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wakemitch
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PostPosted: Mar 17, 2015 11:26 pm    Post subject: Red Bull Reply with quote

When will Red Bull step it up and support a rider who can do more than a shuv indy?

I just posted this on Alliance in response to the Iceberg video
Quote:
Why doesn’t Red Bull just sponsor better wakeskaters? Red Bull spends all this money on these elaborate trips/videos and all they get out of it is a shuv and maybe a shuv to indy. They could do all the same stuff their doing but with a better rider who will have more impressive riding.

In the Red Bull winch series they have on their youtube page they brought in Ben Horan for most of the episodes. Ben rides for Rockstar, but his riding made Grubb look weak in comparison. Ben even wore his Rockstar stuff the whole time. Red Bull should just step it up and support a rider or riders who represent the sport well but can also shred.


I seriously don't get it
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Lychee
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 1:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

...And that video brought wakeskating and Grubb to an interview on fox news. Kinda harsh to shizzle on him when he is promoting the sport. But I agree they should pick up more riders and do more winch series, those videos like cranberry bog were gorgeous.
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senorbueno
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's more than who can do the latest and greatest backside 540 inward nollie heel flip revert. I've been following this sport for over a decade, and some of the new edits that come out I have no idea what tricks are being performed and have to rewind the video several times to figure it out. That gets me stoked but that doesn't necessarily appeal to the masses though.

Grubb has been doing stuff with RedBull for a long time. RedBull obviously thinks the relationship they have with him is worth it so more power to them. If anything it's a sign of loyalty that they don't discard their athletes (a la Byerly getting dropped from Arnette).

I can't hate on him at all because I think he still has one of the best styles behind the boat. So the edits don't have the greatest tricks... I still think he's representing wakeskating positively. Also, you're only seeing 90 second clips from these trips here and there. There's a lot more to a business partnership than the final product, (being on time, getting the shot, portraying an image for the brand). I'm not saying other "pros" wouldn't be able to do it, but maybe Grubb's history with the brand makes him a better fit.
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 4:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.wedrinkwater.com/pages/reason ????
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JCB_Mutiny
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 7:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grubbs one of the original pros of this sport and has been doing his thing longer then most people have even heard of the term wakeskate. Sponsors look for consistency mainly in contests and he has been at the top of the boat game since the first person ever rode a wakeskate behind a boat. I think he's a good ambassador to wakeskating because he's truly been in the game since the beginning. Check out some of the original toe jam vids and see how many names you recognize that are still deep involved in the sport. Grubbs what you call an OG
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wakemitch
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So you guys don't think Red Bull should get a rider who accurately represents current wakeskating? Because Grubb was first they can't even add a second rider?

It's just weird that there is a stale rider hogging the spotlight. It can at least be shared.

I think there are many other riders that can be used to promote the sport just as well that are actually representing current wakeskating.
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electricsnow
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 9:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think senor Bueno summed it up best...I don't have the greatest response right now, only disappointment.

The one thing I can add is the idea of "accurately representing current wakeskating." Wakeskating is something different to a lot of people. ben and Andrew are on something radical, no doubt. But I think we can agree that grubb, reed and danny don't quite ride like that, yet they have their place on teams and as ambassadors for their respective sponsors. I still think grubb is the raddest ambassador for wakeskating.

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Steven M
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 11:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I’m going to play switzerland for a second, I see all sides of the fight and agree with both points.. Grubb just got wake skating on the news and probably out on one of the biggest mass viewings in wakeskatings history besides Dieters teaser for Nosia Vision that went viral..

RedBull and Grubb have a great relationship and have had one for a long time and I don’t see that going anywhere.. Grubb is a great salesmen/ambassador and represents a simple version of wake skating that the masses who have no idea what wake skating is can easily interperet.

Grubb would be similar to Tony Hawk.. Everyone and their mother who couldn’t tell you what a big spin is can still tell you that Tony Hawk is a skateboarder and was a great one.. Andrew and Ben would be similar to the guys in SL who fiznackling kill it but the average person has probably never heard of.. The SL guys are pushing skating in a positive light with contest setups, tricks and style.. but your average person who doesn’t know whats up will recognize Tony Hawk as a skateboard name and not a random SL skater.

