Founder Mark Taylor’s ‘rant’
“Rant Alert: I retired from the
Crankworx World Tour at the end of the 2022 season after my 20th year of working on the project. As a co-founder of the tour and former co-owner, I am completely disheartened by the male slopestyle athlete’s decision to not participate in the 2024 season’s kick-off event in Rotorua.
Holding last minute negotiations to get appearance fees and increased prize money after traveling to the event already knowing what the prize money status was (up 37% from last year’s Slopestyle contest at Rotorua) is a hijack move. The current owners of the tour are not major corporations with the ability to throw money around at a whim. They have risked so much personally to maintain a global tour for a niche sport and to have the athletes show this level of disrespect is so disappointing.
The world of sports marketing is an endless treadmill of chasing sponsors, building upon past success and working through major obstacles with local venues, governments, broadcasters – it truly is a thankless job and the riders are being completely irresponsible in not trying to find solutions to bring more money to the sport constructively.
A walk-out like this is a stunt & while you may have made a statement, you now only throw into flux the ability for the tour to find sponsors to support your events. You should be collaborating and not undermining. After 30-years of acton sports event marketing, I have seen events that don’t have the riders backs and know that with Crankworx, there is not another tour or event in the world that doesn’t have the riders interests at this level of consideration as CEI does.
Back in the day we had Bearclaw, McGazza, McRae, Semenuk, Rheeder, Zink & many more who all had a lot to say, both negative and positive, but would always work collaboratively to grow the events….and it has grown every year with that collaborative attitude – until now.
A stunt like this by a generation of riders who have no understanding of where this sport has come from in a relatively very short time is going to leave a stain. The current ownership structure couldn’t be more aligned for your success and continuation of building the sport.
If you squeeze, their is nothing more to give and you’ll risk the tour being sold and the only buyers would be people who would definitely be looking to take every penny of profit and be far less suited to grow the athletes interests. To pull this at an event that is named “in memory of McGazza” is a huge slap in the face to his legacy too. He was the BEST athlete I have ever worked with – would get up to travel to 6am morning shows, do every media request, work on the course building and always be so full of stoke and positivity.
FMBA athletes now are acting like Gen Z stereotypes now and hope they will get some strong messages from the fans, industry, sponsors & local organizers community that are supporting them.”