Columbia, MD, February 4, 2025 – The World Surf League (WSL) and LTN announce an expanded partnership to bring a wider range of tailored live events to international audiences in 2025. Building on the companies’ long-term collaboration, the WSL utilizes a wide range of LTN’s remote production, monetization and distribution technologies to deliver year-round coverage from breathtaking coastal locations in multiple languages and across global broadcast, digital, and FAST platforms.
WSL is the global home of competitive surfing and sets the standard for elite performance, showcasing the world’s best men’s and women’s surfing across its flagship Championship Tour and events, also including the Challenger Series™, Longboard Tour, Qualifying Series, and Pro Junior series. Its multi-year partnership with LTN, an industry leader in transformative media technology and video transport solutions, enables the WSL to deliver over 1,000 hours of live content per year to millions of global viewers across the WSL’s digital platforms, social media, and broadcast and streaming partners — including expanded coverage on ESPN+ in the US and Disney+ in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We want to bring as many live surfing events as possible to our fast-growing global fan community — on every continent and any platform,” said Rob Hammer, WSL SVP Broadcast & Studio Operations. “LTN enables us to reliably deliver live feeds at low latency from remote venues and customize content at scale for downstream partners, all within one connected IP video distribution ecosystem. Our partnership gives us the flexibility to produce more high-quality live events and engage new audiences worldwide.”
The WSL harnesses a full suite of LTN’s intelligent IP video distribution technologies, including live video acquisition, routing, ad signaling, master control and playout, to enable reliable connectivity in challenging coastal locations while delivering live events across all platforms. To engage global audiences with language-tailored live experiences at scale, WSL utilizes LTN’s live event versioning solution, LTN Arc, to seamlessly create multiple versions of live event feeds for domestic and international distribution, including remote local language commentary in Spanish and Portuguese, tailored graphics, closed captioning, subtitling, and custom ad trigger insertion for localized advertising.
“WSL’s exceptional growth story exemplifies the business and technology benefits of managed IP video distribution,” said Chris Myers, LTN EVP, Chief Revenue Officer. “Interconnected live event versioning tools make it simple for federations and rights holders to reliably and cost-effectively produce more live events from any location, regionalize content for downstream partners, and expand global audience reach. We’re proud to support WSL as it captivates new audiences and powers the growth of surfing around the world.”
The WSL 2025 Championship Tour began on January 27 at surfing’s spiritual home of Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii. The tournament schedule comprises 11 regular-season events, including the debut of Surf Abu Dhabi and the return of iconic venues Snapper Rocks, Australia, Lower Trestles, USA, and Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. For the first time, Fiji's legendary Cloudbreak will host the WSL Finals to determine the 2025 World Champions in late August and early September. Alongside immersive live coverage of the world-renowned Championship Tour, LTN enables the WSL to bring a diverse range of live events across its full season calendar to global audiences, including progressive approaches to surfing in the Longboard Tour, spectacular Big Wave surfing in Nazaré, Portugal — and Championship Tour qualification via the ultra-competitive Challenger Series and Qualifying Series.
Underpinned by LTN’s proprietary, managed IP video distribution network which delivers 99.999% reliability and <300ms latency, WSL embraces an IP-first approach to sidestep heavy satellite infrastructure costs while enabling seamless monetization and distribution for all global partners. LTN’s patented dynamic carrier routing and rapid error recovery protocols overcome the complexities of IP-based delivery to enable ultra-reliable, low-latency video transmission. Meanwhile, interconnected video acquisition, live event versioning, and playout enable the sports federation to increase its operational scale with user-friendly workflows and cost-efficient technology models.
