Street League Skateboarding (SLS) has entered into a strategic partnership with the International Skateboarding Federation (ISF) in a bid to enhance the sport’s global growth.
The partnership sees SLS endorse the ISF’s recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the official global skateboarding federation. As skateboarding prepares for its debut as an exhibition sport at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China this month, SLS – the sport’s first professional league – will work together with the ISF to create official guidelines for the best practices for street skateboarding competition.
A key pillar of the collaboration is the development of the SLS Super Crown World Championship global qualification system as it becomes the official street skateboarding world championship for the ISF.
SLS president Brian Atlas said: “If skateboarding has the opportunity to be added to the global stage it needs to be in the right hands and we believe there is no better group to properly represent the best possible experience of competition skateboarding than the ISF.
“The ISF has already assembled a world class group of representatives throughout the globe that has the right intentions for skateboarding with this potential massive platform. We are now officially collaborating to help them with that vision and to also learn how we can evolve our own platform to better serve the global competitive skateboarding community."
Atlas’ ISF counterpart Gary Ream added: “The ISF has been working for 10 years now to unite the greater skateboarding community to ensure the best possible representation of skateboarding is what is experienced by both the athletes and the fans. For competitive street skateboarding, we believe there is no better place to start than Street League Skateboarding. Not only do they have the support of the top skateboarders but they have also revolutionised the competition format in a way that is perfect for skateboarding on this global stage.”
Further details of the partnership will be announced over the coming months, including a plan of appropriate skate course construction needs, best practices for instant scoring and competition format, and overall criteria to ensure proper execution of street skateboarding competition.
