‘Try to retain a human connection’: World Surf League CEO on navigating unchartered waters

Erik Logan only assumed the chief executive role at the World Surf League (WSL) in January, but already the American finds himself battling the currents.

“My plate has certainly filled up,” he says wryly. “Now I’ve got a new job that I’m still trying to figure out and I’ve got coronavirus on top of it. So I’m off to a rip-roaring start.”

To clarify: Logan has not contracted Covid-19. The global pandemic has, however, forced the WSL – not to mention virtually every other sports property worldwide – to hit pause on its 2020 season, leaving Logan with an unenviable task on his hands just weeks after taking up his dream job. 

“It’s all opportunity,” he says, speaking to SportsPro via video link from his home in Manhattan Beach, California. “Moving into the role when I did and now being faced with this global pandemic, I look at it from the point of view as really giving not only myself but the entire leadership team and the organisation a moment to step back and really think about where we want to chart the course.”

Earlier this month, the WSL postponed or cancelled all of its events until the end of May, including the Australian leg of its elite Championship Tour and the WSL Big Wave Awards. With no end in sight to the stoppage, the tour has since begun releasing a new slate of video content, including The WSL Vault, WSL Rewind and World Surf Weekly, three new shows that lean heavily on archive footage and other original programming to fill the void for surfing fans during the current live hiatus.

Erik Logan became World Surf League (WSL) chief executive in January, stepping up from his previous role overseeing the tour’s content and media operations.

For any leader of an international sports property, the challenges and complexities that have arisen as a result of the pandemic are many. And while the sporting world has ground to a halt, senior executives across the industry are already using the pause in competition as an opportunity to reconsider their long-term strategies.

For Logan, that means reevaluating everything, from the WSL’s organisational structure to its competition pathways and business model. After all, he says, “everybody acknowledges this is temporary”, and the WSL – like every organisation in sport – will need to be ready for whatever the future holds.

How are you dealing with this situation given you’ve not long taken up the chief executive role and now have to confront this unprecedented challenge? 

Never in my three decades of being media have I ever had a chance, really, to take a step back. You did at off-sites, you do it at retreats, but then you wake up the next day and go right back to work. This, because of the economic pressure, what’s happening with your employees, what’s happening with global sport, basically the economy in every country is going through its version of a downturn, really puts the big questions on the table.

If you look at that from a point of view, which I do, that this is a massive opportunity to reshape an organisation for the next ten to 15 years, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s painful when you’re in it, but I’m really focusing on what is the organisation going to be like on the other side of this. Because of this, we absolutely know, is temporary, so I look at it as a real gift and an opportunity.

It is clearly important for business leaders like yourself to take a long-term view and consider the bigger picture. How are you going about keeping your team on track throughout this hiatus?

It’s certainly the challenge. I think there are a couple of things that we’ve employed. We did a video town hall last Thursday where I just addressed the global organisation for 30-45 minutes, tried to tell them what I know about where we are and what the new priorities are for us.

I’ve told people to try not to be on phones, try to be on video chats, try to see people. At every turn, try to have a human connection. I was also saying to our teams that we need to get into a form of routine. You need to get out of your house, go for walks, try to get away from the screen, find different places to work. A lot of our employees have children – I’ve got two teenagers at home so I’m relegated to the garage right now; I’m sitting in my garage with a desk. You have to figure out how to set that up for yourself. 

From an organisational point of view, communication becomes the most paramount thing – clear, consistent communication about what the organisation should be focused on in the near term. You, as a CEO, need to think about what you’re doing in the longer-term, but we need to make sure that the employees that we have are focused on the things that move the business forward today.

In our case, it’s really this digital transformation that we’re going through, that we’ve been talking about for some time, that is in process, that was being planned for in June of this year, to be honest. We’re now accelerating that within a couple of weeks. We’re exponentially upping the output of content from WSL Studios, partnering with endemic brands on levels and ways that we’ve never done in the history of the organisation. All of that clarity is important because it gives people something to hold on to so that they feel like they’re driving towards something.

You’ve also announced that you’re accelerating the production of new projects as well. Is your proposed direct-to-consumer offering going to be brought forward at all?

I think if we had a product that was in market today, it would be an interesting discussion. Focusing on the development of it right now isn’t a near-term objective for us. It is something that we’re going to always have on the vision board and is something that we’re going to be talking about.

We feel very good and very confident that we can monetise this global audience of surfers through a variety of different business models. Direct-to-consumer is a powerful one, but not the only one. However, in the near term, given where we are with the crisis today, it is something that we have off to the side.

