beastofbourbon wrote:
griffeyfan04 wrote:
Just an FYI they moved the 70.3 to May for 1 year. Then moving it back to July in 2018. The full flips from July to May in 2018. Plus WF numbers have gone down significantly the last 5 years. Like down 80 percent significantly. So if you think Ironman is destroying the race for 2017 they may be too late as it is a dying race already unfortunately. And why should they (WTC) care about the impact they have on a competitor's race? If they didn't want to hurt anybody else's feelings and impact races they would have them in the winter months and that wouldn't do very good for them now would it?
It's not that they don't care. They do. Their business practices are predatory and monopolistic.
They were going to keep throwing races at B2B until it sold or folded. Having the Chatty 70.3 in May was no accident, and they got what they wanted with Rev3 Knoxville going away. They probably knew it would only take one year to take down Wildflower, given the recent problems with lake levels.
What has me curious is how they had taken such a huge bite out of Vineman 140.6 (from ~900 to ~300 people in just a couple years) before they bought it.
The best I can do is vote with my wallet, until I no longer have a choice. At that point I think the wallet may stay closed.
You're perhaps voting with your wallet but posting and thinking with emotion.
Think about it logically. I agree with griffeyfan... why the hell would WTC care how their decisions impact their competitors for the worse? It's BUSINESS. It's not a Utopian triathlon world that some of you wish existed. Businesses counterprogram against their competition all the time, especially in the entertainment and event biz. That's how it works.
I also think some of you give WTC a little too much credit for some things. Wildflower was doomed no matter what. The drought killed that race, not WTC. I'm simply amazed they held out this long. They probably should have bailed a couple of years ago. I've said this before, RD's seem to be the last to know their races have one foot in the grave. You also said you're curious how WTC took such a bit out of the Vineman full before they bought it despite no counterprogramming from WTC. That question answers itself. It's because there's next to zero market for 140.6 races without the Ironman name attached to it. You can add up every indie 140.6 race in North America and their total number of participants will not come close to 1000. GFT, Rev3 Cedar Point, and Redman are the three largest indie 140.6 races and combined have about the same number of racers as the M40-44 AG does at a sold out IM race.
The WTC haters also need to resign themselves to the idea the exact same scenario is going to play out with 70.3 distance races. WTC will have a similar stranglehold on that distance in the not so distant future. The only thing that's going to stop WTC is if the whole triathlon industry completely imploded. Otherwise, they're on the path for global domination in the industry. I have said before that Challenge Roth will be an IM race within the next five year. That's literally the only competitive stronghold left. Challenge is otherwise almost a non-factor. I would like it if there were some competition out there as it's likely better for us the consumers but it really isn't playing out like that. Challenge is pretty much only competitive in Europe and that's still mainly due to Roth. WTC controls North and South America. WTC controls the Middle East. WTC will totally control Asia/Pacific soon enough. The Dalian Wanda deal will see to that. That leaves Europe. Sorry, Challenge just cannot hold out. Their fate has already been decided. It's just a matter of how long they want to fight a losing battle. Roth has such a following that not even WTC can counterprogram it out of existence. So they will pick off all of Challenge's other races so that Roth is the only race left standing. At that point, how long does Challenge, the company, last with more or less one race left in their stable? Not long before they surrender to WTC. I don't see it playing out any other way.
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