tom Carroll and Tom Curren soon pushed to the forefront of the sport and their contribution, plus a booming surf industry, paved the way for enormous growth. With over 60 pro events worldwide, the ASP introduced a two-tiered system of ratings in 92, incorporating the Top 44, who automatically qualified for what was then called the World Championship Tour. A World Qualifying Series, (WQS), was also introduced to feed the top tour with 16 people dropping off at year's end to be replaced by red hot WQS aspirants.
After several years of consolidation, ASP then took aim in a dynamic direction. In a somewhat radical departure from the '80s and early '90s tour look, event promoters were encouraged to stage top tour events at prime surf locations.
The industry caught on quickly, the big-name labels, as part of a global promotional strategy, began positioning their respective events at such exotic locations as Grajagan in Java Indonesia,, Jeffreys Bay in South Africa, Mundaka in the Basque Country, Tavarua in Fiji, Teahupoo in Tahiti and Trestles in California.
The policy then evolved so that events were shifted in the schedule to be held in the right peak swell season, with a waiting period or swell window, with the objective being to place the world's best surfers in the world's best waves.
Giant international beer brewer Foster's have seen the return in investment in the sport and have once again signed on as tour naming rights sponsor for 2007.
That shift in focus is a far cry from the '80s and early '90s when ASP World Tour events were staged at metropolitan beaches in the middle of summer, with the objective of filling grandstands and getting butts on beaches. Too bad the surf did not pump until the fall, and many grandstand events, locked into a Sunday afternoon finish, were subject to consistently poor surf.
There are still some grandstand events on the calendar, maintaining the public face of the sport as well as the all-important public accessibility to the world's best surfers.
The new ASP, however, has implemented a formula that literally beams these insane images of the world's elite pros at the world's most dynamic surf venues, directly into the global lounge room.
The main thrust of this is an association with our broadcasting partner TWI who produce quality television packages including a 52-minute highlight TV show (beamed to 296 million lounge rooms) plus daily highlight news feeds from events which are uplinked by satellite to global networks.
On top of this we have been at the forefront of the LIVE webstreaming from events sites, which without delay are delivered directly to the desktops of anyone with access to a modem. This in itself has changed the face of the sport, as second-t-none- images of the best of the best are now accessible to one and all regardless of where an event is held.
In 2007 the umbrella will extend to include all disciplines of the sport. The World Longboard Tour will be held in Costa Rica and France, The Billabong World Junior Championships will again be held at Narrabeen and the ASP Masters will take place in Brazil.
While the rest of the circus circumnavigates the globe we also have the ASP Women's World Tour taking a similar approach to the guys. In recent years there has been an influx of talent and in 2007 we can expect the new guard to stand up and bee counted. Watch the girls as they perform in Australia, Brazil, Spain, and Hawaii.
There is an air of maturity about ASP these days. Having been around for 31 years the sport is developing a deep and enriched heritage not unlike that of more mainstream sports. With a truly professional out look, incredibly efficient business processes and practices plus healthy relationships with some outstanding business partners and events we are sure that in 2007 ASP's success will be immeasurable.