We’re really focusing on executing and delivering exponentially more content that is in development to our audience through our platforms, and then transforming the platform by which we’re delivering that at the same point in time. Our immediate focus is really around those two primary baskets.

There’s no question that this puts tremendous pressure on the model.

How are you looking to include surfers in your output? What can you do, as the tour, to capitalise on the fact they’re not currently competing?

Well, they’ve got some extra time on their hands, for sure. They’ve all raised their hands asking what they can do to help, which has been amazing. All of our athletes are partners, we look at them as partners, we treat them as partners, and they are aligned to do things that really help the longevity and the long-term health of the sport.

With that in mind, they’ve been terrific. We’re in a variety of discussions with a bunch of them about two franchises that we’re going to be bringing to light in the next couple of weeks. They’ll be sharing with us where they are, what they’re doing through the shelter in place, stay at home [advisories], how they’re staying in shape, how they’re working out, what’s happening in their lives, and utilising this moment to help dimensionalise their personalities.

When we’re in the season, our athletes are very training-driven, competitive, and then in the off-season they’re like, ‘Hey, give me a break, I need a break’, and that’s what you’d expect. What’s really amazing in this window for us is we’re choosing to view this is as an opportunity to give them a platform, open them up, allow them to share their narratives and their stories with our audience.

How are you going about determining the impact this situation is going to have on the tour? Are you in a strong enough position financially to withstand this downturn?

The reality is the first thing we have to try to understand is when we’re going to be able to get back on tour. I think trying to get some clarity around that is important. Obviously, knowing when we can get back with our competitions globally gives us an opportunity to start tackling where we need to go in terms of economic decisions and the bridge point.

The good news on the financial side is we’ve been making tremendous progress on that over prior years, and even in the past 18 months, moving us into a better and more healthy direction. But there’s no question that this puts tremendous pressure on the model.

What are the commercial implications of this pandemic for the WSL? What’s the nature of the conversations you’re having with sponsors and broadcasters at this time, and how are you managing the situation from that point of view?

All the contracts are really different: sponsorship agreements are different than the permit agreements which are different from the athlete agreements which are different from the broadcast agreements. But all of the agreements, when you look at them and say ‘how are we navigating this’, we take a long-term view of this crisis.

We know we’re coming out at some point in time. What does it look like at a point in time in the future? Let’s talk about there and start working backwards. By doing that you’re able to have very productive conversations with everybody because, to a person, everybody acknowledges this is temporary. Nobody knows how temporary, but in terms of navigating the temporariness of where we are, you’re able to sit back and take a long-term view.

Approaching it from that perspective removes the need to try to solve the problem for June or May or tomorrow. Then you’re able to know you’re working towards something. That’s also how we’re approaching it from an organisational point of view, and that’s what I’m trying to lead our teams to be thinking about. 

What’s the process for resuming the tour? Obviously there are a lot of unknowns that are out of your control but how will you go about salvaging a season once the dust settles?

We’ve only cancelled one event, which was Gold Coast. We postponed Bells and Margaret River, and we’ve announced that G-Land, which is in June, can be moved to a different date or postponed. We certainly have indicated that we’re not running G-Land on 1st June and it’s TBD if G-Land will be postponed or not.

For us, the most important thing is making sure that we feel that it’s safe for all of our athletes to travel, we feel that it’s safe for our fans and employees. Whenever we get to a place that we feel that is there, we’ll then talking about putting the tours on. It’s really about the safety and wellbeing of our athletes, fans and employees.

The tremendously complicating factor for us in making that determination is we’re truly an international sport. We have 80-plus countries that are represented in our global membership base and in our CT tour we have multiple countries [represented by] our athletes. They don’t all live in their home country, so travelling to our locations from where they come from is extraordinarily complex in a world like this.

But we have a team that is looking at it constantly and we’re optimistic that, as fast as this came on, we feel that we may be in a position to start travelling, hopefully, sooner rather than later. But we have no idea.

With events spanning right across the globe, the WSL is a complex logistical operation that will take careful planning to get back on the road.

Do you think there might be a scaling back among some of the global tours in future? Will they continue to look to expand into new markets after this, for example?

Our current thinking is that there are two different parallel paths. We have a business model that has been predominantly set, and historically set, one way. The business has been anchored and structured for us to execute it that way, so on one hand we’re trying to get a really good understanding of when we think we can come back up.

Concurrently, in the longer view, how do you think about where the evolution of the tour should be in all of your products? Not just the tour, but your digital products, your challenger series, qualifying series, and all the different things that fall into the scope of the World Surf League?

