WSL Gives An Update On the 2020 Tour Situation

There’s been much speculation about what the WSL will do about its 2020 Tours.

And by “speculation”, I mean people thinking about it for less than five seconds before realizing that it will be genuinely impossible for the WSL to run anything resembling a legitimate Tour in 2020 given pandemic-related travel restrictions.  

However, as discussed in the latest episode of Stab CUSP (available on Apple Podcasts under ‘Stab Podcasts’), the WSL has a financial interest in not canceling their Tours outright, despite the extreme unlikelihood of their being able to run enough events to crown a World Champ. 

Presumably, the WSL can retain its event sponsors’ money until their events are officially canceled. This will help cover their operating costs for the time being, though it’s unclear what their long-term plans are.

As of now, only one CT event—the Corona Open Snapper—has been officially canceled. The rest are classified as either ‘postponed’ or ‘upcoming’.

Today, the WSL announced that their Tours will remain on-hold and that the next call will be made in early July. Whether this is a symbol of supreme optimism or simply a way to prolong the inevitable is for the reader to decide.

While the WSL likely won’t be running any “Tours” this year, they do plan to hold exhibition events across the major surfing continents. We have it on good authority that they’ll be holding an American-centric competition in the Lemoore pool sometime soon, and it’s likely we’ll see variations of this in Australia and Brazil as well.