It’s been dubbed the “Super Bowl of surfing,” a mega, nine-day spectacle considered the largest action-sports festival in the world, with a mini city on the sand in Huntington Beach and big action in the surf.
For surfers, the Wallex U.S. Open of Surfing Presented by Pacifico getting underway on Saturday, July 29, is a chance to showcase their talent in front of a stadium-like arena with thousands of fans and maybe take home the event’s prestigious title, which can catapult them to stardom. For the sponsors and brands, it’s an opportunity to market to the masses, giving out free gear and interacting with consumers.
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And the influx of visitors to town means big tourism bucks for the city of Huntington Beach.
This year, with Vans exiting the sand as the main sponsor and Wallex, a digital currency company, stepping in, there will be a new vibe with different offerings, organizers say. One of the most anticipated additions is high-flying freestyle motocross happening right on the sand.
“There’s always different iterations of the U.S. Open. At the end of the day, there’s different things happening at the beach, but the premise is the same,” said World Surf League Chief of Sport Jessi Miley-Dyer. “Everyone is excited to be there, and there’s this action sports vibe that’s really special.”
There will be no skateboarding or BMX events this year, Miley-Dyer said, which had a large footprint in the festival area under the Vans sponsorship. But she gave a glimpse at what will be offered this year.
Music will make a return on a main stage, though not with the massive beach concerts seen in the past. Acts have not been announced yet.
There will also be beach games, activities for families and food trucks on the sand – with everything from tacos, pizza and ice cream on offer.
The World Surf League will be hosting a “Rising Tides” session on Friday, July 28, where young up-and-coming female surfers will be hanging out with the sport’s top pros before the competition gets underway.
“It’s something we’re really proud of,” Miley-Dyer said. “There’s something special about being able to meet their heroes.”
Artist Victoria White will be doing live paintings and there will be an area for Teqball – similar to table tennis where the player hits a ball with any part of their body except their arms or hands.
There’s a total of 40 sponsors this year, said Jennifer Lau, vice president of Action Sports at IMG, owner of the event, adding to the festival on the sand. There will also be the retail store selling U.S. Open merchandise, as well as beach cleanups with Shiseido, surfboard shaping and workshops and activities with the World Surf League’s One Ocean campaign.
A big draw will be Nitro Circus’ “Full Throttle FMX,” a moto exhibition on the sand that will visit on July 29 and Aug. 5.
It will bring to town some of the best freestyle motocross riders, including Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg, Jarryd McNeil, Beau Bamburg, Keith Sayers and Brian McCarty, on a massive 305-foot, ramp-to-ramp demo, said Lau.
Building the mini city on the sand is no easy task.
“It takes a village to create this nine-day beach festival,” Lau said, noting there’s more than 175 onsite event staff to make sure it all runs smoothly.
This year also features the first stop on the World Surf League’s World Longboard Tour, bringing an old-school style of surfing back to the beach.
Visit Huntington signed up as a sponsor for the third year, a chance to target visitors from near and far.
CEO Kelly Miller said visitation to Surf City has seen an uptick since the weather started to warm a few weeks ago. With people tired of being cooped up inside all winter, he expects a strong turn out for this year’s event.
And the Nitro Circus is bound to attract newcomers, he said. “I think it’s going to be fascinating to see the different crowds and types of people who show up.”
An estimated 1,000 jobs are supported by the U.S. Open. According to data collected in 2018, direct visitor spending is more than $55 million and it is estimated that the overall economic impact to Huntington Beach is nearly $100 million.
City tax revenue from visitor spending is about $3.3 million.
“These mega events are a substantial infusion of cash to our economy, they support a lot of our jobs,” Miller said.
There are countless events around town planned to coincide with the beach festival, including the induction ceremonies for the Surfing Walk of Fame and Surfers’ Hall of Fame, movie premieres and meet-and-greets at local surf shops.
Dozens of brands on the sand will be trying to make an impression on the hundreds of thousands of people who typically walk through the event.
