Surfing is getting the hype, but not its cut.Photo: ISA
More than seven years since surfing was voted into the Olympics, it still isn’t getting funded like an Olympic sport. Rules were passed to delay the full funding of new youth-oriented sports that entered in Tokyo 2020 – surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing – until the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
The Tokyo 2020 Games distributed USD $540.29 million in TV rights revenue, spread among the original 28 summer International Federations. As a new sport, surfing’s governing body, the International Surfing Association (ISA), received none of that revenue from Tokyo. It won’t get a piece of the Paris 2024 revenue share either, which is estimated to exceed $596 million.
“It’s fundamentally unfair,” ISA President Fernando Aguerre told The Inertia via phone call. “It means we will have to spend another four years with a scarcity of funds compared to the other Olympic sports who are all receiving significant shares of the Olympic revenue. The IOC provided us with a small contribution as a bridge to the Paris Olympics, but ASOIF created a new rule that prevents us from being a formal part of the revenue distribution between the Olympic international federations until LA28.”
The responsibility for distributing the TV revenue lies with the Association of Summer International Olympic Federations (ASOIF). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) designates a chunk of the TV money for ASOIF, then ASOIF determines how the money is distributed among its member Olympic federations. The distribution follows a system with five tiers according to value. The most valuable sports, like Athletics (track and field, running), gymnastics, and swimming, received the most. Athletics received $39 million for this truncated three-year Olympic cycle. The least valuable sports, in Tokyo 2020’s case, rugby, golf, and modern pentathlon, received the least, $12.98 million each.
Notably absent from the Tokyo 2020 distribution were the new sports: surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, karate, and baseball/softball. Since they entered the Games through a new, expedited process for adding sports (see the 2020 agenda), there was no precedent for how to classify them. They didn’t receive a cut.
Of those new sports, the three youth sports, surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing, are confirmed to continue on the Games’ Program through at least LA 2028. And when they do receive funding at that time, there’s no indication which of the five tiers they’ll be placed in.
In June of 2022, ASOIF amended its statutes with an update that was rather blatantly pointed at delaying the revenue for the new sports. In order to be classified as a revenue receiving “Full Member,” the sport “must have been consecutively included on the program for the 3 (three) most recent Summer Olympic Games”.
Surfing’s exclusion left the ISA perplexed.
“We showed at the Tokyo Olympics that we bring real value to the table, but when it comes to being a formal part of the revenue sharing, we’re left out, which doesn’t make sense,” said Aguerre.
While the ISA did not receive the chunk of the TV revenue it was hoping for, the entity did get a smaller amount of funding to support operations and initiatives. According to the ISA, the IOC ended up giving the association $2.7 million over the three years between Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 that instead came from the IOC treasury.
While the ISA is still yet to reap the full rewards of surfing’s Olympic inclusion, for its 113 national federations around the world, funding has indeed started to flow in from National Olympic Committees and IOC development funds.
“I’ve spent a large part of my life working to get the sport into the Olympics, and this is our next big paddle,” said Aguerre. “There are a lot of benefits coming to the national surfing federations around the world, like Olympic funding from their national authorities for training, equipment, and Olympic Solidarity.”
While the ISA will have to continue to operate with significantly less funding than its Olympic counterparts and deliver the Games with the same level of expectation, Aguerre still manages to see the bright side of the situation.
“We will continue to do the best we can with the modest resources at our disposal to self-fund the organization, but at least we have the certainty that at the LA28 Olympics we will be part of the revenue distribution, which is important,” Aguerre concluded.
