The Wasserman Media Group has ended its plans to create an extreme sports tour, according to several industry sources familiar with the effort. WMG had put a late-December deadline on athletes to join a group that would then negotiate television relationships and follow that with negotiations with action-sports properties that it would sanction as part of the tour.
Sources said there has been no activity on the effort in roughly a month. Casey Wasserman, CEO of the firm, declined to comment. A company spokesperson said, "WMG continues to explore opportunities that benefit athletes."
The effort had been a hasty one, with numerous meetings with athletes in November and December, but its apparent failure seems to be partly the result of a perceived conflict of interest: WMG owns The Familie, the largest action sports athlete-representation agency, and there were concerns the tour couldn't represent non-Familie athletes equitably.
With WMG apparently on the sidelines for now, there is more operating room for other new ventures. NBC is moving forward with its plans for a tour using some existing events, starting late this year or 2005. If WMG had mobilized its group, it could have had the leverage to negotiate for the participation of key athletes.
Another group, Pro Riders Organization (PRO), has been organizing to represent athletes' concerns to event producers, and now numbers roughly 60 athletes, according to Ed Shapiro, the Los Angeles entertainment lawyer who started the group. Shapiro has said the group's first aim is standardized rules and other athlete considerations. It includes well-known skateboarder Chris Gentry and skateboarder and street luger Biker Sherlock.
NBC has had discussions with PRO, according to Wade Martin, the network's general manager for action sports, although he wouldn't speculate what kind of alliance might result, or when. "If [an athlete group] has the right structure and it can be helpful to athletes and events both — not just one — it would be incredibly helpful and important to us. A single voice to go to for athletes would help at all levels of the industry."
The effort's apparent failure shows how nascent action sports are where business is concerned: With multiple sports categories, dozens of events and thousands of athletes competing as pros, action sports is not close to having the players associations and powerful sanctioning bodies of other sports.
And Wasserman's effort showed how confusing the category's structure can be. WMG's "tour" would have been a series of sanctioned events owned by other entities. NBC's "tour" is expected to be a mixture of network-owned and pre-existing events.
