The World Surf League (WSL) no longer owns Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in the Central California farmland. Neither the league nor Kelly Slater Wave Co. made public announcements about the change in ownership, but several sources confirmed the sale and the wave pool’s president, Kaniela Neves, acknowledged the transaction, saying that the company had “not officially released the acquisition details as of yet.” The WSL did not respond to a request for comments on the sale.
It’s unclear who the new ownership is, or how the company is now structured. It appears that one of the new owners is Joseph Self, an investor in the Los Angeles area. He updated his LinkedIn profile to show that he became a partner in the company in February of this year.
The sale of the pool comes during a period of broad changes under new WSL leadership. The league hired CEO Ryan Crosby in 2024, who promised a renewed focus on the core surf audience and changed the tour format — marking a shift from former CEO Erik Logan’s strategy of targeting the non-endemic audience, creating a Final 5 playoff format, and leveraging the pool for a reality TV show, The Ultimate Surfer.
Kelly Slater first revealed his secret inland surf project in Lemoore, California in December 2015, and the WSL announced it had acquired a majority stake in the pool in May 2016. In 2018, the WSL held its first experimental contest in the pool, The Founders Cup, and then included it as a stop on the Championship Tour in 2018, 2019, and 2021.
The WSL tried to duplicate the wave in Austin, Texas, purchasing the struggling N-Land pool in 2019, but that project never materialized. Another attempt to build a pool in Florida also flopped. The League then shifted its wave-pool competitions to the Middle East and the new facility that utilized the Surf Ranch tech. Surf Abu Dhabi was constructed in 2024 and was included on the CT in 2025, and will be again in 2026.
The Slater pool in California has continued operating for public consumption, allegedly fetching rates as high as $70,000 to rent it out for the day.
