ANDREW Stark breaks into a smile recalling the first time he set foot on Siargao Island more than two decades ago, when, from the nearest airport, he remembers taking a four-hour ferry and hitching a ride on a truck through seemingly endless dirt roads.
"There was only one resort in this area [when I arrived]," Stark, now the chief executive officer of World Surf League, tells SPIN.ph.
On this night 21 years later, Stark, a friendly Aussie with decades of experience organizing surfing events across the globe, sits next to Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman Patrick 'Pato' Gregorio on Cloud 9 beach sharing ice-cold Coronas and charbroiled tuna with a group of sportswriters.
It was Halloween, but Stark and Gregorio are on the island for a far more important occasion - the first-ever World Surf League Championship Tour Philippine Pro, which, by its name alone, confirms its stature as the biggest surfing event to ever hit our shores.
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Stark and Gregorio are the two men which made this possible. Their first meeting on the island a year ago set in motion an ambitious project that, to put this in its proper perspective, is much like bringing an NBA regular-season game or a PGA Tour golf tournament to Manila, from a surfing point of view, of course.
"We met in Siargao when we hosted the WSL Qualifying Series 6000 Asia Pacific last October 2025," says Gregorio. "We met again in Gold Coast, Australia when he invited me and Vinny [Marcos] to attend the 50th year of WSL. That was when they made the offer [for us to host a Championship Tour event].
"We had to decide fast. And we did. The President [Ferdinand Marcos Jr.] said, 'Go ahead,'“ Gregorio adds.
Sources say the hosting rights cost millions in US dollars. But bringing over the world's best surfers to play for a US$1M prize fund in Siargao can never be had for a bargain. Also longtime sports officials believe the returns are greater than those from other major sports events that the country has hosted recently, including last year's FIVB World Men's Volleyball Championship which cost much, much more.
Much of the gains come from the exposure from World Surf League's broadcast and social media arms, which beamed all over the world stunning images of this erstwhile secluded surfing paradise in the Philippines that suddenly became the epicenter of the world's premier professional surfing tour for two enthralling weeks.
Unlike other major leagues like the NBA and WTA whose broadcast rights are controlled by major networks, the WSL owns its TV rights and therefore exercises more control. For the Siargao event alone, the WSL shipped in 20 tons of equipment to the island and 40 personnel to do its remote broadcast.
From a tourism point of view, there's no better way to showcase the Philippines' biggest natural assets - thousands of kilometers of coastline and its pristine beaches - than a WSL broadcast that, according to Stark, reaches an average of 10 million viewers on livestreaming and linear TV and tens of millions more via social media. Its stable of global surfing stars have a combined socmed reach of 50 million.
All these videos and images carried more or less the same narrative: of world champions both current and former like Gabriel Medina, Molly Pinklum, and Yago Dora mesmerized by the island's waves, its food and its people - and vowing to come back for more.
"We can tell a story through Instagram, through our broadcast. And our broadcast is not in a stadium, or a tennis court, like it's actually showcased in the area. There's drone shots and roaming cameras, so we can tell a story of an area.
"And all our athletes have been very active on social media talking about the Philippines, and how beautiful it is, and how welcome they feel, and how much fun they're having. It's all very organic, too," Stark says.
The exposure is priceless, and the benefits soon trickle down not only to local Siargao businesses but to Philippine tourism as a whole, as the global surfing community's interest is aroused by this little corner of the globe called Cloud 9 where the waves, swear the world's best surfers, are second to none.
According to Stark, global surf tourism draws US$63.8 billion annually and those numbers are projected to reach US$99.5B by 2030.
"This is like how Bali was 30 years ago," says Stark, stopping himself from hoping that Siargao would one day turn into something like Indonesia's vacation hideaway. Instead he hopes the place would forever keep its rustic charm, remain a place where surfing stars go around in mopeds and dine in roadside restos unbothered.
"I wouldn't [want Siargao] to be that busy, because [Bali has] become too busy. And the roads can't handle it, and all the infrastructure, and it's like traffic jams. It's become very expensive there, too," says the WSL executive.
"So this place, the fact that the roads aren't too busy, and you can get into restaurants, and, you know, it's mellow, and it's... yeah. It's paradise," he adds. "I tell you, the athletes are blown away by the people, the food, the surfing."
The biggest beneficiary, however, is stil surfing - an Olympic sport since the Tokyo Games in 2021 and only recently added to the Asian Games calendar in Nagoya. It's also a sport where Filipinos can excel without being severely disadvantaged by physical limitations.
The Philippine surfing community has never been lacking in talent, especially in Siargao and in other well-known breaks like La Union's. Stark and Gregorio agree that bringing the world's premier surfing talent this year and in the years to come will 'supercharge' the sport's development.
Stark says: "I think there's a lot of talent coming through. But this event will supercharge surfing in the Philippines. I think so. All the kids, there's a lot of aspiration, you know, to become a professional surfer. So yeah."
But like any sport outside of basketball, surfing needs a hero to spur its transition to the mainstream, much like what Manny Pacquiao did to boxing, Efren 'Bata' Reyes to billiards, Alyssa Valdez to volleyball, and, most recently, Alex Eala to tennis.
Surfing fans believe that hero is John Mark 'Marama' Tokong, a talented island-born surfer who has become a legend around these parts, bestowed the title 'King of Cloud 9' which he carries with equal parts irreverence and grace.
The flamboyant Marama showed off his skills when he beat world No. 11 Samuel Pupo of Brazil at Cloud 9 to become the first Filipino to win a WSL Championship Tour heat. He was soon followed Jayuard Alciso, 21, a bronze medalist in surfing's Asian Games debut who stunned reigning Olympic champion Kauli Vaast of France.
Their historic wins notwithstanding, Tokong, Alciso and other Filipino standouts are a long way from getting to the top echelon of the sport, which would entail moving up the ranks in WSL's rigorous Challenger Series against thousands of other surfers in the world.
Bridging the surfing gap
Stark believes Marama belongs to a small group of Filipino surfers who have the talent and sklls to get to that level, but says the gap between them and the next batch coming up the ranks is wide. He says bringing more World Tour events here would inspire kids from other parts like Manila to perhaps pick up the sport and widen its talent base.
"Well, bringing quality events like this here is excellent. Having the opportunity to compete against the world's best, having all the other Filipino surfers being able to watch the best in the world in the Philippines, and seeing what that looks like, see what the talent level looks like, that would, you know, progress the sport dramatically," says Stark.
Gregorio has the same vision. The country has locked up the hosting of a second WSL Championship Tour Philippines Pro at Siargao next year, holds an option year in 2028, and will host a longboard event in La Union in January - events that he hopes can pump steroids into Philippine surfing's development.
“Hosting is an enabler," Gregorio says. "It is an enabler for the youth to pick up the sport.”
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