The return of JJF, Gabs, Steph, and Carissa to the tour mean good things for the WSL. Photo: Brent Bielmann//WSL
WSL executives must be popping champagne in the office this week, because surfing’s biggest stars are suddenly returning to the Championship Tour. You can strategize all you want about boosting revenue or courting sponsors, but nothing moves the needle like the combined star power of John John Florence, Carissa Moore, Stephanie Gilmore, and Gabriel Medina.
Those four surfers combine for roughly 22 million social media followers (yes, Medina’s 13 million Instagram followers do a lot of the heavy lifting) compared to the WSL’s 18.8 million across its various accounts. From a marketing perspective, that’s a significant amount of influence returning to the tour.
None of these surfers have outright said they’re coming back solely because the WSL scrapped the Final 5 format, but the timing is a little too perfect to ignore. It’s reasonable to assume that the format change announced earlier this year played at least some role in these surfers’ decisions – an implicit endorsement that the WSL made the right call for athletes, fans, and likely its bottom line as well.
John John Florence has said he prefers a season that ends at a consequential wave like Pipeline. Carissa Moore never publicly blamed the Final 5 format, but she has said she suffered from those devastating losses – twice losing world titles despite finishing the season atop the rankings. Steph Gilmore has been open about her beliefs that world champions should be based on an entire season. And while Gabriel Medina’s return was not unexpected after his pectoral injury earlier this year, he too favors the old points system.
The stars got the format they wanted. And now they’re back. Simple.
Their return will solve a lot of problems. Viewership will rise. Social media engagement will surge as their fanbases re-enter the CT ecosystem. Sponsorship potential grows instantly when the league’s most bankable athletes are visible. There is no meaningful downside here – only upside.
We may never definitively know whether the Final 5 format pushed these surfers away in the first place (Moore was pregnant in 2024, after all), but if getting them back was as simple as reverting to a season-long title race, then the WSL just made one of the easiest decisions in its history. Under CEO Ryan Crosby, things suddenly feel, dare I say, optimistic.
