Hi Sam,
I'm curious if there are any plans to work with broadcasters to provide better data feeds. First and foremost, what kilometer the athletes are at in the race and time splits. Secondly, we've seen both RCS and ASO (owners and organizers of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France amongst others) broadcast data from the riders showing power data, HR, max power, etc. For the teams that agreed to share this it is available real time in more detail at Velon.cc

I do realize both of these pose a technical challenge that costs real money, but I view the first item is a basic requirement for this sport being broadcast as far as I'm concerned. Not having timing and distance is frustrating for the viewers, but seemingly for announcers as well when this is occurring. The second greatly adds to engagement and understanding of performance.

Thanks for the time.

Age Group racing is an important and integral part of all Triathlon - and to the PTO. Our business model is different in that we are not reliant on entry fees to fund the business - we actually believe that entry fees should be lower to bring more people into the sport and make it more accessible. I have been involved in Triathlon for 20+ years and one very clear difference is that there are alot more 'one and done' athletes now than in the past. By helping lower the cost of being triathlete, we hope we can fix that.

On the rivalry point, we dont organize races so we dont view these groups as rivals. In most case they can and should be partners - we have worked with Challenge to deliver the Collins Cup, with Clash to deliver the PTO 2020 Championships and with USAT to deliver the US Open. Thats not to say the PTO doesn't have competition - but our competition is to win the time and attention of people not engaging with the sport....this is why on the commercial side we have recruited many people from outside of Triathlon - from ATP, UFC, F1.

Definitely agree with you - real-time data is incredibly powerful to tell the story behind a race. When I first explained how RFID timing mats are used every few km's to our exec producer (from outside the sport) he referred to it as like watching a tennis match and only being told the score every 4th serve!

Unfortunately what makes Triathlon so special (swim, bike, run) makes getting this data in a scalable and reliable format (as it needs to be for a global broadcast) very challenging - we know the Velon guys well but we cant have our athletes swim or run with on of their units. This is why even major events with huge budgets like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games still use timing mats.

But! I am happy to share, we are working on a proprietary technology that we'll have in time for next season (global supply chain and chip shortage issues notwithstanding) which should make this alot more achievable - and allow us to provide data to commentators and fans in real-time.

Thanks for sharing those numbers - it just goes to show how Triathlon has to go that the 30th place in Augusta win's more than the no.1 triathlete
Then again - The Masters has an 88 year head start on the PTO - and we are all working hard here to close that gap.

Our prize money will grow as the Tour is established - and I can confidently predict that as with Augusta and Wimbledon that you've shared, as the overall prize pool matures, the proportional split will change. But as with any sport - to the victor, the spoils!

Thank you for the response. I feel like this just adds so much to the event, from the announcers to the engagement with viewers. Even someone like my wife who is a more casual viewer commented on a few of the races. She might be running around the house with the kid and leaves the room for a few minutes. She comes back and their are no visible splits and is left wondering who the heal is where because its not readily apparent.

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.


Sam,

Great to see you on the ST Forum!

Having Announced at the USAT Multisport Championships earlier in the year at Lake Irving just outside of Dallas (and I know you were there for a site visit at the same time), this is a fabulous Race/Event Venue with lot's of potential - on multiple fronts - for athletes, for spectators on site and for broadcast! Best wishes with it.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

To make sure i understand you ,we agree that wimbledon and augusta have a more even distribution in price money than pto ?
But then you go back to your previous argument that the winner takes its all , despite agreeing that the numbers dont support your argument in the most iconic tournaments in the sports, you feel best are best suited for triathlon to follow ?
and you will only change the distribution once and you are more mature organisation ?


i think wimbledon had price money since 1968 and in 1970
it took 15 playes that lost in the first round to make as much as the player that reached the final.
so Wimbledon in its infancy had a ratio of 15en playes to make as much as the finalist , pto a ratio of 35 to make as much as 2nd place .


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Wimbledon_Championships#:~:text=The%20total%20prize%20money%20for,singles%20champion%20earned%20%C2%A31.500.


i would suggest that would not really support your argument that you can only give a fair distribution once you are more mature organisation .
but i have to give you that at least you started equal price money for males and females from the start .


i dont want be pesky and overall i think PTO is doing a lot of good things, but i hope its ok that i struggle to follow your argument based on actual numbers .

i have to assume that if the price money would be fairly distributed, a lot of the top pros which you obviously need would leave the PTO...

Hi Sam,

Which of the other endurance company CEO's do you think you could take in a WWE-style cage match? How much would you charge for viewing that event?

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I do realize both of these pose a technical challenge that costs real money, but I view the first item is a basic requirement for this sport being broadcast as far as I'm concerned. Not having timing and distance is frustrating for the viewers, but seemingly for announcers as well when this is occurring. The second greatly adds to engagement and understanding of performance.


Those visuals and data are important.

