PTO Announces Series C Funding Led by Saudi-backed SURJ Sports Investment and Michael Moritz

Triathlon Forum
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Originally published at: PTO Announces Series C Funding Led by Saudi-backed SURJ Sports Investment and Michael Moritz - Slowtwitch News

The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) has announced “the successful completion of a Series C funding round, led by SURJ Sports Investment (SURJ) and supported by Cordillera, Verance Capital and Sir Michael Moritz.” Reports put the total raised in the latest funding round at US$40 million.

This is big news for the organization and provides security as the company builds on its new mission as an events company that offers high-quality age-group events in addition to its flagship pro races.

5 Things We’ve Learned From a Big Week of PTO Announcements

SURJ was created in 2023 as part of the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund to invest in sports properties. Earlier this year SURJ invested $1 billion to take a 10 percent stake in streaming platform DAZN. According to a report from Sky News earlier this year, SURJ invested $20 million with the PTO.

Earlier this year Cordillera Investment Partners announced a $10 million investment in the PTO. Verance Capital joins as a “strategic investor, bringing differentiated experience across North American sports and entertainment properties.

Michael Moritz was one of the founding investors in the PTO in 2020. After that a series B funding round announced in 2022 saw Divergent Investments, Warner Bros. Discovery and Acuity (a venture fund focused on health) come on board to the tune of a reported $30 million. Moritz has continued to support the organization through the various funding rounds.

“The reason for my original investment was simple,” Moritz said after last year’s T100 World Championship Final in Dubai. “I thought triathlon was a niche sport that, with a dose of creativity and imagination along with the explosion of online video channels, could be transformed into a compelling spectator sport and a much more attractive proposition for everyday participants. The excitement that has built around T100 demonstrates that we’re well on the way to doing so.”

According to today’s release the latest influx of funding will “support the PTO’s continued international growth, innovation in race formats, and long-term athlete and fan engagement.” With SURJ now involved, the move will also speed up PTO expansion into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Saudi Arabia will like host an event in the T100 Triathlon World Tour.

Sir Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital), Chris Kermode (PTO Chairman) and Danny Townsend (SURJ Investment CEO). Photo: PTO

“The PTO is redefining endurance sport for modern audiences – blending elite racing with inclusive, mass participation formats, global storytelling and community engagement,” said Danny Townsend, CEO of SURJ Sports Investment. “We’re proud to support this next phase of growth and to explore how the model can inspire more people across the region to get active. I saw the power of the platform first-hand at the 2024 finale in Dubai – and it’s clear the T100 Tour is just getting started.”

This year’s T100 World Tour has seen a number of schedule changes, but still includes nine races (up from seven last year). The PTO was also involved in the unique Lievin Indoor World Cup earlier this year, too. The T100 season kicked off in Singapore with both pro and age group racing – there were a reported 7,000 participants in the triathlon, duathlon and running races. The San Francisco event ran in conjunction with the famed Escape from Alcatraz, while a new race in Vancouver launched in June that included age group and pro athletes. Coming up are pro and age group races in London (Aug. 9/10), France (Aug. 30/31) and Valencia (Sept. 20). After the Lake Las Vegas race was cancelled, a new pro-only race was added to Wollongong, Australia (Oct. 18). Age group and pro racing return to Dubai (Nov. 15/16) and the season rounds out with the first of a five-year deal with Qatar to host the T100 Triathlon World Championship Final.

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Ick. Does this mean they’ll pay the athletes last years bonuses now?

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I dont believe that any athletes are owed money too at this time.

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Based on a previous promise from the PTO/T100, athletes have still not received the end of season rankings bonus from 2024 Season.

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Who hasn’t?

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The top 50 from last year.

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Your claim is that 100 Athletes have not been paid something that was promised to them last year?

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Was that a current promise? Seems like there is some confusion and grey area whether or not there was an actual contract for this. Have you see the contract??

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Whether or not there was a specific contract that was signed covering the 2024 season, they publicly announced and advertised a payout based on rankings. They even adjusted the advertised payout based on rankings along with their contracts and event prize package.

So it wasn’t like “this thing just lapsed” and you’re using last years numbers, right?

There have been legal cases showing that even without a contract, if a payout is advertised, you are liable to pay. They advertised the payout on their website. It was talked about fairly frequently as part of their broadcasts how their athlete support was good for the sport, mothers, etc.

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I would think until there is an actual written contract, things said are just that. Take a look at what our president says everyday and promises, no legal binding contracts seem to flow from any of that…

I agree it is not cool to come out and say stuff unless it is ready to be signed, but we often in this sport get ahead of ourselves and say shit before it is actually fleshed out. And it’s not just T100, remember the cut to the front of the line for a 1000 bucks Ironman published??(and days later disappeared)Or their lottery debacle?

Hopefully all lessons learned to have stuff in place before announcing, things like this and race locations come to mind…

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Just spoke with @Kyleglass91 over the phone. We are following up on somethings.

