Inside the Warring Wave Pool Factions Fighting for the $1.4 Billion Cake

Last week, we reported on the upcoming opening of Sydney’s Wavegarden Pool. The A$75 million project is to be run by UrbnSurf, who opened Australia’s first surf park in Melbourne.

“The waves are truly world-class,” said Owen Wright, the retired CT star and bronze medalist from the Tokyo Olympic Games who tested the facility. It is estimated that 2 million Sydney residents can access these “world-class waves,” by car or public transport in half-an-hour. Or, if they don’t surf, there's always the swimming pool, skate pad, health and wellness centre, Rip Curl retail store and restaurants.

Wave pools have gone mainstream and sure have come a long way since the 19th century Bavarian King “Mad” Ludwig II electrified one of his private lakes in Neuschwanstein Castle to create artificial waves. Yep, the technology sure has moved on from the equivalent of sticking a 6000-volt hairdryer in a bath, and then bodysurfing it.

Sydney’s pool features Wavegarden technology, which includes 52 separate modules. Each uses an electro-mechanical system to move panels causing the water particles to move similarly to ocean waves. Variations in the sequential movement of the panels change the type and size of the wave, all driven by a sophisticated software system.

“Wavegarden’s data is extracted from full-scale operating facilities, not theoretical design plans and is compiled by engineers, not salesmen,” Josema Odriozola, Founder and CEO of Wavegarden, based in the Spanish Basque Country said this week.

It was based on the assertion that Wavegarden is emerging as a market leader in the rapidly emerging sector of wave generation technology. They have eight surf parks in operation and another 12 Wavegarden Coves under construction. They boast more than 70 projects in development across five continents in the coming years.

“The numbers speak for themselves; eight facilities, two million visitors. 30 million waves,” continued Odriozola. “Our real data shows that on energy use, water consumption and reliability, our technology leads on most metrics. On a like-for-like basis, it will require 10 times more energy to create these waves with pneumatic technology than with Wavegarden technology.”

It seems the various technologies are coming out swinging. That is understandable, given a recent market report valued the wave pool industry at $1.4 billion in 2023, and is to almost double in size by 2030. The pneumatic technology is the basis of other wave pool technology in the market. While each company’s tech is different, they use air management via both vacuum and pressure to create a wave pulse. The pulse exits through chambers to create sequences of ocean-like waves.

The companies using this tech include American Wave Machines (AWM), the folks behind the PerfectSwell pools at Boa Vista Village in São Paulo, Waco Surf in Texas, and Surf Stadium in Japan. Surf Loch is used at the open-to-the-public Palm Springs Surf Club and is to feature at a new development in Rotterdam, Holland. Endless Surf is another emerging player, with development projects in the works including in Houston, Coachella Valley, Australia’s Gold Coast, Lisbon, and Saudi Arabia. Their O2 SurfTown MUC in Munich will be their first to open in 2024.

Add the Kelly Slater-backed Surf Ranch in California and the newly opened version in Abu Dhabi and you can see that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Kelly once admitted to having some Frankenstein-style concerns after the building of his Surf Ranch. “I wondered if I’d made a surfing version of a nuclear bomb,” he once told the Washington Post.

That apocalypse hasn’t occurred, and wave pools are not only here, but here to stay. The various technologies are now fighting it out to see who can gain the early market share lead, and press home their advantage. It should be a fascinating watch.