Short Version = Grubb/redbull did a cool thing with that IceBerg video along with all of his other videos that RedBull and he have put together (the rice patty terrace, the other snow video) but yes, they defiantly have the means and should bring in another wake skater.. if anything to hit a different target audience..

let someone like Andrew, Ben, Austin or any of the other young guns who kill it with the current bag of tricks and level of riding that you see on the tour be the ambassador for the younger kids who skateboard, who watch Street League who might look at a shuv indy and think its kooky because its not what Nyjah, Daewon, ButteryAss Donovan or PRod do on a skateboard. (sorry, i myself dont get to keep up on SL so these names are probably way off.. and im pulling from the Berrics)

It has happened before, but maybe trying and sumbit a sick 2 minute mashup of current level riding to the Berrics for a repost..

Have Silas/Nike make a sick video where they cut between the skate team and the wake team.. you see a skater hit a kickflip down a 10 stair, next shot is Ben hitting a kickflip down a drop.. You see Koston hit a front tail kickflip out.. next shot is Andrew doing the same thing.. back and forth showing the similarities..

Positive ways to grow wakeskating and bring up young kids who like skateboarding ..If wakeskating doesnt swoop them up then wakesurfing will and then they are lost forever Shocked

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Jake S
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Redbull sponsors many athletes in many different "small" and "big" sports. Wakeskating isn't a very big market (if it's considered a market at all) and having Grubb around to produce videos like this makes the most sense.
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wakemitch
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 2:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jake S wrote:
Redbull sponsors many athletes in many different "small" and "big" sports. Wakeskating isn't a very big market (if it's considered a market at all) and having Grubb around to produce videos like this makes the most sense.
why grubb? No one else can talk to a camera?
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GOLD!en
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 2:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Red Bull obviously doesn't see this as a need within their marketing/advertising. It probably doesn't make sense money wise since they sponsor strappers, too.
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nick
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I suppose that I should be biased somehow, but I'm not sure in which direction my bias should lie. As a fan of wakeskating, I'm fairly conflicted on the issue (not that my opinion really matters)...



In my younger years, I held a pretty harsh attitude towards Grubb's prominence in wakeskating. His glacial rate of progression & old wakey style/mentality really felt like a spit in the face of all the up-&-coming rippers at such an exciting time in the sport, like he was hogging up mag space & sponsorship opportunities that seemed like they should go to the guys who were leading the big push towards modern wakeskating: The oft-referenced skate style, winching, & locking-in; all-around more technical riding. In my idealist teenage brain, the guys who couldn't keep up would drop off & be quickly replaced by the new guard...

As the years rolled on, as I grew to understand more of the business side of the sport, I learned why such a rapid turn-over rate would ultimately deteriorate the functioning state of the industry. The grooming process that tempers a talented rider into a functional professional doesn't happen overnight, especially if the rider has no intention of fulfilling the role. Being a professional wakeskater was a dream of mine from the minute I found out it was possible, and so once I reached the point where I realized I had a shot at it, I did what I could to learn what it really meant. I began to learn the hundred subtleties that make an athlete valuable to a company & what would be expected of me as a recognizable face of wakeskating. It was easy to figure out for the most part, but some of it definitely seemed strange or irrelevant at first. After a while, it all began to make sense in the context of maximizing positive exposure for each company & ensuring healthy growth of the industry as a whole. In order to get where I am now, I had to learn the ins & outs of this concept right alongside learning tre flips & noseblunts. There's this rose-tinted mythical assumption that skilled boardriders just waltz into sponsorship deals & that it's all catered around the ideal of providing the best riders with the best contracts & the best opportunities, and sometimes that really is the case, but in each of those instances, you'll find an example of the best rider being a solid professional, in every sense of the word. It's hard to tack down all the little things that mark someone deserving of the title, but overall they're where they are because they made the decision to fulfill the role at some point in their trajectory.