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That’s a reasonable thought if we’re going back and forth in emails discussing deals and then you move forward thinking we have a deal, but never actually agreed to it. (even an email can be legally binding by the way if it’s clear that we agreed on something – at least a case can be made and argued which is going to be just as costly as paying it sometimes)

But here’s a fun refresher that shows publicly advertised payouts are legally binding:

Now, as much as we want to say this is not that, the legal profession makes it’s hay making that into this. The point is, the company claimed they didn’t have to pay because they didn’t have a legally binding contract.

  1. The PTO has claimed they have received funding specifically to pay the top triathletes in the world to develop their skill and drive the sport forward, etc.
  2. The PTO has required athletes to place logos on their jerseys, and then published rankings of the athletes on their website.
  3. The PTO has gone further and even created marketing materials in their broadcast and syndicated content of athletes and announcers talking about how important these ranking bonuses are.
  4. The PTO has published prize payouts on their website, and adjusted them over time.

The athletes whose names are ranked and posted on the PTO website have pretty reasonable grounds to assert their names are used for the purposes of promoting professional triathlon, and that the PTO is actively soliciting investment money using the names and images of the best professional athletes, some of them who have been in the rankings and have yet to be paid their bonus.

I’m not saying the PTO/T100 doesn’t have any argument here, but the “no signed contract, tough luck” argument is not the case close claim that you might think it is.

At the end of the day, no one is going to file a lawsuit, unless they’ve got an lawyer uncle who just likes to donate their time or some money with a hole to burn in their pocket. The athletes would be smart to gently get the word out, as seems to be happening, and hope pressure mounts for the PTO to do something to make good on it.

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How long does 40M last them?

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Have you not been paying attention for all these years? Until they get the next round is the answer. You dont have to like it, but it is what it is, and how many times does it have to happen until you accept it?? It will be their business model until it isn’t. They either run out of rounds(or not), or become self sufficient at some point. In the meantime a lot of pros are making a lot of money racing triathlons, and us fans are getting a lot more interesting races to watch…

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That’s actually not true. The reason they’re continuing to have funding rounds is because current partners aside from Moritz have chosen not to reinvest through Capital Calls. You could move to a capital cull structure. But this dilutes the shareholding of those in the previous rounds.

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It’s a question worth considering.

If I’m following the history right, they’ve raised $42 million up until now, and have raised another $40 million.

Let’s assume they’ve burned through $40 million and have been slow with the season ending bonuses because they’ve dwindled to $2million in the bank and needed to keep that as working capital.

2025
3 races (so far)

2024
7 races

2023
3 races

2022
3 races

2021 (Clash, does that count?)
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2020 (Clash again)
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So if we conservatively say 18 races is what they can put on for $40 million, (we presume they didn’t pay entirely for Clash, and that other races have varying degrees of subsidies, broadcast deals, they get more efficient, reduce costs, etc. etc) then they are spending 2.2 million per race if you spread all the costs around. This isn’t a full fair accounting obviously, just doing some paper math. They’ve received other income and also spent it some buying a race here, donating money and so on.

Right now they have 6 more races on the calendar for 2025. So figure that burns another 13 million. Assume then they make good on the season bonus, another million? So they’ve got let’s say 12-15 more races of funding at their current spending rate. 2-3 years?

At that point, it’s reasonable to assume if the PTO still has some traction and growing interest, their current investor group will not cut bait by give them another round.

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You do have to wonder what their strategy is to get people to start watching these things in person (it’s apparent from the statements of Moritz that this is their goal). I don’t think they realize that the average sports fan will not want to sit through a 3+ hour event like this. People will watch an NFL game, but outside of hardcore tri fans, I don’t think people will ever find this watchable.
I get that they had to pick longer course since they probably wouldn’t have been able to lure away short course athletes to do another short course series, but I think choosing this kind of format won’t appeal to people.

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What is interesting me is how they are got corporate investors (Warner Bros etc) in the last Series B round given that they have to grow the property by selling “viewing units” that are 3+ hrs long and then now they get more investors in Series C somehow with a promise to monetize said 3 hrs viewer blocks.

Normally Series B is an enterprise Scale out round. At that point you have product market fit, some major differenentiation, traction in the market relative to the competitors and the money is to spin up the flywheel to drive up the top line. Series C should be a pre IPO or pre M&A step just building things out from Series B.

But it seems there is still a giant experiment going on relative to product market fit and viable biz model, so the long story here is it helps to be plugged into the finance community if you’re going to build a giant pyramid where the current round of investors bail out the management for blowing thru the investment of the last round of investors. Usually that’s a pre Seed to Series A thing, not a B to C round thing.

It just feels that there is an unclear path to getting to cashflow positive here and staying in biz without investors subsidizing the hypothesis for a long time.

It’s great for the sport that we have VC money playing around and to a degree it keeps Ironman on their toes at least relative to the pro side of the sport. IM has age group racing all locked in given the number of age grouper only races that sell out to 3000 entires.