The Emperors New Clothes, what an awesome tale.
The world most embarrassing kite competition... ever created - the GKA, run by some of the kite industries brands, and more expensive kites.. go figure.
The GKA is a complete joke:
They claim exclusive title to the term world champion through an agreement with world sailing (huge legal $$$ to blow), independent competitions, those without a huge conflict of interest, were legally threatened for running their own world championships despite the fact that sailing has had nothing to do with kiting and that there were world championships long before they got involved to try and save their funding from IOC.
In fact Liam Whaley won the world championship tour one year and was legally threatened with using the term "world" by world sailing.... he pretty much was the best rider...
GKA brand members pay for their own team riders to travel to and pay accom to their own competition and yet offer prize money that doesnt even cover a flight for those that are not sponsored by member brands if you place outside the top 3.
The competition is judged by judges that they pick / control themselves
They count points from dangling with a surfboard between your legs on flat water towards a "surf world tour title"
They think it is a good idea for competitors to compete in one freestyle heat on 2 forms of equipment (riders swap kites and boards mid heat from airstyle to wakestyle)
it's an interesting product, you know you could make skateboards (olympic sport) out of magnesium (trucks) and decks out of graphene/carbon composites but they are sensible enough to know that increasing the cost an inexpensive piece of aluminium, wood and urethane is not the right thing to do.
Business is business, you don't get rich being nice generally or with other peoples interests as your main goal$, but i would say it is also easy to destroy an industry in this way... has happened many times before, kiteboarding already headed in that direction as we know.