Bolstered financially for the past 18 years under Nike’s ownership, Hurley maintained the most expensive surf team the world’s ever seen, on both men’s and women’s side, including the highest-paid surfer in the history of the sport, John John Florence.

Up until this point all eyes have been on John Florence and his next move: he appeared at Pipe yesterday without stickers.

At 9:01am, on Thursday January 2 every surfer on Hurley’s team with anything even remotely like a Termination Clause in their contracts received emails from Bluestar Alliance’s lawyers letting them know their relationship was over:

“I surfed for the brand for 15 years, I would have expected a note to come from someone who I worked with or cared about me, not their lawyers,” said one former Hurley surfer.

The first round of cuts dropped A-Listers like Carissa Moore, Rob Machado, Michel Bourez, as well as the Stab Junior Surfer of the Year, seventeen-year-old Eli Hanneman.

Immediately, the lawyers began combing contracts, coming across one of the most glaring potential breaches Bluestar had in the crosshairs: Hurley’s Olympic athletes, and the Olympic’s forbidding endorsement logos on equipment.

Last year surf brand’s learned that, unless a surfer’s board was made publically available six-months prior to the event, complete with glassed-in sponsors logos, that surfers would be forced to ride logoless boards.

Hurley could have made these moves fairly easily, as several surfers tell Stab they approached people within the brand about doing models with Pyzel, Mayhem, and Channel Islands to ensure the boards weren’t ridden blank, but to no avail.

If all indications are correct, come summer at least three of Hurley’s five Olympic athletes will have walked: Carissa. John. Michel. Gone.

Julian Wilson is the only Olympic surfer left who hasn’t pulled his stickers, and rumour has it he’s in talks with both Oakley and Lululemon currently.

Worth noting: Filipe Toledo is sitting in a decent place. Just last year, he secured a seemingly watertight five-year, $600k-a-year deal with Hurley and as the highest-rated Brazilian surfer not to qualify for the Olympics, he has no threat of contract breaching for riding a non-Hurley x Sharp Eye surfboard at the Games.

“Given the current climate, Filipe knows he’s probably getting paid more than he should,” says an industry insider. “He supports a big family, he’s gonna walk out every line of that contract to make sure he gets it all.”

Like most of the Hurley team with a contract still intact after Bluestar Alliances recent purchase of Hurley, most A-level surfers on the roster were offered a fraction of their multi-year deals to walk immediately: surfers were also permitted a 30-day window to go shopping for a new sponsor and to take the buyout offered.

Part of the deal: that surfers handle their business “professionally,” i.e. that they behave publicly as if it were an amicable split; and of course, a confidentiality gag on the whole arrangement.

Here’s where things get juicy.

Rumours abound that John was owed just shy of $12m and was offered a $2m payout to walk. Insiders have suggested that rather than hit the market trying to secure a new deal, John didn’t like the direction of the new entity and decided to walk.