An ambitious “made for TV” summer surfing league will launch with the promise of career-changing $10,000 weekly wages for Australian surfers on the basis of team franchises being sold to cover the competition’s estimated $20 million running costs.
The Surfing Super League (SSL), a nine-week “home-and-away” season to be contested by eight teams along the east coast of Australia from January 2028, has been unveiled by majority owner and former Surfing Australia chief executive Chris Mater.
The breakaway league is pitching as an alternative to traditional one-on-one professional surfing formats, which feature multi-week, condition-based competition windows at world-class waves.
Instead, the SSL will feature teams of four surfers contesting a 90-minute, relay-based event in fixed Saturday and Sunday afternoon timeslots across school holidays.
The league aims to offer guaranteed broadcast content regardless of conditions in what are traditionally less reliable summer months for quality waves and swell, at spectator-friendly beach venues.
Surfing Australia, the sport’s governing body domestically, is not involved in the start-up league. Surfing Australia representatives could not be reached for comment.
Olympic bronze medallist Owen Wright, big-wave record-holder Laura Enever and former world No.2 Bede Durbidge have signed on as the competition’s biggest names, which will target “out-of-market” domestic and international surfers, along with Australia’s next generation rather than established surfers already competing on the WSL’s Championship Tour.
Documents registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show the SSL was initially valued at approximately $13.53 million based on the $483,333 seed investment for a 3.6 per cent stake by David Elsworth, an Australian entrepreneur whose background includes high-level marketing roles with Coca-Cola in Japan and ownership of a Japanese gin distillery and pet care company.
The league’s valuation has since been marked as significantly higher. Mater is confident of locking in a broadcast partner as negotiations with DAZN, owners of subscription platform Kayo, continue, while free-to-air providers Nine, Seven and Ten have also been approached.
Mater will now begin a market search for a principal partner and sponsors for each of the eight franchises.
In total, Mater predicts running the start-up league will cost “north of $20 million in season one”, with $89,000 wages for 48 surfers (each franchise will have a squad of six, four men and two women) amounting to more than $4.2 million in salaries alone.
Marketed as “the Big Bash of surfing” with a nod to cricket’s T20 format and franchise-based competitions, SSL’s business modelling projects for two of the eight teams to be sold to private investors in order to turn a profit after its first season.
“I wouldn’t call this a rebel league at all,” Mater told this masthead. “I think it’s a complementary league [to the WSL’s world tour]. Or I would ask, is the V8 Supercars a rebel league? This is a format Australian surfing needs. We’re not trying to compete with the WSL.
“There’s a big gap in the domestic market given pro surfing focuses on the international stage, and the national bodies focus on junior development.
“But what we’re doing is creating a real ‘made for TV’ event, and a pathway for Australian surfers to compete in a very different format that opens surfing up in a new way to broadcasters and fans”.
The SSL’s January-February season would land in the WSL’s off-season as well as a window between cricket’s Test schedule and the NRL and AFL seasons.
The new venture’s format and schedule will, however, potentially collide with Surfing Australia’s own teams-based Boardrider Battle, which runs across seven east coast events before a grand final in March.
By locking events into specific summer timeslots, though, SSL organisers risk surfers regularly competing in blown-out, poor quality waves.
“And if you’re in a traditional one-on-one surfing heat, you cannot run an event in poor surf,” Mater said.
“There’s too much of surfers waiting around, it’s just deadset boring. The teams format adds an ironman element where you’re racing the clock with 40 minutes to get your surfers in and out of the water, catching as many waves as they need to win the game.
“It’s a really dynamic format that allows us to run in less than ideal conditions.”
The proposed $89,000 contracts for all SSL surfers, regardless of gender or competition status, are a significant selling point given the gulf between surfing’s elite and athletes on the world tour’s fringe and below.
Surfers like reigning world champion Molly Picklum and leading Australian men Jack Robinson and Ethan Ewing hold non-compete clauses in their WSL contracts, which require express permission for them to compete in other events, and as a result, are not being targeted by SSL.
“The kind of money we’re talking about for more than a handful of Australian surfers here is unheard of,” Wright said.
“It’s going to change lives for the next generation. It can help someone pursue a professional career, and take a real run at the WCT with all the travel and costs that involves. The market around things like individual sponsors is really shifting, so that’s a big reason why I’m so passionate about this format”.
Mater resigned as Surfing Australia chief executive in late-2025 after seven years in charge and describes the sport as “one of the country’s most powerful untapped commercial opportunities”.
He believes grassroots investment and under 18s and under 21s competitions around each regional franchise will help create genuine fan engagement and in turn, attract private investors.
“We’ll run the league in the first season and our model is budgeting for at the end of that first season, we’ll have proven it’s successful with crowds, TV ratings and our events,” Mater said.
“We’ll then be selling two of the eight teams. And each season we’re going to sell another two, plan to introduce two more franchises by season five and create a big engine of revenue and profit on top of a model that already takes in sponsors, ticketing, merchandise and a diversified revenue stream.”
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