‘Don’t call it a rebel league’: Inside surfing’s new $20m Big Bash-style comp

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.