"Interesting paper, I had no idea that WTC has to pay NBC to broadcast the Kona race, amazing!!! "

I'll read the paper later, but this has been known for a long time. They also hire the production team, usually based here in Austin TX, don't know for 2015.

I have most of the IM Kona races on video going back to 1992. Ironman Hawaii coverage is an infomercial for the Ironman brand, it's not race coverage. Despite the pro's having GPS trackers this year, there were no speeds, no gaps, no distances, no mileage, in fact no stats at all during the coverage. Compare this to almost any other sport on TV...

In an infomercial, even the fake audience members get paid, in the Ironman Hawaii coverage, most athletes are paying to perform.


In any discussion about general pro's, it's important to seperate North American pro's from the rest of the world. The have an important co-dependency, the WTC, but there are many other things that can be done. I wrote this back in http://trstriathlon.com/grow-the-sport-by-cultivating-local-triathlon-heroes/ which is a follow on to http://www.triathlonbusinessintl.com/...lete-local-hero.html

Well, how long has the Ironman been paying NBC??? I would *assume* that, back in the early 80s when the race first appeared on World Wide of Sports, that the race director was not paying NBC simply b/c he/she couldn't afford it. Perhaps the "pay for broadcast" started in late 80s or early 90s???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Its a good article. Several observations:

1. Golf is haemorrhaging participants and viewers due to the time it takes to complete a round - both viewing figures are decreasing year on year and membership of clubs in the uk is declining. This is in part due to 5 hour rounds, which if it takes you an hour there, hour back and drinks is an 8 hour day
2. Kona is not a World Championship, it is a for profit athletic event that does not pull the fastest open field it possibly can over a given distance. If it did you'd have individuals that participate in challenge events there who are quick
3. It has always baffled me that so many people want to get their pro-card, its a little like a scratch or plus 1 or 2 golfer deciding to turn pro - the quality of the fields is diluted
4. There are to many events with to little money in to many places that simply don't relate to each other
5. It would service both Pro's and AG'ers to have a more rigorous ranking and qualifying strategy

There seem to be any number of "pro's that have taken a card but don't make a dime out of their "pro-ness". The criteria seem to weak leading to weak fields.

Can you provide the official definition of a 'World Championship' and site your sources?

As an example, FIS hosts a slopestyle skiing world champs, but many of the best are at the AFP finals or X-games...which one is the 'real world champs???

i'm not offering a definition of a world champs, is the IM world champs the strongest field it could possibly be and valued as such, I'd suggest it isn't when a slot drops 21 places in an AG, in contrast using your example does the x games attract the best - probably

You are absolutely offering a definition, stick to it or don't state it in the first place. I think Kona has the best field out of the people who are interested in attending. It has the highest profile of any long course race. There is also no other event in long course that you could consider a world champs. Walk like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it's a duck :)

Hi Marian,
I had just a couple questions in regards to your publication... First, is that site sort of like an open access blog/OpEd site? Second, why do we need to grow the business of a participation sport like triathlon? You write about how one might approach this, but you don't seem to make any indication of why we would want this. I dont mean to be selfish about this, but when push comes to shove, that is what it boils down to. I want to participate, not watch. How does this help the participants/racers? Does it increase the opportunity for racing? Does it decrease the price of racing? I just dont understand how increasing the business related to the pro side of the sport helps all the rest of us.

Stephen J

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I believe my local reality has been violated.
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Happiness = Results / (Expectations)^2

It's interesting, the one thing we don't know, is what Ironmans business objectives and goals are. Without that we are really just shooting in the dark and trying to do what we can to promote the lot of professional athletes.

You make good points Stephen, it may well be that increasing the visibility of the sport, especially in North America, will make it harder to get in races, more expensive etc. as there are a limited number of places you can host a full Ironman and the additional attention would just bring more people, more lawsuits over problems/failures which in turn jacks up prices.

However, for the most part, from what we've seen and heard, Ironman growth is tied to the parts of the world not currently full of races, especially China.

I think those of us that have worked with, home stayed, and otherwise supported, mentored, and managed pro athletes want to see them get a bigger slice of the pie. They are as of today, little more than indentured servants.

My angle is that given the total revenue/$$$ turning over in our sport, there is not a lot of room for a much larger long course Pro field. I'd rather see the same number of pros gettting paid more than more pros splitting the available pro revenue from prizes and sponsorship. This sport is not conducive to fans watching. I am watching IM Arizona right now and it will be a 9 hour endeavor on the internet popping on and off in between home stuff, exercise and viewing. Almost no fans other than die hard participants will care to do that, so you won't get any more eyeballs on this sport than you will get participants (you'll only get a subset of the participant eyeballs).

While WTC can do a bit better to package up the pro race, this will only convert to so many more non endemic sponsors (think Barclays, Verizon, Citi, BMW, TCS, Coke etc). These types of companies will jump on board (ex TCS being title sponsor of the NYC marathon) because of the participant base who care about pros, not because of the non athlete eyeballs who will barely ever watch this sport.

Au contraire, I could host a full Ironman almost anywhere; all you need is a place to swim, and i believe there are lakes, oceans, etc, in all 50 states and in most of the 300 or so countries in the world. And actually, if worse comes to worse, you could even have the swim in a pool in heats, with a time trial format. For the bike and run, all you need are some sort of road or trail.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Err you've missed the most important thing, volunteers. You need volunteers to run an actual Ironman, which means being in proximity to a reasonable population.

I'm sure we've all done long distance races where the aid station is the side of the road with a cooler, and a box of gels and bananas on a table. My first two years of triathlon were exclusively pool swims, I've organized races in pools... again, you can do it but it wouldn't be an Ironman, and in the context of pro's thats what we are discussing here.

