COSTA MESA, Calif. — Many of the top skateboarders in the world will compete for nearly $500,000 in cash and prizes at the Maloof Money Cup starting tomorrow.

The three-day competition at the Orange County Fairgrounds will include street, vert and amateur. The event is sponsored by Joe and Gavin Maloof, the brothers who own the NBA's Sacramento Kings.

"It will without a doubt be one of the biggest events in skateboard history," said Rob Dyrdek, who will be competing on a street course he helped design. "This is the first time where basically the 30 best skateboarders alive will be in the same place competing for one prize."

Among those joining Dyrdek in the street competition will be Paul Rodriguez, Jake Duncombe and Ryan Sheckler.

"The future of competitive street skateboarding starts at the Maloof Money Cup," Dyrdek said.

Vert skaters entered include Shaun "The Flying Tomato" White, the Olympic snowboarding gold medalist and X Games star; Bob Burnquist, who two years ago rode a skateboard into the Grand Canyon and then parachuted the rest of the way down; Australian Jake Brown, who became an instant celebrity last summer after he survived a 40-foot fall at the X Games that was so jarring it knocked his sneakers off; Andy Macdonald; and Bucky Lasek.

"From what it sounds like, the Maloof is going to be a pretty great event," Macdonald said. "There is certainly significantly more pre-contest hype than most events. It's invitational and they're going to try some new formats so it should be interesting for both the fans and the athletes. I'm not sure there will be more spectators there than say at the X Games but the prize money is the biggest ever for a single event."

The prizes are $100,000 for first place in street, $75,000 for first place in vert and $25,000 for women's first place. Another $240,000 will be distributed among the first-20th finishers in street and first-10th in vert.

The men's pro street preliminaries will be Friday night, with the semifinals on Saturday night and the finals on Sunday night.

The vert prelims will be Saturday night, with the finals on Sunday.

Women's pro street prelims are Friday night, with the finals on Sunday.