By Jack Burden

The 2025 Swiss Pro Slalom will not feature on the Waterski Pro Tour after the event failed to meet the minimum prize purse threshold required for tour inclusion. A blip? A bureaucratic technicality? Or is it a mirror held up to the broader struggles of professional waterskiing?

The numbers are clear cut: a total prize purse of $12,000—half of last year’s offering—falls below the threshold required to maintain its star-level status. Technically, it could qualify as an introductory event, but only if it hadn’t worn the badge of a higher-tier competition in both 2023 and 2024. So here we are, with a top-tier webcast and world-class athletes, but an event that no longer qualifies for the official tour it helped define.

And therein lies the tension.

In many ways, the Swiss Pro Slalom is the blueprint for modern waterski events. Held in the heart of Central Florida—a stone’s throw for most of the world’s elite—it minimizes travel costs and sidesteps the logistical sprawl of international hosting. There’s no scramble to pack bleachers with spectators. Instead, the focus is squarely on the screen, with a heavy investment in producing a polished, professional webcast. In fact, the Swiss Pro has served as the unofficial proving ground for The Waterski Broadcasting Company (TWBC), the undisputed titan of waterski streaming. It’s their backyard. It’s their home court. And it shows.

But for all its polish, the money has rarely matched the production quality. Since its 2015 inception, the Swiss Pro Slalom has usually operated on the financial fringes. Its status has bobbed between introductory and non-qualifying levels, only recently ascending to a more lucrative tier in 2023 and 2024—before falling back again this year.

Yet despite modest prize purses, Swiss Pro Slalom remains TWBC’s most viewed webcast every year. It routinely eclipses richer, flashier tournaments with deeper sponsor pockets. Which begs the obvious question: does prize money matter as much as we think it does?

If viewership is the metric that counts, then maybe not. But if professional waterskiing becomes a loop of Central Florida-based events rewarding only the top three athletes, the ceiling lowers fast. There’s a real danger the sport becomes a closed circuit: elite, expensive to enter, and hard to sustain.

Current event funding models lean heavily on a trio of lifelines—endemic sponsors, community benefactors, and increasingly, athlete entry fees. That’s a brittle structure. One good gust and it all falls apart. And yet, the answer may not be to pour more into the prize pot, but to grow the audience instead.

Which is precisely what TWBC is trying to do.

Armed with high-tech cameras, drones, slick graphics, and expert commentators, TWBC has become the face of waterski broadcasting. In 2024 alone, it streamed 10 of the 13 Waterski Pro Tour events. Its influence is unmissable. Since COVID-era lockdowns drove viewership online, TWBC’s numbers have surged—at least initially. But since 2020, YouTube viewership has plateaued. Publicly available data shows a consistency in viewer counts, not growth. Maybe the deeper analytics tell a different story, but the surface stats suggest a ceiling has been hit.

Still, the ambition hasn’t waned. TWBC’s 2023 documentary project drew over 140,000 views, taking a page from Formula One’s “Drive to Survive” playbook. But the follow-up series, The Rise of Waterskiing, hasn’t yet caught fire. The sport is still waiting for its breakout moment.

Meanwhile, nearly every major player in the sport is all-in on TWBC. And for fans, this might just be the golden age. You can watch almost every event live, for free, and in better quality than ever before. But current viewership alone doesn’t pay the bills—or the prize checks. If it did, the Swiss Pro Slalom wouldn’t be fighting for tour status.

So here we are. The Swiss Pro Slalom won’t appear on the Waterski Pro Tour in 2025. But it’ll still feature a stacked field of athletes. It’ll still be produced with unmatched polish. And if history is any guide, it’ll still be the most watched event of the year. For all its flaws, it remains one of the best exhibitions of pro slalom skiing.

Will that be enough?

I’ll be watching. Odds are, if you’ve read this far, you will too. And maybe that’s the metric that matters most.

After all, if a rope is shortened at the lake and no one sees it, did it really happen?