World Surf League celebrates 50 years of the World Tour with ‘Imagine What’s Next’ campaign via Aussie-founded creative studio CONVICTS

Aussie-founded independent creative studio CONVICTS has developed “Imagine What’s Next”, a season-long brand campaign for the World Surf League (WSL) marking 50 years of the World Tour and the start of a new competitive era for the 2026 Championship Tour.

The campaign is the result of a months-long strategic and creative process in which CONVICTS worked to uncover what 50 years of the World Tour actually means, not as a retrospective, but as a launchpad. The central insight was simple: for five decades, the WSL has provided a product where imagining what will happen next has been the thing that keeps fans engaged. The unpredictability. The rivalries. The split-second moments that change everything. “Imagine What’s Next” is a celebration of that truth and a declaration that the most exciting chapter is still being written.

CONVICTS developed the campaign from the ground up, beginning with strategic positioning and creative concepting before landing on a three-part narrative framework: “That Was Then / This Is Now / Imagine What’s Next.” The structure gave the team a way to honor the depth of the WSL’s 50-year history without getting stuck in nostalgia, while keeping the energy firmly pointed at what is happening now and what is coming next.

The hero film, voiced by three-time World Champion and Australian surfing icon Mick Fanning, brings that framework to life with palpable energy. CONVICTS and editor Andrew Holmes (Heckler) spent weeks deep in the WSL archive with the WSL team, combing through five decades of Championship Tour footage frame by frame, hand selecting the pinnacle moments and pairing them with current-day highlights to build a film that celebrates what defines the tour: the risk, the rivalries, the icons, the world champions, those who came first and pushed the boundaries, and those who continue to push them today.

The film searches across 50 years of competition for the best moments in WSL history, pairing them with the raw intensity of the current generation to build a case that surfing’s trajectory has always been forward. The film features champions and competitors spanning the full breadth of the Championship Tour’s history, including Mark Richards, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew, Tom Curren, Pam Burridge, Mark Occhilupo, Lisa Andersen, Kelly Slater, Layne Beachley, Andy Irons, Mick Fanning, Stephanie Gilmore, Jeremy Flores, Owen Wright, Michel Bourez, Felipe Toledo, John John Florence, Carissa Moore, Tatiana Weston-Webb, Lakey Peterson, Italo Ferreira, Gabriel Medina, Jack Robinson, Griffin Colapinto, Tyler Wright, Caroline Marks, Barron Mamiya, Yago Dora, Molly Picklum, and Caity Simmers, among others.

Fanning’s voice was a deliberate creative choice by the WSL and CONVICTS teams. As both a living legend and someone deeply connected to the current state of the sport, he bridges the campaign’s two worlds. He is the history, and he is still part of what comes next.

Beyond the hero film, CONVICTS designed a complete campaign system built to sustain energy across the full 9-month, 12-event Championship Tour season. This includes a modular design system, a messaging framework for WSL’s broadcast, social, and marketing teams, and a content architecture that supports both planned storytelling and real-time reactive content tied to event results.

The campaign also extends into WSL’s Fantasy Surfer gaming products, with dedicated broadcast and social spots for Pick Your Team and the new Bracket Challenge game, both built within the Imagine What’s Next design system. Portuguese-language market versions voiced by 2019 World Champion Italo Ferreira round out the initial deliverables, with additional extensions planned throughout the season.

The campaign launches ahead of the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach and spans broadcast, social, digital, OOH, and on-site activations at Championship Tour events worldwide.

Says Brooke Farris, Chief Marketing Officer & President North America, World Surf League: “The WSL is entering a new era. We’ve returned to the aggregate format crowning World Champions at the Pipe Masters, we have a new generation of incredible surfers stepping onto the world stage, and we’re celebrating 50 years of the World Tour. ‘Imagine What’s Next’ captures the ambition of this moment, it’s a nod to our deep history while being focussed on what surfing is becoming. We wanted a creative partner who understood the sport from the inside out, who could build something with the depth and longevity this moment deserves. CONVICTS delivered exactly that. This campaign is designed to grow with the season, react to what happens on tour, and keep our fans engaged from Bells Beach through Pipeline. We’re incredibly proud of it.”

Says Tom Law, Director and Chief Creative Officer, CONVICTS: “Surfing has always been at the center of what we do at CONVICTS. It’s in our DNA. This wasn’t a brief we approached from the outside looking in. We live in this world. We understand the rhythm of a tour season, the weight of a heat at Bells, the feeling of watching someone do something on a wave that has never been done before. The challenge was building a campaign system that honors 50 years of that history without getting stuck in it. ‘Imagine What’s Next’ is designed to look forward. The three-part structure gives us a way to acknowledge the legends and the legacy while keeping the energy pointed at what’s happening right now and what’s coming next. And having Mick’s voice carry that story felt like the only choice. He bridges both worlds. He is the history and he’s still deeply connected to where the sport is going.”

Says Dylan Roley, Business Director, CONVICTS: “The WSL sits in a unique position in professional sports. It’s one of the only major leagues where the athletes and the culture existed long before the competition did. Surfing doesn’t need a league to exist. That tension between free surf culture and organized competition is what makes the WSL so fascinating to work on, and so challenging to market. The audience doesn’t just watch. They surf. They check the forecast. They have opinions on who deserved the score. The relationship between a surf fan and the tour is more intimate and more critical than almost any other sport. That’s a harder audience to earn, but it’s a more valuable one. The insight that drove this campaign is that for 50 years, the thing that has kept people watching is the same thing that keeps a surfer paddling out: what happens next is never guaranteed. That uncertainty is the product. For CONVICTS, this is the kind of work we exist to make. Long-term creative partnerships where strategy, craft, and culture can’t be separated from each other.”

Client: World Surf League
Chief Marketing Officer & President North America, WSL: Brooke Farris
Chief Strategy and Brand Officer: Dave Prodan
EVP, Content Strategy and Production: Tim Greenberg
Director, Global Marketing: Travis Tan
Art Director: Chase Tarkington
Director of Broadcast Production: Milby Shannon

Agency: CONVICTS
Chief Creative Officer / Director: Tom Law
Business Director & Producer: Dylan Roley
Executive Producer: Pete Maiden
Creative Director: Sharkey Weinberg
Business Director: Abby White
Producer: Chris Fitzsimmons
Voiceover: Mick Fanning
Editor: Andrew Holmes
Post-Production: Heckler, Sydney
Executive Producer: Will Alexander
Post Producer: Isobel Jones
Music & Sound: Heckler Sound
Sound Design: Dave Robertson & Myles Lowe
Executive Producer: Bonnie Law
Colorist: Fergus Rotherham
Design: Sam Chirnside

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