When I do Track & Field Commentary for RunnerSpace* - we have the clock running on the screen. When I'm doing Commentary for FloBikes - the TV Feed that we get from the Host Broadcaster, again has data and info embedded into the Feed - Distance to finish. How much time the Break has on the peloton etc . . .

It all helps tell the story!

*RunnerSpace has there own behind-the-scenes data-flow for there Commentary Teams that is super helpful for Field Event Coverage - which has always been REALLY challenging to cover. We can now cut straight to say the Women's Long Jump and in one key stroke of my notebook, I know exactly what is going on - who's on the Runway, what Jump it is for them, what place they are in, what they would need to jump to move into 1st place . . etc . . I can instantly capture the Story and convey it to the Audience! That's powerful stuff!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

+1

It would be awful to commentate without that basic data.

Definitely agree with you - real-time data is incredibly powerful to tell the story behind a race. When I first explained how RFID timing mats are used every few km's to our exec producer (from outside the sport) he referred to it as like watching a tennis match and only being told the score every 4th serve!

Unfortunately what makes Triathlon so special (swim, bike, run) makes getting this data in a scalable and reliable format (as it needs to be for a global broadcast) very challenging - we know the Velon guys well but we cant have our athletes swim or run with on of their units. This is why even major events with huge budgets like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games still use timing mats.

But! I am happy to share, we are working on a proprietary technology that we'll have in time for next season (global supply chain and chip shortage issues notwithstanding) which should make this alot more achievable - and allow us to provide data to commentators and fans in real-time.


Sam,

Exciting stuff! Looking forward to hearing more about this!

It's ironic that while probably 90% or more of any Triathlon race field, usually has some form of GPS Tracking technology traveling along with them - in the the form of some wrist based tracking software on their watch.

I often get asked when I am Announcing at races/events, if athletes are being tracked by GPS? Just this past weekend, while Announcing at a Gran Fondo event in Edmonton at least 10 people came up to me where I was Announcing, at the Finish Line and asked me this question. Ironically, with individual mobile device tracker info available via GPS (with various Apps), Spectators may know more about where athletes are on a Gran Fondo or Marathon course than the Race/Event does!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

There was a really fun thread on ST earlier this year about whether triathlon could move to a "4 Majors" type model for it's pros, similar to what golf and tennis have, and since you've brought up the golf/tennis comparison a couple of times now, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. Obviously the PTO has the US and Canadian Opens, but both of those are North American races. The Collins Cup is analogous to the Ryder Cup and the Pro-Am doesn't lend itself to being a "Major".

Could we see the PTO collaborate on this with Ironman and Challenge to maybe have Kona and Roth become "Majors" while a couple of PTO races, perhaps the US Open and another TBD race *cough* Australian Open *cough* fill out the "Major" calendar? If this is something that's on the radar, how do you ensure that you get top pro fields without risking too many injuries from over-racing?

Sam has graciously decided that he'll extend this for one more day! Keep the questions flowing and he'll be checking back in tomorrow.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Loved the front page interview. It sounds like there is some really good stuff about to be announced.

My question for sports in general. What sports out there in the sports stratosphere have made broadcast/sponsor success without having a “live” paying audience to at lest offset/help costs of the sport.

Just how we all agree LC tri isn’t setup as a “buy a tix” and get a stadium full of fans. That’s a decent revenue stream to lose. I just can’t wrap my head around LC tri being a broadcast successful biz….I want to, I’m just small minded I guess, ha.

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

The PTO made itself out to be some type of athlete's association, it is not anything resembling one. Will it stop making itself out to be one?


The PTU/PTO for most of its history was just a sour twitter account under the @collinscup moniker, will the PTO start acting differently and stop attacking the organization that drives the sport globally (WTC)?

Why did the PTO in its launch/re-launch under you make disingenuous offers to purchase Ironman from Wanda? Why did you attack them over their sale to Advance as if it was the worst thing to happen?

Why have you/PTO looked at Ironman as an enemy? It's not. It's the best Triathlon promoter in the world bar none.

Why has the PTO gone full bore into mass participation? It looks like you are copying the only model in triathlon that works. Which is mass participation.

I understand these are adversarial questions, but the dude/dudette/crew of people who ran the twitter account for Collins Cup for the first four years of its existence as social channel doesn't exactly endear me to your organization or want to support it. (hopefully they are not longer around)

What is the VC runway? Ten years? That's what it looks like as an organization ( a VC play).

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Technical stuff, why has the PTO failed to provide live splits on its broadcasts? Why are there not live leaderboards? Why does the PTO use too many commentators on each broadcast?

Since Challenge Daytona in 2020 the broadcast product has been really substandard, similar to every other triathlon broadcast, or I guess that just meats the standard? Not sure.

What is the plan for the Collins Cup to address the multitude of issues that broadcast had? PTO promised a lot when it came to packaging for TV, it has not delivered, why is that?

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If you're going to call events "US Open" or "Canadian Open" are you going to have a qualifying series that puts elite amateurs in each of the Open Championships like actual Open Championships in Golf and Tennis? To actually model of Open Championships? You said you did so in a previous post on page 1, but there was no open qualifiers for amateurs.

