Surf Cat

The World Surf League (WSL) will not be holding a surf competition at Mavericks Beach in San Mateo County this year due to costs and logistical concerns.

“Obviously, we thought long and hard about this,” said Pat O’Connell, the senior vice president of tours and head of competition for the WSL. “We’ve been trying for multiple years now to really find a sustainable model where we could get a partner sponsor that helps subsidize some of the costs of having an event like that.”

Despite being optimistic that they’d find a partner, they haven’t been able to find one.

WSL hasn’t been able to run the surf competition just north of Half Moon Bay for the past three seasons because of a variety of factors – sunlight, length of the competition, having a one-day permit among them.

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“You sort of get into the logistics, like, ‘Hey, are we going to be able to do this?’ And so we started to have some hard conversations,” O’Connell said. He said the league began thinking about whether it made sense to “sit in one place and wait for waves” to see whether they could have the event. The league tries to hold the competition between the beginning of November and end of March each year.

O’Connell said it has become “harder and harder to sell that event.”

“We just realized that we need to change tactics. We believe in big-wave surfing, we absolutely do. We invest millions of dollars in it and we’re going to continue to do that,” he said. “But we’re just going to do it in different ways.”

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The WSL isn’t completely closing the door on Mavericks. O’Connell said that as the WSL tour gains more sponsors. “I don’t believe that this is it and we’re done,” O’Connell said.

“I definitely believe that this is the right move today. We believe that we can build our audience base by delivering content all year round, and as that grows, hopefully our sponsorships grow, and … 100 percent events are on the table. Mavericks would be on the table. We’re not close-minded to it.”

Drew Costley is an SFGATE editorial assistant. Email: drew.costley@sfgate.com | Twitter: @drewcostley