Is wake boarding participation declining?

[disland]

Seems surfing has really put a dent in wake boarding. I cant remember when I last heard about an amateur competition in my area.

 

Are wakeboard sales way down? Are there less pro contract's? Who tracks this stuff?

[LoopSki]

maybe they moved to cable

[liquid d]

Why ski when you can wakeboard? why wakeboard , when you can wakesurf? Why wakesurf, when you can sit on a couch? Why sit on a couch, when you can lay down on a couch? aaahh, the next generation....

[Horton]

@disland my understanding is wakeboard sales have been gently declining for a number of years

[UWSkier]

wakeboarding is down bigtime in my circles. Most of the slalom folks I know who took up wakeboarding have come back to slalom but dabble in surf. Most folks I know who started out wakeboarding went pure surf.

[ScottScott]

Its amazing to me that the general boating, and lake front living, population has tolerated bigger and bigger wakes that disrupt other boat traffic and cause greater erosion issues. Its not like they are all doing it either. Watersports is really only a fraction of the overall boating public. And only a fraction of the people that live on lakes actually do much boating.

[vtmecheng]

@ScottScott my family has a lake house and my impression is that general boating and lake front owners either surf or hate it. The boats definitely cause large erosion and limit what others can do. The loud music isn't always great when we just want to relax on the dock with a drink. Problem is that they are boaters who spend money at marinas and shore restaurants, so there is little push to stop them.

[APB]

Massive decline.

[ToddL]

Water sports has moved onto to the "Easy" button generation. What I see most prevalent on public lakes are towed inflatables for the kids and surfing for the teens through adults. These are the "easy button" of water sports.

[gregy]

Do people just not get out as much these days? I remember canoeing and camping on the river 25 years ago and at times you could hardly find a place to camp. Lately when I've been to the same camp its empty and the population has greatly increased in the area.

[APB]

It’s happening in snowboarding, downhill skiing, skateboarding & wakeboarding. The stuff portrayed on tv, the web and social media is unattainable for most. Especially in wake.... a 200k boat, double flips and 1080’s. What wake needs now to get the needle moving again is the industry acceptance of promoting an outboard boat/ cheaper inboard , cruising around, carving/ slashing around, some grabs, good times with friends..... that will get kids, teens and families interested again.

 

A lot of families keep walking at boat shows when the see boat, board, etc pricing and sales guys saying this is what you need! Easier to pick up a tube.

[Southside_Mike]

They're on cable. Cheaper, less painful, much faster progression (easier).

[addkerr]

Not sure if its just my niche but I have only taught a few wakeboard beginner lessons this year, as for skiing, this year I have taught maybe 10x the amount of beginners versus the same time last year. This would normally be pretty 50/50. Tubing is always good fun for the kids but more and more total beginners at my site want to ski then have some fun tubing. This sport may not be dead yet! As a skier I am happy.

[Fatroll]

Problem with the rise of the big v-drives is that they are not novice wakeboarder friendly. Even with ballast empty, there is too much wake to learn the fundamentals without taken really hard falls. This forces people away from it to focus on surfing and inflatables. And these boats suck for the traditional ski disciplines. On our lake the best wakeboarders all learned on direct drives and slowly worked their way to bigger wake options.

 

 

[TB29]

It is unfortunately. 10 years ago, a sunny and hot Saturday would have the lake packed with wakeboarders in the afternoon. Now, I hardly see any all summer long. Hell, I hardly see tubers anymore! Everyone is just wakesurfing now. Maybe it's because there's a near-zero chance of getting hurt, and it's easy to get a video of you shotgunning a beer for instagram. Who knows! I hope to see a rise in wakeboarding again.

[ThomasAlive]

Bingo @Fatroll. Back in the mid-90's we were wakeboarding behind regular tournament ski boats. It was a ton of fun. Once we had our fundamentals down we added a bit of weight and a skylon pole. We then learned spins and inverts without a problem. Lots of falling but nothing like the crashes you take on these big honking wakes of today. The huge wakes today don't allow them to learn the basics. Beginners go out and take one nasty fall then realize surfing is way more enjoyable. 90% of the wakeboarders I see out here should be behind a smaller boat, shorten the rope, and go slower. Have you seen how sloppy a fat wakeboat's wake is at 17mph? No thank you.

 

Anyways...I miss the 90's. :)

 

[tlarocque]

Surfers=Tubers>wakeboarder>skiers. I'll be surprised if my dock is still standing in a couple more summers with the rollers that come ashore. I guess I'm a little spoiled living where I do because I feel like if you want to surf you should go to the beach and keep $200k in the bank. As far as wakeboarders.... I RARELY see someone who is any good. We have a couple on the lake and the rest just ride around and hop the wake a little like me. Fortunately I can still get in some good skiing in the mornings and evenings.

