I would like do ask how does he justify that no 1 gets the same yearly bonus than 50th to 100th together?
And would he agree that they oversell their maternity leave program if the athlete is 51 St in the world.

Would he agree pto is great. Overall the execution is not as fair as it could be.

Do long course fans have a case to gripe about the PTO making events that “favor” short course athletes, who they also recruit to parachute in for the big exhibition like Collins Cup?
What are the points against not implementing a bike radar sensor to minimize drafting issues?

See question below....I'm interested in the financial outlook...I get it, PTO is very slighted towards the top athletes, I get that. But I'm more interested in the long term stability of this, for the ability to have a "professional" sport in tri.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

What is the PTO doing to grow the sport outside of Europe, North America and Oceania?

Has PTO ever been able to engage / have talks with Ironman? Do you feel that Ironman has lessened pro payout and race opportunities in part in retaliation against PTO?

Hey all--

Sam's forum account is just going through validation procedures and should be along later today to start tackling these.

Thanks!

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Thanks for doing this and coming by to answer questions! I have several on the Dallas US open that I can’t wait to race in a months time.

How many AG competitors are expected at the PTO Dallas US open? What time is the AG 100k race start?

What pros are expected to race PTO Dallas us open? Is it true male pros will compete after the AG race finishes?

Is there a plan to allow the top AG to qualify for a championship type event down the line?

Will the Dallas location always hold the Us open or will it move to another city next year?

It's been reported that all pros invited to the Collins Cup are contractually obligated to attend. If that's actually the case, who sets the date of the Collins Cup? Could a situation arise where the Collins Cup is placed directly in competition with, say, Kona and all the big-name Ironman athletes have to go to Slovakia instead of Hawaii? That would be quite the coup!

Sorry for the delay – as Ryan mentioned, we had some technical issues getting access here

Great questions - look forward to discussing further as we build up to our 2nd Collins Cup later this week

Thanks for joining, Sam! Glad to have you here.

Now to go fix our Collins Cup preview story with the news about Taylor Knibb not racing.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Hi Slowtwitchers!

Sorry for the delay – as Ryan mentioned, we had some technical issues getting access here.
Great questions – I’ve combined a few where similar – hopefully this catches us up

A: I think your describing all professional sport here – not just Triathlon and not just the PTO! Tennis, Golf – I would be interested to see any sport that doesn’t have incentive to win! We find it heart-breaking to see incredible athletes place 6,7, 11th etc in major triathlon's and to actually lose money in the process, . This is why we have a deeper prize purse than most – and have expanded the rankings to pay to the 100th ranked position.
As for execution - we're the newest member of the community and have much to improve!

A: Its certainly not perfect but we are grateful for the opportunity to provide extra help to athletes we think are very deserving of the support.. What’s more shocking is realizing quite how little support like this exists within sport in general - even in sports much much larger, more established and more commercial than triathlon.

Interestingly, I am never asked this from people in the professional sports industry (where our business model is very common). – but it’s the most common question from within triathlon – who are used to the Age Group business models.

Professional sport has a diversified business model – media, corporate sponsorship, local partners, ticketing, merchandise, F+B, city/regional support. We are applying a tried and tested model from other sports to Triathlon.

Like many new organisations, we are in our start-up phase and so we are supported in that from investors – but I am happy to share we are well ahead of our plans to commercialize the sport – and though its early days yet, the indicators are very positive. As Dan’s article cites, we will soon announce a Series B fundraising, which is further validation of the progress we and the sport is making.

Our strategy is not to about volume of racing – its about quality. One of the things we believe has held the sport back is that there is not the incentive for the best athletes to compete together very often (essentially just once a year) – and that means very hard to build a ‘sporting narrative’ – and even harder to grow a fanbase. What we are seeking to create with the PTO Tour is a small number of big budget events that provide the opportunity for the best of the best to compete together – as that’s the fundamental of all sport.

This is a great suggestion! – we do recognize the challenge that in the US (at least) the name has more connotation with rest than the ultra endurance sport that it is!

We are in regular dialogue at all levels of the sport – World Triathlon, Super League, Ironman, Challenge. In contrary to your question, I believe prize money at Kona has gone up for the first time in over a decade – which is great news!

