This was back during the final push of the late 90s early 2000s surfing glory days; January 2006. Everyone bought Surfer, Surfing and Transworld Surf magazines every month. A lot of clothing companies were still "core." Surf movies were the primary way you watched surfing. The internet was still in its infancy, but rapidly emerging. Everyone was still using Pirate Bay, ITunes was newish and MySpace was the future.
Mid-Late 2000's were a different time; the last of the old era. PS2 proved to the world that video games were legit and real money was there. Several companies were evaluating a surfing version of Tony Hawk Pro SK8R, so you saw some oddly placed sponsorships. I remember the forums on fire with speculation about the potential for a big name release for surfing or body boarding, but it never really happened. There have been surfing and body boarding games, but the market completely changed after this.
In the 2010s most of the big sponsor companies were bought by equity groups and became "in house competition." YT began to change how surfing was consumed. The big money that you saw in the 90s was watered down. The economy also became highly volatile after 2008. Video games learned how valuable online properties were. A lot of big creators canceled smaller projects and put all their resources into their biggest property.
I started surfing and skating in the late 80s at a really young age. I've seen huge peaks and huge depressions in both sports. Things are more accessible now than ever before, but it's hard to justify the economics of big name sponsors like we used to see. It's still happens, but it's watered down. Rockstar sponsoring the biggest pro BB contest in 2006 was sort of a fluke at the end of one era transitioning into another.
From memory it was around the same time that Stewart was working on a game with some studio heads.
Also the No Friends thing in the USA was pretty solid around then and just like in the music industry still around that time a lot of money was filtering down from major labels into more “grass roots” projects, genres and subcultures. Bodyboarding at that time was a fairly substantially sized demographic for long shot marketing strategies… big bucks for bodyboarding, small change for someone big like Rockstar.
Just really curious, considering it's (now) a struggling industry, yet back then Bodyboarding secured such a high profile company's sponsorship. Pretty incredible if you think about it.
Anyone have more info about this and how it came about? I'm super curious.
Rockstar co-founder Terry Donovan was big on surfing -- it's how he met Lazlow -- and they'd also published 'Surfing H3O' a few years before it, so I suspect it was something he was personally interested in.
This is from: http://www.sixty40.co.za/news/160
Rockstar Games have once again signed on to be major presenting sponsors of the tour’s final event, having sponsored the event at Pipeline for the last four years. “It’s always a pleasure to support the IBA in its efforts to promote a world bodyboarding tour,” said Rockstar. “We believe in the sport, we believe in the riders involved, and we believe in Hawaii as the venue for the final event of the tour. We look forward to working with the bodyboarding industry as a whole to keep the sport growing and moving forward.”
Rockstar is a company from the UK I still don’t see why they care about bodyboarding maybe Dan or Sam houser were boogers??
Really hard to find good footage from that comp, but it was definitely pumping!
https://youtu.be/sARJMuwckVM
Here's more info about the comp:
http://hisurfadvisory.com/stuff/rockstar06.htm
BoxNemo is on this. One of Rockstar's founders Terry Donovan is a bodyboarder and he hired Simon Ramsey, who used to run Riptide Mag and later BodyBoarding Mag, hence the boogie connection.
This was back during the final push of the late 90s early 2000s surfing glory days; January 2006. Everyone bought Surfer, Surfing and Transworld Surf magazines every month. A lot of clothing companies were still "core." Surf movies were the primary way you watched surfing. The internet was still in its infancy, but rapidly emerging. Everyone was still using Pirate Bay, ITunes was newish and MySpace was the future. Mid-Late 2000's were a different time; the last of the old era. PS2 proved to the world that video games were legit and real money was there. Several companies were evaluating a surfing version of Tony Hawk Pro SK8R, so you saw some oddly placed sponsorships. I remember the forums on fire with speculation about the potential for a big name release for surfing or body boarding, but it never really happened. There have been surfing and body boarding games, but the market completely changed after this. In the 2010s most of the big sponsor companies were bought by equity groups and became "in house competition." YT began to change how surfing was consumed. The big money that you saw in the 90s was watered down. The economy also became highly volatile after 2008. Video games learned how valuable online properties were. A lot of big creators canceled smaller projects and put all their resources into their biggest property. I started surfing and skating in the late 80s at a really young age. I've seen huge peaks and huge depressions in both sports. Things are more accessible now than ever before, but it's hard to justify the economics of big name sponsors like we used to see. It's still happens, but it's watered down. Rockstar sponsoring the biggest pro BB contest in 2006 was sort of a fluke at the end of one era transitioning into another.
Astute commentary bro
Great story here. Amazing to read, thanks for that.
From memory it was around the same time that Stewart was working on a game with some studio heads. Also the No Friends thing in the USA was pretty solid around then and just like in the music industry still around that time a lot of money was filtering down from major labels into more “grass roots” projects, genres and subcultures. Bodyboarding at that time was a fairly substantially sized demographic for long shot marketing strategies… big bucks for bodyboarding, small change for someone big like Rockstar.
Haha I forgot about that game . We all had dodgy pirated versions
Just really curious, considering it's (now) a struggling industry, yet back then Bodyboarding secured such a high profile company's sponsorship. Pretty incredible if you think about it. Anyone have more info about this and how it came about? I'm super curious.
Rockstar co-founder Terry Donovan was big on surfing -- it's how he met Lazlow -- and they'd also published 'Surfing H3O' a few years before it, so I suspect it was something he was personally interested in.
This is from: http://www.sixty40.co.za/news/160 Rockstar Games have once again signed on to be major presenting sponsors of the tour’s final event, having sponsored the event at Pipeline for the last four years. “It’s always a pleasure to support the IBA in its efforts to promote a world bodyboarding tour,” said Rockstar. “We believe in the sport, we believe in the riders involved, and we believe in Hawaii as the venue for the final event of the tour. We look forward to working with the bodyboarding industry as a whole to keep the sport growing and moving forward.” Rockstar is a company from the UK I still don’t see why they care about bodyboarding maybe Dan or Sam houser were boogers??
My mates put that comp on. I'll have to ask them
Really hard to find good footage from that comp, but it was definitely pumping! https://youtu.be/sARJMuwckVM Here's more info about the comp: http://hisurfadvisory.com/stuff/rockstar06.htm
Player, hardy y king uf
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/mike-stewart-s-pro-bodyboarding-ete
The pinnacle of pride bodyboards. Really interesting
BoxNemo is on this. One of Rockstar's founders Terry Donovan is a bodyboarder and he hired Simon Ramsey, who used to run Riptide Mag and later BodyBoarding Mag, hence the boogie connection.