Now this all ties back to the Grubb debate because at the end of the day, on top of being a stylish & consistent rider with as long & decorated of a history in the sport as anyone, he's one of the most professional dudes ever to grace wakeskating with his presence. He's had plenty of hate sent his way over the years, but I've come to respect the shi.t out of him for everything he's done for wakeskating. He's not landing nollie inward heelflips down in the sewers to cap off his monthly video section because that's not his role. As far as I know, that facet of wakeskating wasn't what drew him to the sport (since it didn't exist in the late '90s). I don't know him very well since we haven't traveled together much & mostly keep to polite small talk, but from what I can tell, he likes the lake life--Sunny days hanging out on the boat with friends, boosting off of meaty wakes, music playing through the tower speakers & girls laid out on the back deck. That's his territory. Whether it resonates with the core of the sport anymore or not, that's still what wakeskating means to many of it's participants, if only at first. How many of us started out on a lake or a river before becoming winch-obsessed van-dwellers? Almost all of us. Grubb has been monumental in the introduction of wakeskating to thousands & thousands of people, by means that many of wakeskating's current best riders have either neglected or outright spurned: Working with the existing structure of the wake industry & actively pursuing large-scale non-endemic projects to put wakeskating in front of huge numbers of previously unexposed eyeballs, with an unwavering smile...

These days we have a crop of very talented wakeskaters making the impossible happen every single day. Tricks that we never thought we'd see outside of our imaginations a few years ago are now stuffed in the middle of a leftovers edit. It's an incredible time to be a fan of wakeskating, seeing so much talent popping up everywhere. Unfortunately, a large majority of them don't know jack shi.t about being a professional, with even the highest ranks filled by those who refuse to fulfill the role, refuse to acknowledge the realistic necessities of growth for sustainability (being a niche-market-within-a-niche-market), & refuse to reach out to a larger audience. They want to film the most banger web edits they can, then call it a day; not giving a second thought to how easily they could gear a little bit of their efforts towards promoting wakeskating towards those who aren't already fully immersed... Maybe at the end of the day, that's their role, but when the question gets asked why Red Bull keeps Grubb on the frontlines instead of someone more exciting to watch, keep in mind that some of your favorite wakeskaters think that any company or media outlet that isn't completely controlled by their immediate circle of friends is "fuc.king gay"... Very professional. /s

All of that having been said, it's safe to say that we all love wakeskating, but it's become obvious lately that there are schisms within the sport holding very different ideas on what's good for it. Some of these ideas are just more objectively reality-based than others, simply put.


tl;dr- Grubb is a good dude who has done a lot for wakeskating, but doesn't hold a candle to modern wakeskating (even though I hear he watches More Than Machines & Good Ratio a lot). Obviously Red Bull is blowing it by not having a more progressive wakeskater to represent the current state of the sport, but the state of professionalism in the newer generations of wakeskating today is pretty embarrassing, which partially explains why they haven't scooped anyone else.





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GOLD!en
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nick, hit it on the head. Thanks for being a role model for future professional wakeskaters. Very few understand the dynamic that goes on between sponsors and their riders.
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wakemitch
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nick, thanks! That was perfect
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electricsnow
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PostPosted: Mar 18, 2015 8:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nick, that was the best explanation from a rider's position, and I definitely value your perspective on this!

I guess along similar lines, grubb hasn't ever been the "coolest" rider. And your statement about glacial paced progression is kind of funny and also kind of true. Anyway, he was never like the cassette dudes, and didn't really exude the skate style everyone was after. However, after 13 years, that dude has the most solid list of sponsors from the start of his career, including a boat sponsor, and you can probably count on one hand the number of sponsors he no longer has. He certainly holds a special kind of market value...and maybe part of it is the core isn't always the target market.

