The World Surf League is doubling down on their partnership with streaming platform Caffeine. They started that team-up last for the 2023 WSL season, which saw more than 5.2 million total views for the WSL Rip Curl Finals in September. And now, they’re bringing three further circuits to the platform.
The new WSL circuits headed to Caffeine are the Challenger Series, the Longboard Tour, and the World Junior Championships. The first to kick in is the Challenger Series, which begins Saturday in Australia. That season-long series will see the top 10 men and top five women at the end qualify for the elite Championship Tour in 2025. There’s also the Longboard Tour, beginning July 18, which will show off events in Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia, Huntington Beach, CA, El Sunzal, El Salvador, and one to-be-announced location, and crown both a men’s and women’s champion. And there’s the World Junior Championships at the end of the 2024 season.
All of those events are set to be streamed on the WSL page on Caffeine, and they’ll be available both live and on-demand. This is in addition to other WSL live and on-demand content on the platform. Here’s more from a release on why the sides are expanding their existing partnership:
“We’re excited to continue our partnership with the World Surf League to bring these events to fans across the world,” said Ben Keighran, Founder & CEO of Caffeine. “We aim to elevate the surf experience for our community and provide direct and easy access to the excitement of competitive surfing.”
“Caffeine is a great streaming platform for our 2024 Challenger Series events, which has large fields of hungry young athletes and millions of fans following them. The potential to reach Caffeine’s 60M+ active monthly users alongside other premium brands in Action Sports is a no-brainer, along with the collaboration with their incredible team,” said Cherie Cohen, WSL Chief Revenue Officer.
Surfing as a whole is doing quite well in popularity at the moment, across various docuseries, movie projects, FAST channels and more. It’s also set to be featured in the Summer Olympics for the second straight time this summer. And the WSL’s Championship Tour is headed to ESPN platforms this year. But it’s notable to see the WSL continue to work with Caffeine amidst that ESPN deal, and to see them bring new series to the Caffeine audience. And that adds to the list of leagues partnering with Caffeine.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.