Just my $.02...
I think DJ and Nick are pretty right on with what they have said regarding facebook, I'm sure lots of forums are experiencing a similar shift in traffic.
And as far as the sport dying and the OEM's pulling out...I think the OEM's pulling out is a great thing! Aside from the SXR in racing back in 03, can you please tell me what "innovation" has come from the OEM's in the past 15 years to help the freestyle/freeride side of the market?
The sport of riding standups is not going to go away just because Yamaha is going to stop selling their dinosaur of a boat that was designed when McHammer was cool. Aside from not spending money on developing the stand-up watercraft, they also spent basically no money marketing it either. So I don't really see us losing all that much. I don't blame them for not developing the skis further, or spending more advertising money on them...why would they. If you can sell tens of thousands of KMZX 755's vs hundreds of another model, I would certainly focus on the big sellers.
But if you look around there is a ton of innovation right now in the aftermarket, and there clearly is some solid demand for that innovation. In my opinion, the market it ripe for a new "OEM" to get in to the business of building and advertising turnkey fun to ride standups. While the market may not be big enough at this point to get Kawazuki excited it is certainly big enough for a smaller operation. And I'm pretty sure that next OEM is going to be Rickter. Don't read too much in to that comment, I don't know anything and I am certainly not tied to RRP in any way. But whoever it is, you can bet they will be spending money and time on both continual R&D and advertising if that is their primary business. And if it can be proven that there is a viable market for these toys we like to play with, there will be more manufacturers. I know we have Hydrospace or did...or whatever and they flopped or are in the process of doing so. But that boat is pretty limited in what it is good for, and for my money not all that fun to ride.
I'm pretty excited about the state of some things in the "industry" at this point. Certainly many parts of it are worse that it was a few years ago, our IFWA tour is a shell of what it was in 07. But there are freeride contests and events literally all over the globe at this point. And places like Argentina are nuts for Standups. In 08 Yamaha sent a rep from Japan to meet with a friend of mine in Argentina to find out why they sell more SuperJets in Argentina than any other country in the world, and there a stock boat is the about 9 G's.
I've certainly been down on things personally this past year, but that has been more due to my poor decision making with respect to what I have chosen to do for a living the past few years, than the state of the sport. *Note* If anyone wants to pay me to do anything from shoveling horse
to being their personal pilot, I'm down so long as you can give me the 90 or so days off I need a year to travel and ride ;-)
As for the first comment regarding surf riders trying to keep people out...I and most of the guys I have ever ridden with or know for that matter have been nothing but welcoming to new comers. When we get new blood in Oceanside, we do what we can to keep them around...that is what I have thought was so great about this sport.