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ETA: Why do you attempt to compel athletes to join the PTO, and why do you force members to wear the logo on their kit. Since it's not a Union, are you paying every member for those four square inches of space? If you're not, that's another reason why I'm probably hostile to this whole endeavor.

One of the biggest things I've wanted since the big announcement when you were announced as CEO is for the organization to be honest with what it is: A race promoter.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Great idea. Maybe 2 140.6, 1 70.3, 1 Olympic.

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Let food be thy medicine...

It’s too late if you are trying g not to be pesky Personally, I can’t follow it your arguments but Sam is being gracious in trying to answer them. Whatever point you are trying to make, you’ve had ample opportunity to make them and get a response from Sam. You don’t agree; we get it. So does he. That’s ok, but I think time to move on from your attempt at hard-hitting journalistic questions.

Thanks for taking part Sam

Is the PTO going to take part in developing athletes? As I see it, the problem with making races exciting is not only that it's hard to get the top athletes at the same event, it's also that there isn't much depth. It's very rare to see any of the hyped up battles turn into a real contest. Obviously part of addressing this is raising the financial benefit so more athletes see value in moving out of the current developmental series (ITU), but I'd be interested to know whether PTO is going to take part in building faster athletes to improve the overall product.

Hi

Do you have a set plan for a 200km race, when and where.

Also, listen to the latest IM Talk Podcasts the boys had some great suggestions for the collins cup that they pitched to Crowie during the interview this week to make it more exciting and the team aspect even better.

Thanks Steve! Huge potential and I hope USAT and ourselves are just the start of many events that utilise the venue - its not every day you can get from T1 to a major international airport quicker than Kristian Blummenfelt can run 5km :)

Haha what an excellent question :)

True story - I actually one challenged Joe de Sana to race an Ironman we were attending the next day - I was very fortunate he was flying out the next morning!

When it comes to athletic endeavour, we have some of the greatest athletes in the world to watch go head to head this weekend....I am just here to make sure the trains run on time for their show

Hello Sam,

thank you for participating on this forum and answering the questions.

Any timeline on when we will see a race in the Middle East? I would be really looking forward to having another big triathlon promoter in the region, and personally would definitely be interested in participating in a PTO event and seeing the top pros compete live

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Tridad

It is ironic - and I know frustrating that as individuals we often have better data in our hands than broadcasts that are going out to millions. The challenge (for those who want the details) is standardising that data and then getting it to our broadcast trucks in real-time, that we can then integrate and share.

Its not an impossible technology to fix by any sense - there just hasn't been the commercial reason for anyone to put time, energy and money into developing a solution....until now!

When the data is available in a scalable and reliable feed, there are many things we can do with it - second screen, alternative views - maybe we'll even see a triathlon in the metaverse one day :)

I couldn't find the thread, but I'm guessing that some of it might have come from what we've said we would intend to bring to the market the next year or two. One of the problem's we've seen in the calendar currently is that the sport is very fragmented from a professional perspective - meaning we only get to see the top athletes race together once or twice a year. We believe what professional triathletes do (and indeed triathletes in general) is incredibly inspiring and could be great entertainment - but to be entertaining we need a season long narrative, not a once a year moment.

That long preamble aside, we intend to launch an Asian Open and European Open next year so we can see that season narrative start to develop. The reason we have two of our Majors in North America is that this is both the largest triathlon market and also the largest sports media market.

To your over injury comment - you hit on the one very big difference between Triathlon and Golf/Tennis (and many others) - Triathletes cannot race 15-20x per season, this sport just is too demanding for that. This is why we will only have a single digit number of events - and its also another reason we think the 100km distance is more suitable - its better for TV, its more accessible for age groupers and it takes less recovery time to bounce back from

Thanks Brooks...not small minded at all - if it was easy or obvious, it would have been done many years ago! This is exactly why on joining the PTO, we spoke to venture capitalists - they have an investment model based almost entirely on making contrarian/against the grain investments.

If someone had told me they would upend the entire hotel industry with a business model based on renting spare couchs and rooms I would have thought they'd need directions to a good doctor.......well (Sir) Michael Moritz didn't and Airbnb has worked out pretty well for him and all of us who travel! Equally he has some amazing stories about the 3 founders he gave office space to launch an 'alternative TV' on the internet - YouTube was born. The PTO (and the sport of triathlon) is very fortunate to have the support of an investor like this who recognises the opportunity is not necessarily in the way the sport is currently, but in the potential it could have with a new approach

Re: non ticketed successes......the Tour de France and other cycling majors (though the structure of cycling might be a big can of worms - no one questions its economic value).....in my part of the world the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race is an annual highlight on the sporting calendar.

The London Marathon another example - and although it is 'mass participation' - they, like the PTO, keep their entry fee's low because they want to make the event accessible - and can afford to because of their diversified revenue mix - sponsorship, media, merchandise and government support.