Brodie Carr on Fiji, Slater, WADA, Nike and More
Brodie Carr, the man who brought Fiji back to the ASP World Tour
BURLEIGH HEADS, Queensland/Australia (Tuesday, August 2, 2011) – As CEO of ASP International, Brodie Carr’s dance card is understandably full. Between juggling the interests of the surfers, the events, his staff and the widely-varied expectations of the sport’s ever-growing audience, it is a role that offers new challenges with every day. Australia’s Surfing Life (ASL) Magazine caught up with Mr. Carr to get a breakdown on this month’s hottest topics. This…is their story…
Ah Mr. Carr, we meet again. Tell us about the last couple of weeks. You guys were getting blasted from all angles, then the competition stepped up at J-Bay and everyone backed off again.
I think we copped a hammering after Rio, the fans out there are vocal on certain issues and certain points. You know, everyone wants us to go to Fiji and Tahiti every stop of the tour, but we have to strike the right balance between that, and getting media coverage. We can’t rely 100% on the webcasts, so we need to build our mainstream media market coverage as well. So this year we added more suburban beachbreak kind of locations. But then we’ve been working for three years with Volcom to try and get the Fiji deal sorted, and it has come at a great time. The pendulum had maybe swung a little too far with the beachbreaks, and now this will be the start of it getting back to the middle. We need one more quality wave location and hopefully we’re getting there.
Do you think the six week break in the tour is poisonous?
Yeah, I think some of the fans get a little, er, the natives get a little restless, y’know. They haven’t seen Jordy Smith or Adriano De Souza or Mick Fanning surfing for a while and they’re wondering what they’re up to. That June break is six weeks, it’s too long. So that’s where we’re going to slot Fiji, and it’s in a prime swell window too.
I’m interested to see how things play out starting in Tahiti, when we have a massive second half of the year. We’ve got three to four months of just absolute back-to-back competition and I’m really eager to find out how the fans react to that. Maybe we should see what employers think of that too, as some offices’ productivity will plummet when certain events are on. We need to develop an app that hides the webcast from employers.
You say the Volcom event has been three years in the making. How does it work, do the sponsors come to the ASP, or do you say to potentials, “We really want Fiji on the schedule, who’s gonna pony up and do this?
Volcom and the ASP and myself have been talking about Fiji for a long time. Some things take time. I’ve been talking to Nike for a long time about…
For full interview, check out ASL’s ‘A Chat with the Chief’
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