The World Surf League, an international professional surfing and surf lifestyle promoter with offices in Hawaii and around the world, said Tuesday that CEO Sophie Goldschmidt is being replaced by Erik Logan, WSL president of content, media and studios.
The change in leadership takes effect this week at the organization, which produces pro surfing’s world championship tour for men and women as well as big-wave, longboarding and junior championship competitions.
Also on Tuesday, WSL announced this year’s Volcom Pipe Pro, scheduled to be held between Jan. 29 and Feb. 10 on Oahu’s North Shore, will be upgraded from a 3,000- to a 5,000-point event in its men’s qualifying series.
This gives a prestige boost to the contest, already a highlight of the surfing world in which John John Florence, a North Shore native, holds an unrivaled four titles and is set to compete this year after an injury hiatus.
Goldschmidt, during whose tenure female surfers, starting in the 2018-2019 tour, achieved parity in prize money with men, will continue to “help the company” as a member of WSL’s advisory board, the WSL said.
“Sophie is responsible for transforming both our business capabilities and culture in her tenure as CEO,” said Dirk Ziff, WSL owner, who ranked 131st on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans and 379th on the Forbes list of billionaires in 2019.
“With the converging trends in sports, media and entertainment, we mutually agreed it was time to make a change,” added Ziff, whose grandfather co-founded publishing company Ziff Davis, which his father expanded and sold in 1994.
Ziff described Logan as “a proven leader and a world-class media executive with a profound personal connection to the sport of surfing.”
In addition to equalizing prize purses, Goldschmidt, who became CEO in 2017,
restructured and refocused WSL with an emphasis on the lifestyle as well as the sport of surfing, negotiated a 10-year agreement with the World Professional Surfers union and established content partnerships and platform sharing with the likes of Facebook, ABC, Airbnb (with its global surf experiences, including surf lessons in
Hawaii) and Rolling Stone.
“With the WSL now ready to become a more focused content and media company, the Board and I have mutually agreed it is the right time to make a change,” Goldschmidt said. “Having worked closely with Erik, he is the right person to lead the WSL into its next era.”
Logan, who has served as WSL’s content and media president since February, was formerly president of the Oprah Winfrey Network and executive vice president at Winfrey’s Harpo Studios.
“The World Surf League is the most exciting, inspiring and promising opportunity I have ever encountered,” Logan said. “The power of the organization’s platform, the history of championing the world’s best surfers, the global fan base and the opportunity to accelerate the WSL as an international sport and media powerhouse is absolutely incredible.”
Logan is to oversee the three divisions — Tours, Studios and WaveCo (which manages the artificial-wave surf ranch associated with Kelly Slater in Lemoore,
Calif.) — of WSL, which is headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., with regional offices in North America, Latin America, the Asia Pacific and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Goldschmidt is passing the baton to Logan at the start of a watershed and potentially lucrative year for the sport of surfing and for Hawaii, its birthplace, with the first-ever Olympic surfing event to debut this summer in Tokyo.
Two Hawaii pros — four-time world champion Carissa Moore and two-time world champ Florence — have won berths on the four-member U.S. team, and last month the Hawaii Tourism Authority agreed to pay WSL $100,000 to help take advantage of an anticipated Olympic boost.
