Personal babble on the ASP in Rio

I have been a long time fan of watching professional surfing and every world tour event online when they are on. Recently the tour landed in Brazil for the Billabong Rio Pro and I couldn't help but become stupefied by just how lousy the surf was in Rio. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of times when we would kill for that lousy surf locally, but for a world tour event it just flat out sucked.
During this same time we were bombarded with images from Tahiti and other locations around the world, and I couldn't help but wonder, Why are they in Rio? I know the cost of running a pro contest is great and a lot of the big companies are in financial trouble, so a contest like Rio is great because the event sponsor is actually the city as opposed to being Billabong. They just have the name on the title and don't have to fork out the dough to put on the entire event. But really, if they are trying to make the pro tour more enjoyable for us, the viewers, and even the surfers on tour stops like Rio, have got to stop... Or at least be knocked down to a 5 star event on the WQT.

I saw countless tweets made by surfers while they were on tour enjoying Rio life, but the majority of them (including Kelly Slater) were very unhappy with the waves and really that's what its all about. I don't know if there is a simple answer to this problem as events like J-bay and the Search now cease to exist because of the high cost. There has got to be an alternative and hopefully next year when Zosea takes over the ASP we will see some changes, and maybe one day we might get to see it drift back to the Dream-tour of years past. Of course, this is all just my own opinion. I could be completely wrong. On a side note, one good thing that came out of Rio was an Occy interview with Kelly Slater. If you haven't seen it yet you should go check it out here! It's worth the watch.