The N.Y. TIMES' Lang Whitaker sat down with Street League Skateboarding Founder Rob Dyrdek to discuss his professional tour, now in its second season. Dyrdek "became a mainstream star" with two MTV shows -- "Rob and Big" and '"Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory" -- and his third MTV program, "Ridiculousness" debuts tonight. Dyrdek "has a hand in everything from clothing lines to a cartoon series, and has nearly 1.3 million Twitter followers." But "currently taking precedence in Dyrdek's ever-growing empire is Street League Skateboarding, a national tour of the world's top street skateboarders." Dyrdek said, "The biggest athletic alternative to organized team sports in the world is skateboarding. If you don't fall into that team sports mold but you're athletic, you become a skateboarder. So it's creating a place for those guys to shine, to cross over to the mainstream in an easily understandable format." He said Street League is "similar to" the PGA Tour or ATP, but the "business model is more of the UFC model, where you sign with the League and you skate in the League only, where the PGA and the ATP are more organized bodies that have events all over the world." Dyrdek: "Now it's a matter of building our stars through shoulder programming and awareness. Building a niche sports property and taking it to the mainstream takes a decent amount of time." Asked about what makes Street League different from other skateboarding competitions, Dyrdek said, "It plays much more like a traditional sports game. There's three periods and you're accumulating points all the way to the end." He added, "Last year, we averaged 5,000-6,000 people per event; this year, it's about 8,000-9,000. We're going straight to the top" (N.Y. TIMES, 8/28).
