Huh, I actually thought they spent way more time on the pro race than ever and balanced out the age grouper stories so it wasn't all sob stories. I agree the restaurant guy went on too long.

But from my perspective, although it's good to tell the age grouper stories no one wants to hear about the super driven software nerd who trains 15-20 hours a week to be competitive in the amateur field. If you want a story about super human performance, that's what the pros are for. Then they just lump the rest of the field with some human interests type stuff.

Anything that Ironman does (being a Growth-PE owned brand) is done to grow the brand. This is PURE marketing and a way to either 1) keep customers buying (see your favorite heroes in action), or 2) attract new customers (see everyday people change their lives, buying their product)

It´s not like Messick and Du Bey are shelling out a couple of millions on a production like this, if it does not have a positive ROI :)

But that's Ironman's original sin. It is a private company, which produces a great product but is so focused on the selling part in order to make a quick buck that it becomes detrimental to the product quality itself.

What does Wimbledon do when they want to promote the event? All they need is a video of the excerpts of a tense final between Nadal and Federer - it goes without saying that if you watch it from home, you start to fantasize about being there in person, feeling the tension, the roar of the crowd, the cliffhanger points, the product sells itself. Now if this was Ironman, I could imagine the Wimbledon video: "look at that spectator on the 4th row! Having the time of his life sipping a glass of Pimm's and Lemonade! And the temperature is so comfortable! What an incredible event, the lawn is so manicured! And the timing by Rolex is so precise! And now let's look at Federer taking a Maurten break! He must feel so energized after having his $3.99 bottle of Gatorade available in all supermarkets near you! Of and by the way they also played some tennis today, we didn't have enough cameras to capture it all and it's too hard to keep score to understand who is in front, but people had fun watching so please sign up for your VIP pass next year!".

Bleah. For a company that is based on endurance and long term commitment, their focus on making money QUICKLY detracts from what is an excellent product.

I really really thought that the excessive focus on the chef was all about targeting the people who are interested in cooking shows/competitions. Fans of Gordon Ramsey etc. This is not a small group of people, just look at the number of shows on the various networks/cable, etc.

Much like the NFL is trying to play up to the Taylor Swift fan base to hopefully get them to be fans of the NFL product.

Cross promotion is not a new concept. The question for me is how much play will this get in the cooking show world.

Whatever, that was my thought while watching. I could be totally wrong.

I agree with your take on the trendy nature of cooking shows. But that begs the question -- who is the audience for this 3hr broadcast on a closed circuit app called Outside that I never would have heard of if not for Ironman in the first place?

I highly doubt people channel surfing the food network are randomly pulling out their phones, discovering an app called Outside and downloading it, just in time to find it broadcasting Ironman. Which incidentally, once I installed the app, I had to hunt around to actually find the broadcast to begin with. So there's just no way this broadcast is bringing any significant number of people to Ironman other than....

Fan service. Fans of Ironman watch the app, and their spouse/friends/family get subjected to it and they watch a little too and get pulled in by some of the human interest stories. That's at least my wife's experience. She leaves everyone of these Ironman broadcasts thinking for a moment.... "I could do that if they can do it" and then she reminds herself she's terrified to go fast on a bike.

Right, it would require collaboration from particular food shows to mention and show portions of that doc with him in it.

Then potentially for people to search out that specific doc or just generally look up triathlons/ironman (which there is plenty of youtubes out there on) and maybe peak interest for some people.

I realize the reality of what I said was a long shot, its just what it felt like to me.

Episode 1 (32 mins and <2 mins ads) published now:

Episode 2 (29 mins):

Episode 3 (34 mins):

Episode 4 (37 mins):

Episode 5 (35 mins):