We believe passionately that the best way to grow the sport is to grow the profile of the professionals within it. This isn’t some brainwave from the PTO – you can look at all professionals sports and see an inflection point in growth following the popularity of a sporting Star. Jordan, Woods, Palmer, Williams, Gredsky

So the first way we will help grow the sport is by helping grow the profiles of the athletes – by creating content for and with them and then securing broadcast partnerships that will promote their athletic talents far and wide.

Secondly, further down the line – the Collins Cup is an event that like the Ryder Cup will move between regions – and we have had a lot of interest not just from traditional triathlon locations, but newer markets – without doubt hosting a major event like the Collins Cup in a developing triathlon market will help the sport grow there. Watch this space!


We are on track for 1000 athletes in Dallas – and working with our partners there to open up more capacity for future years. The first wave is 7am

We will announce the field in a few weeks – after the success of Edmonton we can all expect a stellar line up!

You are correct, all of our age group racing will occur at separate times to the professionals, so you’ll have the chance to race, recover, grab some Texan BBQ and then head into the grandstands to watch the greatest athletes on the planet.

The course has been designed in Dallas so that spectators in the fan village will get to see the professionals go by 10 in 3 or so hours – a very different experience to most long distance events.

We have a few idea up our sleeves for the AG community – watch this space!


- We have modelled the PTO Opens of their equivalents in Tennis and Golf – one of the things that’s so special about the US Open (in Tennis) takes place in Flushing Meadows each year. Its hard to comment before we’ve had our first event in Dallas if that will be its home forever – but certainly the feedback has been positive so far - our goal was to create a long distance race that was easy to get to, close to a wide variety of lodging (from Motels to a Four Season's) and had family activities both through us and nearby (Sammy Hagan's playing right next door and we'll have fun activations for all the family - not just the Tri-hards

That’s an interesting theory!

for the record, i'm not american and i never (ever) think 'Paid Time Off" when i hear PTO.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Am I correct in thinking that the intent is to have 4 PTO Tour races in 2023 et seq of which one will be a '200'?
Is the aspiration to have one in Europe and another not in North America?
Other sports have found that offering points bonuses (eg 5% for PTO Tour races) skews world/national rankings unacceptably. Do you not think that the prestige, quality competition and prize money (purse size and depth) are enough to incentivise the top PROs to include PTO Tour races in their competition calendar?
Is the purpose of the 10% bonus ranking points for an athlete's best full distance performance to recognise that athletes who race 'fulls' can't race so often? Edit: Otherwise what is the rationale? This 10% bonus seems effectively to exclude athletes who don't race full distance (well in WPRO anyway) from a high ranking.

Interestingly, I am never asked this from people in the professional sports industry (where our business model is very common). – but it’s the most common question from within triathlon – who are used to the Age Group business models.

Professional sport has a diversified business model – media, corporate sponsorship, local partners, ticketing, merchandise, F+B, city/regional support. We are applying a tried and tested model from other sports to Triathlon.


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PTO keeps referencing golf/tennis in it's model. One of the biggest issues I see is that triathlon can't really be a "ticketed" sport like tennis or golf. Sure you can have a VIP / grand stand, but we are talking about areas that are essentially open venues at almost all the races. Hell the Olympics doesn't even require a ticket to go watch, and they try and monetize everything about the Olympics.


Of course if you do an event that is on a private property, I think you can, but for most venues that just isn't going to be viable. Neither Edmonton or Dallas are likely to be "closed" off to the public. If joe schmoe leaves the coffee shop, he'll be able to just go walk over and watch the bike or run course. So I think "ticketing" is still something that is going to be hard to figure out in LC venues. And again yes I know these races will always provide some VIP access to high paying customers, but that's going to be small scale imo. Your not going to get 20k people wanting to sit in the grand stands or come on site to watch an race. We just aren't that type of sport, *yet*.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Aside from the year-end bonuses extending a bit deeper (which is great), has there been consideration or movement towards increasing the voice and benefit from PTO to athletes ranked outside the top 50? As I know is the case with any organization like this, I'm sure the members have divergent interests, with the lower-ranked athletes having very different concerns from those at the top. If what I've heard is correct, only athletes ranked in the top 50 can serve as athlete reps, with the election for those reps only including votes from those in the top 50. Any chance of future athlete boards being open to those outside that cut-off so that more pros have representatives aligned with their interest?

Thank you, fantastic feedback! Looking forward to racing Dallas even more now!