[UWSkier]

@ThomasAlive I think you're onto something here. There's no way to mellow out a G23 wake enough to make it something that won't kill a 12 year old learning to go wake-to-wake. Ironically, wake boats are partially killing wakeboarding.

[Jody_Seal]

 

[BraceMaker]

@Jody_Seal in all seriousness my 60s aged mother got leveled off the platform a few summers ago, we were all chatting while she got her skis on and wham broad sided by a huge roller off a surf boat. Luckily she had just gotten everything on and laughed it off. If she'd gotten hurt I think the boat crew would be assembling molotovs.

[mfjaegersr]

I used to wish for exactly this (decline)...until it became clear the next ‘wave’ was just THAT...a YUUUGE! wave. ?‍♂️

 

Now, just about any no-talent @ss clown can - within the weekend if not same day - get that Hero shot for Instagram and Facebook, drawing oohs! and ahhhs! from the uninitiated, unknowing throng of anonymous worshippers. While docks and shorelines take it in the teeth.

 

Oh, but for the days when it (Correct Craft) was all about NO Wake!

 

[E_T]

Surfers are people who don’t have the balls to wakeboard or ski. They don’t want to put in the work or time to learn

[escmanaze]

From my perspective, I have to believe wakeboard sales to be WAY down. Surfing is up. Way up. As a skier, I think it works to my benefit though as the surfers need deeper water and know they need deeper water so they stay even farther away from my precious little waterski course.

 

[skinut]

So the trend in towed water sports seems to be moving from Hard=Skiing, A little less hard=wakeboarding, easier=surfing, stupid easy=tubing. At what point do people who surf and tube get tired of it? I think surfing is fun for about five minutes and then get bored with it. I hate tubing because I get the sh@t beat out of me. So at the end of the day do you have an industry that is slowly killing itself because they have moved to a sport that requires little effort to master and can create boredom?

 

I have to wonder if there will be boat cost overload once (200k )boat owners tire of driving in circles with a tube or in a big arc with the boat listing to one side while watching someone down a beer while riding a wave. I wonder what the next wave of towed water sports will be.

 

Then again I'm a skier so my perspective is significantly skewed.

[swc5150]

If the big 3 boat forums and marina pro shop inventories are indicators, the answer is yes.

[RINLE]

I still wakeboard but I am too old to push it hard. I can push my slalom ski really hard, and can take a barefoot fall, but no way at 50 I am going to really push my limits to try and advance on a wakeboard anymore.

 

Only trips the ER with the kids were also wakeboarding.

 

Catching air on a wakeboard sure is fun, but it has got to be the most dangerous of all our flavors of watersports.

[hockeyref74]

oh I hope so

[One_Ski]

I took boatload of high school seniors out recently. One was a nice kid - a snowboard instructor who'd never waterski'ed. I encouraged him to try two skis first and get a feel for it, but he insisted on one ski. I pulled him, but after three tries, he gave up. He wouldn't ski again - only wanted to tube. He could have figured it out if he'd wanted to; just didn't seem willing to admit it was harder than he'd expected. I'm thinking he's typical of those kids who strap on a wakeboard behind an expensive boat with massive wakes, then do the typical whiplash faceplant. One of these, and they're done. It looks easy, but it's not. Go figure.

[escmanaze]

@skinut Here is how it goes down in Utah.

 

3 guys are business partners and they decide to go in on a boat together. Right there, a 200k boat is a 70k boat. They all have a wife and 3-5 kids. They only use the boat about 5-7 times per year, plus a weeklong trip to Lake Powell, so it's easy to share with 2 others - especially when they are your business partners and you see them every day and are used to sharing things with them.

 

So on those 5-7 times per year, they invite one other family in their neighborhood of about the same size, so now we have a group of 4 adults and almost 10 kids heading to the lake together for a day of fun in the sun.

 

So they get there and load the boat in and they all start surfing or trying to surf. The water is pretty rough as our lakes are really crowded, so even just getting to where you can let go of the rope turns out to be pretty challenging on such rough water. They spend the whole morning with everybody taking a turn of about 10 minutes at surfing and then they have some lunch out on the lake. Once that's done, now it's afternoon, the breeze has picked up, and the place is a madhouse so they break out the tubes. They usually tube 2-3 at a time, so now each kid gets a good half hour or so on the tubes while the adults just watch and by about 4-5 pm all the kids are smoked.

 

Now the adults might take one more quick turn on the surf before they go, but probably not. More likely, they just leave at 5 or 6 and grab some dinner together on the way home and get home right about a good time to start getting ready for bed etc.

 

Under the scenario above, nobody is ever "mastering" wakesurfing, and frankly, it was never about that to them. These are just simply folks who just want to make and have friends for themselves and their kids and they just want to beat the heat on a hot saturday but first and foremost, it's all about socializing. The whole experience is totally social and has nothing to do with mastering a skill or anything like it. It's like going mini-golfing. Nobody goes mini-golfing because they really want to get good at it. They go mini-golfing because there is a girl they want to take on a date and they need some excuse of something to do that they can call a date.

