The Business of Sport

Business

San Diego teems with active folks with outdoor intentions. And local companies can always find ways to make a buck off all the surfers, bikers and weekend warriors.

I'M LYING ON A BODYBOARD, getting ready to hop on a sheet of water moving at about 30 miles per hour.

“You want to keep your elbows in and use them to pivot to control the board,” says my instructor, Kristen Barney. “Keep your feet down.”

Before I can fully appreciate her advice, I’m propelled backward into a 10-foot barrel wave. The elbows and feet I’m supposed to be directing are sent flying by the wave, and I’m gently deposited on the exit ramp.

I’ve just wiped out on Bruticus Maximus, a wave machine that’s the brainchild of Tom Lochtefeld, who plans to plant barrel waves all over the world for flowboarding, surfing’s latest craze. Bruticus Maximus resides at Belmont Park, but Lochtefeld has invested millions in flowboarding facilities around the United States and overseas. He’s hoping to “drop in” on a barrel wave of popularity for sales of surfing gear, apparel and accessories, which grew from a $6.5 billion market in 2004 to $7.5 billion in 2006 (a 14.5 percent increase), according to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association.

San Diegans——quite naturally——are at the forefront of developing technologies that cater to the new, X-Games fueled athletes, as well as aging weekend warriors who suddenly decide it’s time to run a marathon.

Lochtefeld designed rides for Raging Waters theme parks throughout the West. But he wasn’t satisfied with early attempts at a surfing experience. “The wave pools in operation don’t give the surfer the chance to do tricks and maneuvers,” he says.

So Lochtefeld developed a “sheet wave” technology that directs water over a surface——creating a perfect, stationary wave. Surfers can ride on a bodyboard, similar in size and shape to a snowboard. Flowboarding is relatively new, but skateboarders and snowboarders are most likely to succeed at it.

Outside San Diego, Lochtefeld has opened flowboarding machines such as the Bruticus Maximus——and its gentler little brother the Flowrider——in more than 80 locations, from Vista to Chile and Singapore.

The pull of surfing transcends geographies and cultures, Lochtefeld says. “It’s always been an aspirational activity——really hard to learn in the ocean, dealing with changing parameters. That amount of investment carries a sense of accomplishment. And then recognizing that you’re pretty insignificant in the scheme of things and dealing with phenomenal forces. It’s a humbling experience——but if you can do it, you’re stoked.”

A flowboard runs about $300. Rides on Lochtefeld’s machines cost about $20 per hour. The flowboarding machines have become the centerpiece for Lochtefeld’s Wavehouse, a restaurant he operates in Belmont Park. Since taking over the city lease for Belmont Park attractions (except the Coaster) in 2002, Lochtefeld says, park revenue has doubled, to about $21 million annually.

His full redevelopment plan for Belmont Park is “pretty major,” he says. “It could involve tearing down everything and starting over” and might carry a price tag north of $50 million.

In the short term, Lochtefeld says he’s looking at bringing in a new wave attraction, catch-a-wave, built for beginners. Longer term, Lochtefeld envisions an “athletic hotel” that would combine the aquatic elements of Belmont Park and the beach with retail that dovetails into the beach lifestyle.

“That’s what Mission Beach is,” he says. “We’re trying to maximize what San Diego has to offer.”

JACKIE BICKFORD is a Lunatic. The Lunatics is the name of a bike-riding club sponsored by Luna Bars, an energy snack. Bickford is a 47-year-old business license inspector for the city of Oceanside. She rides her bike more than 30 miles a week, training for various endurance events. On the way to losing 75 pounds, she discovered Active.com, a Web site that aims to enlist weekend warriors and endurance athletes in leagues and events.

“As a Christmas present from my daughter, I received a guide to train for my first 5K run from Active.com,” Bickford says. “They send daily e-mails that tell you how much you should be running, how to train, and they provide encouragement.”

There’s no charge to become a member of active.com; members pay to enroll for events. The training programs run from $9.95 to $39.95 depending on the event and length of the program.

Bickford is one of an estimated 5 million monthly visitors to San Diego–based Active.com, which has 12 million registered users. In addition to the training guidelines, Active.com handles registrations for more than 100,000 events each year. The nine-year-old company has also developed and acquired specialty participation sports Internet Properties, including eteamz.com, ActiveEurope.com and ActiveGolf.com. The Web site has attracted mainstream investment from Ticketmaster and ESPN, and has gone global with offices in Canada, Australia and China.

Active.com also helps about 80 percent of the nation’s top 100 parks-and-recreation departments get organized on the Internet, with recreation league news and data. CEO Dave Alberga says Active.com is “the leader at what we do. We make it easier for people to find and participate in various activities.”

He says Active.com connects with its average user in cycles, once as a kid and later on as an adult.

“We see them first in youth sports, college, little league, NFL youth programs, parks-and-rec department programs,” he says. “Then we pick up our audience again, after college. This audience is in adult leagues and parks-and-rec but also endurance sports like running, swimming, triathlon and cycling.”

Alberga sees untapped potential in more than 2,000 summer camps that have much the same information, registration and data collection needs as a parks-and-rec department.

Though traditional sports leagues tend to dominate, Alberga says he’s noticed explosive growth especially in triathlon and lacrosse. He calls the latter “the fastest growing sport in the United States, 10 years running.”

Whether other sporting endeavors——like flowboarding——can gain a similar foothold remains to be seen. But entrepreneurs like Lochtefeld have a model to look to: the skateboard industry. From humble beginnings in the ’70s, skateboarding has grown into a $5 billion-plus industry, on the strength of recognizable heroes like North County’s Tony Hawk, development of skateboard parks in many cities and more than 12 million skateboarders nationwide, according to the International Association of Skateboard Companies.

Add churning water to this recipe, and you might have the future of flowboarding, where even wiping out——trust me——is an exhilarating experience.

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