As we continue to do that, I think that’s where clarity will come in as to when you come back up and how you come back up. But the primary focus, from a business perspective, is we’re going to try to get the model moving forward again. We think that there’s a really significant opportunity to reshape the tour. We had that thought prior to Covid-19; Covid-19 has given us an opportunity to really think about it more.

Erik Logan only assumed the chief executive role at the World Surf League (WSL) in January, but already the American finds himself battling the currents. “My plate has certainly filled up,” he says wryly. “Now I’ve got a new job that I’m still trying to figure out and I’ve got coronavirus on top of it. So I’m off to a rip-roaring start.”

To clarify: Logan has not contracted Covid-19. The global pandemic has, however, forced the WSL – not to mention virtually every other sports property worldwide – to hit pause on its 2020 season, leaving Logan with a considerable test on his hands just weeks after taking up his dream job. 

“It’s all opportunity,” he says, speaking to SportsPro via video link from his home in Manhattan Beach, California. “Moving into the role when I did and now being faced with this global pandemic, I look at it from the point of view as really giving not only myself but the entire leadership team and the organisation a moment to step back and really think about where we want to chart the course.”

Earlier this month, the WSL postponed or cancelled all of its events until the end of May, including the Australian leg of its elite Championship Tour and the WSL Big Wave Awards. With no end in sight to the stoppage, the tour has since begun releasing a new slate of video content, including The WSL Vault, WSL Rewind and World Surf Weekly, three new shows that lean heavily on archive footage and other original programming to fill the void for surfing fans during the current live hiatus.

For any leader of an international sports property, the challenges and complexities that have arisen as a result of the pandemic are many. And while the sporting world has ground to a halt, senior executives across the industry are already using the pause in competition as an opportunity to reconsider their long-term strategies.

For Logan, that means reevaluating everything, from the WSL’s organisational structure to its competitions and business model. After all, he says, “everybody acknowledges this is temporary”, and the WSL – like every organisation in sport – will need to be ready for whatever the future holds.

How are you dealing with this situation given you’ve not long taken up the chief executive role and now have to confront this unprecedented challenge? 

Never in my three decades of being media have I ever had a chance, really, to take a step back. You did at off-sites, you do it at retreats, but then you wake up the next day and go right back to work. This, because of the economic pressure, what’s happening with your employees, what’s happening with global sport, basically the economy in every country is going through its version of a downturn, really puts the big questions on the table.

If you look at that from a point of view, which I do, that this is a massive opportunity to reshape an organisation for the next ten to 15 years, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s painful when you’re in it, but I’m really focusing on what is the organisation going to be like on the other side of this. Because of this, we absolutely know, is temporary, so I look at it as a real gift and an opportunity.

It is clearly important for business leaders like yourself to take a long-term view and consider the bigger picture. How are you going about keeping your team on track throughout this hiatus?

It’s certainly the challenge. I think there are a couple of things that we’ve employed. We did a video town hall last Thursday where I just addressed the global organisation for 30-45 minutes, tried to tell them what I know about where we are and what the new priorities are for us.

I’ve told people to try not to be on phones, try to be on video chats, try to see people. At every turn, try to have a human connection. I was also saying to our teams that we need to get into a form of routine. You need to get out of your house, go for walks, try to get away from the screen, find different places to work. A lot of our employees have children – I’ve got two teenagers at home so I’m relegated to the garage right now; I’m sitting in my garage with a desk. You have to figure out how to set that up for yourself. 

From an organisational point of view, communication becomes the most paramount thing – clear, consistent communication about what the organisation should be focused on in the near term. You, as a CEO, need to think about what you’re doing in the longer-term, but we need to make sure that the employees that we have are focused on the things that move the business forward today.

In our case, it’s really this digital transformation that we’re going through, that we’ve been talking about for some time, that is in process, that was being planned for in June of this year, to be honest. We’re now accelerating that within a couple of weeks. We’re exponentially upping the output of content from WSL Studios, partnering with endemic brands on levels and ways that we’ve never done in the history of the organisation. All of that clarity is important because it gives people something to hold on to so that they feel like they’re driving towards something.

You’ve also announced that you’re accelerating the production of new projects as well. Is your proposed direct-to-consumer offering going to be moved forward at all?

I think if we had a product that was in market today, it would be an interesting discussion. Focusing on the development of it right now isn’t a near-term objective for us. It is something that we’re going to always have on the vision board and is something that we’re going to be talking about.

We feel very good and very confident that we can monetise this global audience of surfers through a variety of different business models. Direct-to-consumer is a powerful one, but not the only one. However, in the near term, given where we are with the crisis today, it is something that we have off to the side.

We’re really focusing on executing and delivering exponentially more content that is in development to our audience through our platforms, and then transforming the platform by which we’re delivering that at the same point in time. Our immediate focus is really around those two primary baskets.