[Drago]

Not at all what i see @ Lake Powell. I see big,loud,jacked diesels pulling big wake-makers . Lots of ink, backwards pro fit caps, pumping music, perfect hair, enhanced front-ends...

Even a 2nd mortgage on my house couldn’t buy all that stuff. Anyway, i see lots more surfboards than wakeboards

[DW]

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Ernest Hemingway.

[Drago]

Probably not the “mountaineering “ he was talking about ⬇️

 

[skinut]

@escmanaze that makes sense. I haven’t seen fractional ownership of boats in Idaho. They just partner up on farm equipment ;)

[ReallyGottaSki]

It affecting everything to high degree

 

I'll cycle 40-60 miles with my club, be out 3-4 hours on residential roads...

 

Lucky if we see one or two houses with children playing outside in that entire span, and those we see, are rarely teens.

 

Everything quiet, beautiful day, but somehow the lawns are all mowed, nobody outside. Its like a cheap zombie apocalypse movie.

 

most kids are pastey and doughy, misformed, awkward ,poor range of motion and low resilience. Not activating the billion years of epigenetics inside them, we're going to see some serious accelerating decline in health and capabilities when they pass these traits to their children.

 

That said, decades of footing and slalom, my most brutal falls were wakeboarding, and my speeds were comparatively slow. Something about the physics of the board grabbing lots of water, bindings reluctant to release, and the leverage of accelerating the head to the water.

 

My daughter got a serious concussion just trying a slide at 18-19 mph , that took her out of school for months and has had lasting effects years later .

Its too bad, she misses it, she had great form/stance, people would stop what they were doing to look as she went by because it appeared like she would explode into a toeside tantrum mctwisty or whatever, but was just boarding and doing pullouts with great form from her early ski exposure, and consistent slalom that she loves.

[balsamcutter]

too many public accesses. Neighborhoods around lakes filled with homes with boats on trailers. Lakes are too busy when kids want to ski. surfing and tubing can be done on a busy lake.

 

 

 

 

 

[ScarletArrow]

That quote was actually Ken Purdy.

 

Link

[dip]

No one I hang around with wakeboards anymore. Even the best riders have quit due to injury or just general pain. No one that wakeboarded as a primary skill has moved to slalom, a few have moved to surfing.

 

I agree with the comments that the boats themselves are hurting the sport. The pro tour used to be pulled by Sea-Doos. The wake behind a weighted direct drive was more than enough to have fun and develop skill for 98% of boarders, and forgiving to learn on. The wake behind the new boats is terrifying. I will surf a little during the summer when I want to be on the water but can't ski (public water). It gets boring pretty fast. Driving a surfer is equal to or worse than pulling a tuber.

 

As for kids, my 11 and 13 year olds are competent wakeboarders and capable slalom skiers. I am pushing slalom because its my thing and I don't want them to be injured. One issue with kids today is that the ones that are active are so overwhelmed with organized sports it is difficult to find the time for skiing. Mine play hockey and lacrosse. Both sports try and take your time (and money!) 12 months a year. When I was a kid we had 1 hockey practice a week, maybe two games a weekend and the whole thing lasted 3 or 4 months. During the summer I moved south to the lake and skied every day for 3 months. Now my kids practice at least twice a week (rarely on the same nights for both kids) and have 60 plus games over a 9 month season with summer activities also planned (the rinks are 12 month businesses now). Lacrosse club season extends into July. You won't see my kids in the yard on a Saturday because we're either in a rink or on a lacrosse field. And between mid July and Labor Day, if we're lucky, at the lake.

[jcamp]

"One issue with kids today is that the ones that are active are so overwhelmed with organized sports it is difficult to find the time for skiing."

 

You are spot on @dip.

[igkya]

Makes me glad my kids are grown, but really need someone to kick them out of the house. Damn millennials :D

[escmanaze]

@Drago

Yes, you are definitely right. There's a fair amount of that as well. However, I think the two groups have some very common threads. The first is shared boat ownership. Those groups you're seeing - most of them do not have one single owner on that boat. Second is that they are boating for primarily social reasons and not primarily competitive / self-improvement / skill mastery reasons. I guess the date and mini-golf analogy would be even more closely related in this case.

 

Would you agree with that?

[Drago]

Yup. Pack-em in and give it a shot.

[unksskis]

The wakeboarders are at the cable, or the river. There is an amateur competition every week at Hydrous right now, the competition scene is just as much alive if not more than the ski scene, it's just at the cable, no boats necessary, those are for surfing.

 

There is also the Pro Wakeboard Tour, which started in Houston a month ago, and is in Utah this upcoming weekend.

[packski]

Saw one slalom skier on a public lake this weekend. One wakeboarder trying to survive 30 mph. Lots of Wake surfers just going straight and tons of tubers.