“You know, when I hit a million subscribers, that was a tick on my bucket list,” Jamie O’Brien told SURFER. “I’d worked so hard for five years to get that. It was like a World Title for me. But on YouTube, the next World Title is 10 million subscribers. And do I really want to chase that? I dunno, man?”
Way back in 2009, O’Brien looked at big-wave surfing and thought it was way too serious. “My clips were basically answering the question: ‘ How do we put the fun in this?’ He said. “And the public just seemed to love being in on it.”
15 years later, he has around 1.4 million subscribers who have combined to watch 522 million views across 1,015 videos. When it comes to YouTube and surfing JOB is the GOAT.
There’s no doubt the Islands are the surfing spiritual home when it comes to YouTube. JOB was effectively a UGC Jonny Appleseed, seeding the idea to the next generation of Pipe chargers that the old competition and sponsorship revenue model need not apply.
Nathan Florence has been particularly successful, using a very simple template. He chases the heaviest waves on the planet, and packages up the adventures in a no-frills travelogue edit. It’s not rocket science, has terrible fonts, but it’s led him to amassing more than half a million YouTube fans, and shooting well above the moon. No wonder his brother John turned his back on the rather difficult task of trying to win a fourth World Title and tacked, literally, into the world of content creation. His Vela series has seen him edge north of 236K subscribers as he heads downwind into lucrative new waters.
The eldest Florence brother is quickly catching up on his good mate Koa Rothman (256,000) and has overtaken fellow Pipe charger Koa Smith (198,000), while Kai Lenny’s multi-faceted waterman antics have scooped up 162,000 followers.
Away from the North Shore, Ben Gravy has spent a decade chasing novelty waves, fresh locations and views. It’s seen him create a career based more on unique destination and storytelling rather than pure surfing talent, and carve a unique space in surf culture. Topping out over the 200,000 mark, it has also no doubt provided a pretty decent living.
More middle-of-the-road is Noah Wallis. In Surfing with Noz, the Sydney surfer and surf coach does surf tutorials, wave breakdowns, and vlog-style travel pieces, using a GoPro as his main weapon and angle of choice. A recent how to wax a surfboard in 30 seconds clip scored more than 1 million views, which says everything, and nothing, about this slice of the surf world.
In the how-to space, Canadians Gabriel Lanoix and Alexandre Vassilatos have cornered the lucrative kook market with Barefoot Surf. Their instructional, technique, etiquette and travel videos target beginner and intermediate surfers who wish to progress to the next level. Who’d have thought the art of the pop-up could help gain 241K of YouTube fans?
But all these pale in comparison to Pete Gustin. You’ll have heard of Gustin; he is one of America’s most recognizable voiceover artists. However, he is also a keen surfer, who happens to be legally blind due to Stargardt’s disease. His BlindSurfer channel documents his life surfing, skating, and overcoming barriers, which has garnered a massive 2.5 million subscribers. Which, for a surfer who largely catches straight-handers, is pretty impressive.
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