How are you looking to include surfers in your output? What can you do, as the tour, to capitalise on the fact they’re not currently competing?

Well, they’ve got some extra time on their hands, for sure. They’ve all raised their hands asking what they can do to help, which has been amazing. All of our athletes are partners, we look at them as partners, we treat them as partners, and they are aligned to do things that really help the longevity and the long-term health of the sport.

With that in mind, they’ve been terrific. We’re in a variety of discussions with a bunch of them about two franchises that we’re going to be bringing to light in the next couple of weeks. They’ll be sharing with us where they are, what they’re doing through the shelter in place, stay at home [advisories], how they’re staying in shape, how they’re working out, what’s happening in their lives, and utilising this moment to help dimensionalise their personalities.

When we’re in the season, our athletes are very training-driven, competitive, and then in the off-season they’re like, ‘Hey, give me a break, I need a break’, and that’s what you’d expect. What’s really amazing in this window for us is we’re choosing to view this is as an opportunity to give them a platform, open them up, allow them to share their narratives and their stories with our audience.

Whilst looking out for the entirety of the WSL business, how are you going about determining the impact this situation is going to have on the tour? Are you in a strong enough position financially to withstand this downturn?

The reality is the first thing we have to try to understand is when we’re going to be able to get back on tour. I think trying to get some clarity around that is important. Obviously, knowing when we can get back with our competitions globally gives us an opportunity to start tackling where we need to go in terms of economic decisions and the bridge point.

The good news on the financial side is we’ve been making tremendous progress on that over prior years, and even in the past 18 months, moving us into a better and more healthy direction. But there’s no question that this puts tremendous pressure on the model.

What are the commercial implications of this pandemic for the WSL? What’s the nature of the conversations you’re having with sponsors and broadcasters at this time, and how are you managing the situation from that point of view?

All the contracts are really different: sponsorship agreements are different than the permit agreements which are different from the athlete agreements which are different from the broadcast agreements. But all of the agreements, when you look at them and say ‘how are we navigating this’, we take a long-term view of this crisis.

We know we’re coming out at some point in time. What does it look like at a point in time in the future? Let’s talk about there and start working backwards. By doing that you’re able to have very productive conversations with everybody because, to a person, everybody acknowledges this is temporary. Nobody knows how temporary, but in terms of navigating the temporariness of where we are, you’re able to sit back and take a long-term view.

Approaching it from that perspective removes the need to try to solve the problem for June or May or tomorrow. Then you’re able to know you’re working towards something. That’s also how we’re approaching it from an organisational point of view, and that’s what I’m trying to lead our teams to be thinking about. 

What’s the process for resuming the tour? Obviously there are a lot of unknowns that are out of your control but how will you go about salvaging a season once the dust settles?

We’ve only cancelled one event, which was Gold Coast. We postponed Bells and Margaret River, and we’ve announced that G-Land, which is in June, can be moved to a different date or postponed. We certainly have indicated that we’re not running G-Land on 1st June and it’s TBD if G-Land will be postponed or not.

For us, the most important thing is making sure that we feel that it’s safe for all of our athletes to travel, we feel that it’s safe for our fans and employees. Whenever we get to a place that we feel that is there, we’ll then talking about putting the tours on. It’s really about the safety and wellbeing of our athletes, fans and employees.

The tremendously complicating factor for us in making that determination is we’re truly an international sport. We have 80-plus countries that are represented in our global membership base and in our CT tour we have multiple countries [represented by] our athletes. They don’t all live in their home country, so travelling to our locations from where they come from is extraordinarily complex in a world like this.

But we have a team that is looking at it constantly and we’re optimistic that, as fast as this came on, we feel that we may be in a position to start travelling, hopefully, sooner rather than later. But we have no idea.

Do you think there might be a scaling back among some of the global tours in future? Will they continue to look to expand into new markets after this, for example?

Our current thinking is that there are two different parallel paths. We have a business model that has been predominantly set, and historically set, one way. The business has been anchored and structured for us to execute it that way, so on one hand we’re trying to get a really good understanding of when we think we can come back up.

Concurrently, in the longer view, how do you think about where the evolution of the tour should be in all of your products? Not just the tour, but your digital products, your challenger series, qualifying series, and all the different things that fall into the scope of the World Surf League?

As we continue to do that, I think that’s where clarity will come in as to when you come back up and how you come back up. But the primary focus, from a business perspective, is we’re going to try to get the model moving forward again. We think that there’s a really significant opportunity to reshape the tour. We had that thought prior to Covid-19; Covid-19 has given us an opportunity to really think about it more.