Rip Curl Earnings Plunge 27% After Boycotts Tied To Transgender Surfer Promotion

KMD Brands, the parent company of the popular surf brand Rip Curl, posted an $82.9 million loss and will close 21 retail locations, per a report from The Daily Mail. Rip Curl generated $30.6 million in total revenue in FY25 before taxes, representing a 27% decrease in earnings from the previous year. 

This financial update follows the end of Rip Curl’s longtime partnership with pro surfer Bethany Hamilton and the release of a promotional clip featuring a transgender-identifying male, which led to boycotts.

The Australia-based KMD said on Wednesday that it had recently restructured its business in a move designed to save $5 million annually. The results for 2024-25 are significantly worse than those of the previous year, when the company posted a $48.3 million loss, according to 1 News in New Zealand. The outlet noted that the company has not been profitable since the 2014-15 fiscal year.

There is no explicit connection between the company’s poor financial performance and its push for transgender inclusion, but social media users have been pointing to the results as proof of the popular adage, “go woke, go broke.”

In January 2024, the international brand released a documentary ad featuring Sasha Jane Lowerson, a male competing in the women’s category for professional surfing, as part of its “Summer Looks Good on You” campaign. Lowerson previously competed in the men’s surfing division under the name Ryan Egan until he began his “gender transition” in 2021.

The video received massive backlash, prompting Rip Curl Women to pull the ad just days later. 

“Our recent post has landed us in the divisive space around transgender participation in competitive sport. We want to promote surfing for everyone in a respectful way but … we upset a lot of people with our post and for that, we are sorry … The surfer featured has not replaced anyone on the Rip Curl team and is not a sponsored athlete,” the company said in a statement at the time.

Meanwhile, Hamilton, an outspoken Christian and critic of males competing in women’s sports, reacted to the promo by posting on X, “Male-bodied athletes should not be competing in female sports. Period.”

Hamilton is best known for losing her arm in a shark attack while surfing when she was 13 years old. But instead of letting the accident quell her love for the sport, she went on to compete into adulthood. Her incredible story was turned into both a book and the movie “Soul Surfer.” 

The pro surfer had previously come out against the World Surf League in 2023 when it adopted the International Surfing Association (ISA) policy on transgender participation in the sport. 

“This concerns me as a professional athlete that has been competing in the World Surf League events for the past 15-plus years,” Hamilton said at the time. 

“I think many of the girls currently on tour are not in support with this new rule and they fear being ostracized if they speak up,” she went on. “We are seeing glimpses of male-bodied dominance in women’s sports like running, swimming, and others. I personally won’t be competing in, or supporting, the World Surf League if this rule remains.”

It’s unclear who initiated the break in sponsorship between Hamilton and Rip Curl, but there’s no denying that the two were at odds when it came to transgender activism. In October 2023, followers noticed that Hamilton’s surfboard, which was always covered in Rip Curl decals, had been stripped bare. 

Hamilton is now sponsored by PublicSquare, an online marketplace that shares her values.

While the exact situation between Hamilton and Rip Curl was never publicly addressed, social media was not kind to the surf brand after it was revealed that it had endorsed males competing in women’s sports.

“Imagine, dropping a phenomenal professional surfer, who survived a shark biting her arm off, only to replace her with a man who pretends to be a woman. Guess what my followers and I will be doing? We will all #BoycottRipCurl,” one person wrote on X.