I had breakfast with Mark Wilson the former race series and race director for the HITS Triathlon series, shortly after they first launched, and we discussed pro's at length, their series continues, although with ongoing changes, they won't be adding pro's anytime soon I expect.

Mark,

Many thanks for checking in--your TBI article was one that fueled some of my thinking about this issue, early this year. If you've read mine, you'll see that I'm coming at it from the top down, and you're more bottoms-up--and I think both are really important. I don't know if you saw my suggestions to Charlie from Rev3, when he posted asking about including pros in their races? They touched on some of the ideas you've written about.

I know you're on the PTU's advisory board now--am wondering if you guys have spoken to Scott Zagarino, who I learned about in that Slowtwitch article that I discovered/linked to yesterday--he looks like someone who might have some useful insights and skills for the PTU.

Marian

Stephen,

First--background on medium, the platform where I published the article. (I have also posted it to my own site--with a pretty extensive set of footnotes--but the version on medium gets much more traffic and visibility, which is why I published it there.)

Totally fair question--I think I answered it a bit in the article, but definitely not from the perspective of an age grouper who just wants to race and isn't into the pros. Short answer: I'd expect it to expand and grow the sport at all levels. I'd expect there to be more races at all distances and for entry fees to go up for some races--especially those that feature pros--and down for others--especially non-pro and local races.

I look at this through the lens I described in the article of a premium brand--where one or two brands set a standard--and there are lots of lesser priced off shoots that fill in the eco-system. It's not too dissimilar from running--you can pay up for the big, global races, or stay local, if that's your thing.

(Also I saw that you participated in the thread with Charlie from Rev3 too--and my response to him may fill in some more on my thinking ...)

Marian

To be honest, I put my name forward and was accepted for the PTU Advisors, based mostly on work I did back in the UK from 1999-2003, and between 2011 and the start of 2014 was being lobbied to act as pro rep to the race organizers including the then REV3 and Ironman.

Brandon Marsh and I were on the way to proposing an entirely different approach to pro representation, that like the pro union, would have not been exclusive, but wasn't a Union. As many will know, Brandons life took a pretty sharp right turn to take care of higher priority things. At that time, Brandon was key, he had some good ideas, plus name recognition(for the most part no one knows who I am), and was looking to his post racing career.

I then had an important, well paid fulltime job, which coincidentally I quit this month. So, when the Union was announced, I reached out to (fellow Brit') Richard Allen and said remember me, he did, I agreed to help. I need to catch up with Richard and know he is busy pulling together the actual Union launch for next year. His priorities and objectives need to be the problems non drafting pro's need to do, not some objective that I or we set for him.

You've obviously thought about and been involved with these issues a lot--I'm sure you'll prove to be a very valuable resource to Rich and his team. He's taken on a huge, probably pretty thankless, task.

I see the track record of the pros organizing and recognize that it's an uphill climb--but since I'm a fan of the sport generally and the pro sport specifically--and since I think a pro association would help the pro sport grow effectively--I hope he, his team and this group of pros succeed where others haven't.

If you are a fan, where were you all day when one of the most exciting IM's in the North America calendar was going on? Take a break from posting about how to make the pro sport better, and join in for the fun of one of the best pro races of the year.

Well it's over now, but it was a blast while it was going on!

Why does the IM business need to grow?

Anyway I don't think the long distance version of the sport will grow because of pro's. No one has been able to make Olympic distance racing a huge commercial success....

Lets face it, most people couldn't name the current Olympic marathon Gold medalist. Not to mention the current 100m champion. Triathlon is boring, and for most part a very individual sport.

Marathons are pretty popular, because they are a challenge to everyday people, people who don't give a hoot about the pro's, or how much money they make.

I'd rather see triathlon be more like marathons, something for the average punter to do once or twice, and then get back on the couch. I definitely don't want to see triathlon in a stupid TV format, with Apps on phones, and

• "The Lead Characters —in beautiful Settings  with Special Effects  surrounded by a Supporting Cast  with Friendships, rivalries, injuries, comebacks, coaching controversies, romances, cheating, honor ."

There is ample crap on TV with all of that.

Valid point but if you did it on a loop course like the long-running Esprit Triathlon in Montreal, you could get by with fewer volunteers. Sure, this race is in a large city but it would not have to be. Certainly, many will say that race is pretty boring doing that same 3-ish mile loop over and over again but my point is that it can be done. Really, i'm just making an academic point. Carry on:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I'm not bothered with the IM Business growing. As stated earlier, Americans especially are going to pay for this growth, assuming it does. Ultimately every new race that comes to life outside the US, means less US slots on the pier at Kona. Thats why, IMHO, they are heading to regional championships. It will take 3-5 years to play out, put I'm guessing once the WTC has scooped up all the licensed IM events and they become wholly owned, there will be a change to 3-tier events.

1. local events, no pro's, no IMH slots
2. Regional events - Pro's prize money, IMH Slots < I'm guessing there will be some form of qualification criteria for AG and Pro's
3. IMH

This way they can expand IMH to more WW athletes, make the regional championships big ticket, big PR races, world wide.

The question here is not actually growing the IM Business, it's how to get a better deal for Pro's? You may not see the need for them, or what role they play in any growth, and thats fine. You can also argue against Pro's, but thats where we can already see the local events going. The question for those of us that work with Pro's anyway, so we have a pre-disposition is how to get them a better deal. This may, or may not be through the growth of the sport, but it has to be paid for somehow.

For my part, having had first hand experience with pro's with major medical problems, like everyone else here in America, we need to find a way for them to getting affordable medial coverage. That doesn't require IM to grow, but it does need some creative thinking... rather than a big shift. There are lots of other small things that need addressing.

It's not the hill ahead of you that wears you down, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.