Red Bull Street Style 2013
Three minutes, two freestylers, one ball and a whole lot of wildcards and controversy: it’s Red Bull Street Style 2013. With just a few days till the 4th Red Bull Street Style world finals begin in Tokyo, Japan, excitement should be in the air and discussions should be taking place all across social networks. That’s not the case though, as Red Bull have messed up this year and they have messed up in pretty big style.
It has always been the easy to criticise Red Bull Street Style and it’s flaws, the celebrity judging panels and the denim Monta balls being the two main concerns, but overall Red Bull have given so much to the freestyle community. They built a platform where freestylers from all across the world could go to their local competition, meet other freestylers, gain experience in competing and get the opportunity to travel to the world finals for the trip and competition of a lifetime. This year they took it all away, they took away the one thing that made RBSS a reputable world competition. They took away national competitions and decided to hand out wildcards instead.
When I first heard that Red Bull Street Style was moving to a yearly format instead of having a world finals every two years I was excited, it seemed like Red Bull had noticed how competitive freestyle has become and how much talent there is out there. For the first time since it’s inception it felt like the competition was finally evolving and heading towards a more legitimate and respectable future. Come Summer 2013 it was pretty clear that this wasn’t the case, with only a few national qualifiers taking place and an outdated website it was pretty obvious Red Bull were streamlining the competition to territories that were more beneficial for their marketing plans. In fairness, this is understandable, but as a freestyler it is hard to accept. The potential for RBSS is huge however Red Bull’s objective isn’t to elevate freestyle and make it a legitimate sport, their objective is brand awareness and if they feel that all they need is a world final with wildcards rather than national qualifiers then that is what they are going to do.
The problem with this is that it effects the freestylers more than anyone and if Red Bull want to use freestyle to promote their brand then they need to keep the freestyle community fairly happy and on their side. Representing your country should be one of the proudest moments of your life, yet we have seen freestylers apologising for being selected as a wildcard to their fellow freestylers in their country. That’s not how it should be. Red Bull have a chance to bring back some needed credibility to the street style format if they want it to have a successful and long future. Here is how you do it:
Firstly, they need to team up with F3 and bring back national qualifiers. F3 do an excellent job of working with freestylers and listening to their feedback, plus they have a ranking system. If F3 are willing to they can co-operate with Red Bull to select wildcards or better yet organise national competitions, there’s no reason why freestylers can’t organise their own event to decide who should get the “wildcard” for their country. F3 can oversee and assist each competition and Red Bull can concentrate on their big world final.
Secondly, hire someone to keep on top of the Red Bull Street Style website. It’s out of date, rarely updated and often has mistakes. It’s a useless website which serves no purpose and poorly represents the production value and big event feel of the world finals. A website updated regularly each month with news, tutorials, interviews and special features wouldn’t take a lot of work and would be helpful for everyone. Tie that in with a Twitter and Facebook account and you can really make a presence online, keep the news and buzz happening yearly and build to the world finals slowly rather than just in August and September.
Thirdly, change the ball. It’s the wrong size and it’s made of denim. Enough said. By making these three small changes they can bring back some credibility and put on a more professional competition. If Red Bull are planning on RBSS to be around for years to come then they need to start listening to freestylers and not shutting them out.
Leave your comments below about how Red Bull can improve their competition. What do you think about RBSS?
Follow Learn2Freestyle on Twitter
Like Learn2Freestyle on Facebook