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POPTART
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PostPosted: Mar 19, 2015 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nick Exclamation Smash Smash


Pay more attention and see what RedBull is doing to their other riders too. Like Danny Mckaskill. In this video he hits a fence with his front wheel and front flips over it (6:10). A few months later redbulls instagram post was a video of a bmx guy doing a nose bonk frontflip with a box on a resin ramp at woodward. They posted it with a title something like "Worlds first nose bonk frontflip". When they have a rider they sponsor who did it basically on flat ground on a mtb. Mckaskill had also had done them on a trials bike. Special Greg of the nitro crew has rumored to had been one of the first to stick one but idk where the proof is and it does not matter.

Then a few weeks later when Grubb's intial snowskate/wakeskate winch teaser edit dropped on insta redbull labled it on insta "this is snow wakeboarding" Rolling Eyes Laughing Laughing Laughing

(insert ARCHER voice " they dont even know what bindings are")

Basically my point is don't let the idiots on the computers deter you from the rider, his skills , or that their post has any indication of the expressions/views the rider has. (see esnow's sig)

I thought that they did a ton for winching in general with the winch edits.They are all sick and they included plenty of new blood in those edits. Andrew, Ben, Yan, HOOKER etc (link for the lazy ) (do your homework). So they are trying but that might not be showing up in the "non wakeskaters feed".

I think Grubb is just playing the cards at hand. I at one point had a mentality of the ACTIONSPORTS ILLUMINATI holding down the little guys who were in it for the right reasons. But the longer I sit and watch the more I realize that it's just a paranoid conspiracy theorist dream.
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Jake S
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PostPosted: Mar 19, 2015 1:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

electricsnow wrote:


I guess along similar lines, grubb hasn't ever been the "coolest" rider.


Back when I started wakeskating Grubb WAS one of the coolest to me, alongside Thomas' part in Wide Awake, Him, Thomas and Byerly were all I knew. But man, I watched Grubbs part in Boombox so many times. His cover on Alliance (the first issue?) was a huge deal to me - I don't care if he landed it - It was wakeskating on a cover of a magazine. Which to me was awesome at the time.
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nick
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PostPosted: Mar 20, 2015 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

POPTART, I've read your post a dozen times now & still can't pick out any cohesive point or theme.

You lost me right away telling me to pay more attention to Red Bull's BMX program, and then it went all over the place from there. I don't know at what point you stopped addressing me & began addressing the general reader. I have no interest in BMX, but I'm aware that these big companies essentially pay a couple of interns to run their social media platforms, regardless of those interns' actual affiliations within the sports. They are encouraged to use click-bait titles like "____ lands the first ever ____!" in order to build their audience & make the accomplishments of their riders seem more impressive. Whether the claims are true or not is mostly an endemic issue & typically doesn't ever come back to whoever posted it. That's just a basic (albeit strange) byproduct of the current state of large-scale action sports marketing... My contribution to the thread was meant to be more of a glimpse into what aspects of a rider will appeal to these larger non-endemic companies, apart from what they do on their board, & how that all relates to wakeskating in 2015.

I edited the last paragraph of your post where you stated that I once shared in your delusions of an 'action sports Illuminati'. Despite the vast differences between the original denotation & the modern connotation of the word 'Illuminati', or what implications (if any) the concept has for our industry, I've still never said anything that suggests that we were on the same page with that at any point...






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POPTART
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PostPosted: Mar 20, 2015 8:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jesus Christ. I was saying the post stating the box trick was a first was wrong. They had already post another rider doing essentially the same trick and that was not far from mislabeling Grubbs post Wakeboarding. Showing how little they care about making sure they are promoting wake skating,or any similar endeavor, when they are focused on likes and follows : that is what I was getting at. I didn't mean to imply that my thoughts directly reflect yours, Just that in a similar way to what was said about changing your views on how things work over time I have had a change of heart. Maybe posting after you was a mistake or adding a [b] whom shall not be mentioned [\\b] Also mentioning illuminati in a literal context without clarifying that it was a stretch to make assumptions or terrible assimilations. In retrospect I can see how the entire post or any thing I typed on this page was for the reading of one and only one audience member. I have no experience from a riders standpoint and I'm pretty sure that's evident.

As for emoticon clarification


. != exclamation
:hammers: - nailed it , hammered , silent gavel, judge Judy has prevailed
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