Surfline And Red Bull Team Up For New Big-Wave Series

Big-wave surf contests are dead. Long live big-wave surf contests. 

Aside from Jaws and Nazaré, XXL surf comps have struggled to remain afloat in the last decade. The result is that more and more surfers who excel in massive surf have had to push content on the almighty algorithm, something not everyone is adept at. Bottom line: to succeed you have to produce. And due to the inconsistent nature of their profession, that’s easier said than done. 

This was the thought process behind Surfline and Red Bull’s announcement today. The global forecasting site and energy drink brand are launching a new web series called Twenty Foot Plus. (Aptly named because that’s basically the tipping point when people either start running for the hills or get a crazed look in their eyes). 

The nuts and bolts of it is that Surfline plans to livestream, free-of-charge, heavy sessions around the globe. No, not Instagram live. High-quality cameras and multiple angles. When a crew heads out to quadruple overhead surf, a camera team will follow. A sleek content package under one roof. In the downtime between swells, the series will profile surfers, shapers, water safety and filmers – all those who make the operation run smoothly. 

To learn more about Twenty Foot Plus and sign up for email alerts, click the link here. 

Though at first glance it seems like some kind of contest, this is just a video series. Surfline wants to document the “day of days” for these clips, so don’t expect a series every time the buoys hit. 

It’s produced in collaboration with $upport from Red Bull on the media side and Heavy Water Surf (HWS), a newly formed coalition of the who’s who in big-wave surfing. Per Surfline, Jamie Mitchell and Zack Porter came up with the idea in 2019 when they held a meeting with around 40 of the best guys and girls in the biz. Some of the members include Kai Lenny, Albee Layer, Lucas Chianca, Billy Kemper, Ian Walsh, Nic Von Rupp, Laurie Towner, Justine Dupont, Nathan Fletcher, Peter Mel, Russell Bierke, Matahi Drollet and Maya Gabeira. 

“We wanted to put our careers in our own hands,” Jamie told Surfline. “We’ve got a bunch of surfers and we’re heading in the right direction. We want to write our own path for big-wave surfing. I would expect big, different, more creative things that maybe haven’t been seen before. I want to see a young guy like Luca Padua, for example, have a gateway to a professional career in big-wave surfing. I want these young girls coming up to see a career path as well — that’s what we’re setting out to do.”

Surfers becoming entrepreneurs, taking their careers into their own hands… Has Jamie been watching Stab’s How Surfers Get Paid series? While Surfline and HWS will have flights queued to the mainstream spots, it appears there’s a desire to showcase remote strike missions to lesser-known waves. 

“I think that’s a massive part of big-wave surfing: the exploration, the adventure; the unknown,” added Jamie. “It’s searching for your waves, and we have a lot of surfers in HWS who have made careers off finding waves and exploring for them. So, yeah, with Twenty Foot Plus, we’d love to explore lesser-known places, hopefully find new waves and document those journeys. These stories need to be told.”

Stay tuned.