Sam, for years IM (WTC) steadily built a near monopoly over 70.3 and 140.6 races. Sometimes they paid to buy existing races; sometimes they targeted them with adjacent races. Very few independent 70.3 still exist, and basically no 140.6s do. This has affected AGers (higher fees, less choice) and pros alike (smaller purses). Kudos to the PTO for creating events that include AGers.

Ultimately, it will be very hard to exert any leverage over IM unless there is viable competition for AG athletes. Long term, what is the vision for how you can help build partnerships with rival promoters or your own proprietary races to a necessary scale? IM acts sometimes like they don’t really need the pros at their races, but they do need AGers.

Hi Sam,

There has been a little bit of controversy over "Captain's Picks" for the impending Collins Cup. It has been discussed that there is a "commercial committee" who have the final say in at least one of these picks, if I remember rightly. This decision, while perfectly understandable in the context of growing the event, seems to be at odds with the union type approach that the PTO stands for. I'd be interested to hear your take on this. Is the PTO Championship and event that will be based on merit alone eventually, or is there always going to be some more commercial influence deciding athletes who are selected? Or, of course, will it remain a hybrid model which I think also functions, or could function better if the athletes knew that the top 4 places were on merit and the next two were decided on different factors.

   


thanks for your answers Sam , if you allow me to dig a bit deeper using actual numbers.

https://www.wimbledon.com/...2022_Prize_Money.pdf


if we use wimbledon it takes 21 people who lose in the first round to make the same as the finalist.

https://www.sportingnews.com/...pfrswxksb6rhxqdrof#:~:text=Masters%20Tournament%20purse%202022,to%20its%20participants%20in%202022.

if we use augusta it takes 23 golfers to make the same money than the 2nd place

if we use pto yearly bonus it takes 35 people to make as much as second place. sorry i had initially 37 as i thought it was 75 k for 2nd place.

so i guess we can agree that within professional sport the distribution of pto is more unfair than in the sports you are modelling off .

Hi Ajax - thats right, we will announce a few more Tour stages for 2023 - we have had some great interest from host cities - which is testament to how attractive this sport is!

2022 was a transition year for us with the rankings - we had to factor in the impact of covid on so many races and athletes travel schedule. We have formed an athletes rankings committee to evaluate whats worked, what hasn't and what could evolve.....all I can say at this point is to watch this space!

The parallel with those sport is less around the ticketing - its the similarity in the audience demographic and what that means to media values. Golf doesn't get NFL numbers and it never will - but it doesn't need to because the value of those who watch is much higher and therefore more attractive to brands wanting to reach this demographic.

On the spectating side, we definitely believe this can evolve - and the Olympics is a good example in that it does actually have ticketed sections for the Triathlon. The London Olympics had reportedly over 200,000 around the course, but 5,000-10,000 of those also bought a premium ticket so they could have a granstand seat to watch. We wont be charging for grandstand seating in the short term, but as the popularity grows we could see the demand for this rising

Thanks Sam. I think my point in bringing up ticketing sales is that it’ll never be an revenue source that LC triathlon can count like it is in tennis or soccer or basketball.

I don’t see how it can evolve unless you put it on entire private property (golf is perfect example) and force every patron to buy a tix. But then your limiting the venues as you wouldn’t be able to race in city locations- ie current Edmonton or Dallas course (yes you can have an vip area but it’ll be super small percentage points)-

But again that’s just the nature of a sport that plays out on miles of tarmac and not in a cute made for spectator stadium. The Olympic model 5% of in person people paid to watch. Again I think that’s what your looking at, at best. I’ve seen it play out in shorter course racing. You have to pay for grand stands at ITU events yet you can stand along the fence for free. It’s just not going to be an valued revenue stream that you can count on. I mean is 5% helpful you bet it is when it’s 5% more than 0%. But it’s small potatoes priority it would seem to be. I just don’t see some ground breaking ideas to make it in person spectator friendly.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Hi Ian, sport is full of controversy and I'm sure every year we will have people agreeing, disagreeing, shouting!

4 positions, as you say are earned based on current ranking - the remaining 2 are Captain's picks with input from the non-athlete board members. This is an important distinction as although we are an athlete body (not a union) - athletes will always be conflicted if needing to select within their peers.

Its going to be some exciting racing this weekend - and I would recommend tuning in to the opening ceremony on Thursday to see which athletes are selected for which match!

100% agree with you, it will never be more than a few % points.....its more important for us to attract large crowds than to charge them. We want to bring together the local community to see the superhuman talents of triathletes!