You nailed it.

Please please tell us more we want more of your brilliant insight!

Ironman now seems to own many of the major marathons and half marathons in NZ, plus Tarawera Ultra. Not sure if that is the case overseas, but here they own Auckland, Queenstown and Hawkes Bay marathons and half-marathons.

So I'm not sure if you are talking ironman the company or ironman the event.

Three of our local triathlons are gone too, must be Ironman and Messick’s fault. LOL

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Team Zoot So Cal

Not only that, but birth rates are down too. My wife even wants nothing to do with me after seeing that autographed 8x10 headshot of Messick I have in my office.

Ironman and 70.3.

They will keep making easier money from marathons and biking events.

They don’t need triathlons.

Do they even make money from them?

Messicknis either a genius killing off Ironman triathlon and buying up running events

Or an arse. Depending on what you like and do

LOL

I think his retirement coupled with less participants and less races does signal major restructuring on Ironman's part.

When revenue is cut in half you can't pay for expenses to include the over inflated salary of the CEO. I think it echoes the financial woes Ironman is going through due to numbers plummeting.

With time I think we will forget many of the ups and downs of IM during Messick's tenure. He does some good things. But I think the one thing we will remember is the killing or severe injury to the mystique of Kona.

We can pretend it was for fairness to women, bla, bla, bla. But it was a need to put 5000 people on a course to "grow", not the sport, but earnings. Long term they would have been better with 2400 people in a one day event and found alternatives for many of the other issues.

Had we been in a boom, maybe they would have been able to transfer some of that mystique elsewhere and Nice was certainly a candidate. But the timing was not good. The powers (PTO, Challenge, IM) should have cooperated for their own good.

Bad conditions, good pilot, one can recover. Bad conditions, bad pilot, goes into a tailspin.

I do not blame Andrew, he is is accountable to his shareholders not to any legacy

Only time will tell.

Not sure how you automatically blame him for certain races not getting the turnout they need to survive?

The only thing I really disagree with over the past 10-12 years (my time in the sport) is the splitting of the worlds. I think it would have been a great thing if they could have kept both days in Kona, but didn't work out that way.

Messick did not cause Covid, nor did he cause recession & interest rate hikes, etc.

This is entirely a fantasy thread based on some anecdotes. Anybody looked at published financials? Don't know where to get there but there must be something out there. I suspect the revenue base is massively larger than 10ys ago, Messick has squeezed the value of the franchise like a lemon, he got very wealthy with the various sales/corporate actions, and is laughing all the way to the bank. He's now left an overextended franchise with its key event (Kona) blown up in pieces and likely a few down years for the brand ahead, with the pieces being picked up by somebody else. Classic corporate America.

this could be a very positive turn out. There is too many races around and participation is low. If we can slowly move back to a few less races and get those races fill up, it will greatly improve the volonteer experience, the participant experience and be a positive turn out.

we will see.....

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

It's funny how short our memories are.

Triathlete wrote an article 2019 on the IPO of WSG estimating the IM participation revenue at $91.9mm. The total participation revenue for WSG was reported at around $140mm.

In 2020 IM and other parts were sold to Advance (a private group).

In 2021 WSG was delisted from the NASDAQ. Articles reported that their fourth quarter 2020 participation revenue was - wait for it --- $3.8mm. Of course, by this time WSG did not own IM. However, since it was public you can extrapolate similar results to private participation companies. In the fourth quarter of 2020, WSG held THREE events in the whole quarter. In 2019 they held FORTY-FIVE.

COVID restrictions killed participation companies like WSG and IM. We all lived through the last minute cancellations of events. For us, participating in a First-World activity, it was frustrating for sure. But for a company (WSG/IM/whomever) trying to host an event of 2,000 or more people, it was financially crippling. The planning, including the spending of money, takes over a year for each of the events.

You could argue, "Yeah, but they kept the participant's money, so how'd they lose?" They did allow deferrals (maybe not what I wanted), but more importantly they had to continue to plan "next year's" event. This means more money for the 2021 event. Then many of these were also cancelled by the local authorities. So you get to start planning 2022, the third year of spending without the expected revenue.

I'm not trying to defend them, as I think they handled the cancellations poorly and they've handled the rebuilding poorly. But there's no doubt that for many of the participation companies COVID was devastating.

I'm interested in seeing what the new CEO will bring and I'm hopeful that IM will return to the lore it once had.

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

There’s another post here that shows Lanzarote is not cancelled. Date for 24 will be announced soon.

Post 11
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=7974702#p7974702

Nice! Taking rumors you found on social media and passing them off as official news. You should start your own 24 hour network.

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MS: Exercise Science
Your speed matters a lot, sometimes you need to be very fast, where sometimes you need to breakdown your speed.