With Vans as the previous title sponsor, it was difficult for big surf brands to have a spot on the sand, said Peter “PT” Townend, surfing’s first world champion, who has been around since the days the surf contest was known as the OP Pro. He’s now executive director of the International Huntington Beach Surfing Museum, where a 40th anniversary exhibit of the OP Pro is on display.
“Vans had pretty serious control of what happened on the beach,” Townend said. “Under the new, with a non-endemic sponsorship, it gives the opportunity for brands in the surf industry to get involved. That wasn’t possible in the Vans era.”
Hurley is back this year as an apparel sponsor, for example, and will have a presence on the sand and in the downtown area, said Brett Simpson, head of sports marketing for the Costa Mesa brand.
Hurley athletes will do signings and meet-and-greets and the brand is also helping to host music concerts at Pacific City across the street from the pier. They’ll give away free swag – more of an “old school U.S. Open” that Simpson remembers growing up.
“Hurley is a big name already, but we want to really give back. The younger kids love that,” he said. “It’s a throwback feel, celebrating the surfing and the surfers. We’re looking forward to the overall experience and enjoying the summer crowd.”
Hurley is also helping set up the Nitro Circus freestyle moto demo area, which Simpson expects will be a huge draw.
“I think all of us have that adrenaline junkie in us,” he said. “It’s going to draw a crazy crowd. Any time we get fun activities like that on the beach, it’s just inspiring people.”
Simpson, who grew up surfing the pier, knows just how much the big stage means to the hundreds of up-and-coming surfers who come to compete.
In 2009, Simpson was a rising star himself, trying to earn a spot on the elite World Tour, and a U.S. Open of Surfing win helped solidify his spot. Another win the following year cemented his legacy that now, looking back, was the highlight of his pro surfing career, he said.
“It definitely solidified my name in the surfing world,” said Simpson, who in 2021 coached the U.S. Olympic surfing team. “(The U.S. Open) will always be etched in with my name and I’m super proud of it. It always gives me a fuzzy feeling to remember I was able to capture those moments.”
There’s a handful of local surfers hoping to make their mark at the event and some are hunting for valuable points to land on next year’s World Tour. The U.S. Open of Surfing is the fourth stop on the World Surf League’s Challenger Series, the minor leagues of the sport and the route to making the cut to compete against the world’s best.
“We have a half dozen kids from Southern California in reach of making the Championship Tour, a whole new breed,” Townend said. “That’s the biggest influx of new Southern California talent since the World Championship Tour was invented in my day, 1976. I don’t think we’ve ever seen that many Californians make it on the tour.”
San Clemente’s Cole Houshmand is leading the Challenger Series rankings and Kade Matson and Jett Schilling, both also from San Clemente, are within the Top 10 rankings and within reach of making the elite tour. A strong result in Huntington Beach could also boost fellow San Clemente female surfer Sawyer Lindblad closer to her goal of qualifying.
“If you get a good result or win, it really puts you on the map,” Simpson said. “You can have the pier with thousands of people, the beach is littered with people. And then all the festivities around it. It’s more of a different beast compared to most surf events.”
But, they’ll have to get past some of the world’s best showing up to compete, including current world champion and San Clemente resident Filipe Toledo, a Brazilian whose aerial style is suited for the kind of waves that break south of Huntington Beach’s pier. He won the title in 2014.
Other World Tour threats who have signed up for the event include two-time U.S. Open winner Kanoa Igarashi and Olympic gold medalist Italo Ferreira, who is one of the inductees into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame on Aug. 4.
With all the planning and building on the sand, there’s one thing that event organizers don’t have control of: Mother Nature.
“This year, hopefully we’ll get good waves that brings a lot of excitement,” Simpson said, adding the weather “dictates if we get a lot of people on the beach.
“There’s variables to having a big, successful event on the beach each year,” he said. “Fingers crossed this is one of them.”
