Online streaming is the perfect wave for pro surfing

Surf’s up! As the world of streaming video grows, more live niche sports 🌳are looking to ride the over-the-top wave.

Take the World Surf League. Three years ago, former NFL marketing director Paul Speaker acquired WSL and created the WSL app. But the acquitition also came with 35 years’ worth of archival footage of a variety of global competitions, which Speaker hoped to shape into something more organi🔴zed that sponsors could make sense of.

Speaker tells The P✤ost that while Mother Nature governs much of the sport’s timetable, there’s growing interest from marketers looking to tap the hip sub-culture of its millennial audience.

Jeep just joined Samsung and other advertisers, from Target to watchmaker Tag Heuer, t🍷o support surfing in all of it🃏s glory.

Speaker, who also worked at the Sundance Festival wit✱h Robert Redford and ran Time Inc. studios, just created a new production facility in Santa Monica, C🎶alif., to generate fashion- and music-related content to air between surfing competitions.

He was in New York last week looking to sell distributors, such🔜 as Smar🌊t TV makers and marketers, on riding the waves.

His timing couldn’t have been better. On Tuesday, one of the major competitions saw the sport’s star Owen Wright win a rare perfect-🀅10 score twice from judges duri🐓ng an event in Fiji.

Surf enthusiasts, who can watch WSL’s global 🌞live coverage at the company’s Web site or via its app, would have a hard time finding much c𝓰overage on linear TV, though in Brazil, some 29 million tuned in to watch competition finals live.

Speaker touts the company’s ability to plac🦩e geo-targeted advertising, depending on the country.

The sport is also huge in Australia and is increasingly popular on the East🌸 Coast, with New York-area locals heading to Ditc𒉰h Plains in Montauk or 90th Street in Rockaway.

In the three years since it launched, the WSL app has attracted 300,000 registered users and the sport has 3 million fans tuning into☂ live coverage, according to Google analytics provided by WSL.