Sam Renouf | What Trail Running Can Learn From The Professional Triathletes Organization

Finn (00:01.097)
Sam Renouf, it is a pleasure to have you on the Single Track Podcast. How are you doing today?

Sam (00:06.07)
Great to be here. Yeah, look, we tried a few times to schedule this and I'm sorry, things are pretty frantic at the moment as we're getting ready to launch our world tour, but glad to be able to chat on this cold November day.

Finn (00:17.861)
Well, it's an honor to have you here. And for this type of conversation, I will always do whatever it takes to make sure we get it on the record. So happy to do it today. The main reason why I wanted to have you on the show is that you've created this new professional paradigm in triathlon. And I think along the way, you've learned a lot about professionalizing the sport and creating fans and improving athlete welfare. These are all topics that are being fiercely discussed and debated and addressed in.

my world of mountain ultra trail running. And I think this audience, you know, a lot of people, they're, they're race directors, they're pro athletes themselves. They're super fans. I think they would benefit greatly to understand your perspective better. I was telling you offline, I don't always like to go into backgrounds, but because you come from a slightly different world or an adjacent world, it's good to kind of do it. Um, what is the PTO and what prompted you to start it?

Sam (01:10.958)
Sure, look, add the caveat given that introduction that we are making some changes to the endurance sports world, but we're learning as we go, and we're by no means perfect. And look, each month is another month where we learn something should be different than the rest. And so I don't think we necessarily have a model that people can copy yet. We certainly aspire to that. And that longer term, we think we've come across whether it's our governance structure or the approach that we're taking.

a method that can work for other sports. And so could I see this happening in trail running in the future or ultra running? Absolutely, and that would be fantastic, especially if we can make some more professionals, give them a better life, which is ultimately the essence of what the organization's about. But hey, look, that was a long, waffly answer, right? What is the PTO and what are we doing? So the PTO stands for Professional Triathletes Organization. We are the membership body of professional triathletes.

which might sound unusual, but actually it's a really common model in sports. Just people don't necessarily realize it. So we're actually technically a non-profit. And without boring your listeners, we are 501C6 to be very US specific. And that is a membership based organization whose mandate is to promote its membership. That's very detailed, but what perhaps people would be more interested to hear about is like that's the same organization structure the PGA tour has.

that's very similar to the ATP. And this is a really common model in sports. It didn't exist in endurance sports, and that's what we're sort of bringing to the market, as it were, but a very common model in other professional sports.

Finn (02:43.125)
How does the PTO make money? What's the business model?

Sam (02:46.674)
Yeah, oh, now we're jumping right into the details here. Maybe I should, I'll add some extra context given I paused there. When I first got involved in this, if we go back to sort of the origin story, it was very much underpinned on triathlon is really in the dark ages compared to where it could be commercially. And what I mean by that is it's been reported and I don't know enough about ultra running to know exactly about the demographics comparable, but I would imagine it's fairly consistent.

Triathlon has been well reported as being called the new golf for more than a decade, nearly 20 years actually, there's been sort of Wall Street Journal articles and FT articles about how valuable this audience is and without me being sounding derogatory, like it is a yuppie audience, right? It's very expensive to do. This is people who travel around the world and they're BMWs and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a hugely valuable market. And yet somehow that value is not flowing to the people very at the very top of the organization, which is the professionals, right? In fact,

I don't need to say this and be controversial. The pros have come out and shared it recently. If you don't finish, I'm gonna go with my memory, last year, if you didn't finish fourth in the world at the Ironman World Championships, then you probably lost money as a professional. Which is crazy, right? Like you're talking Kona, right, or Nice, as they've now expanded it, to not place fourth in the world, you lose money. And when I mean that, I mean, obviously, once you've absorbed the cost of...

Finn (03:56.637)
Wow.

Sam (04:07.202)
traveling all that way, you've stayed for two weeks, you've maybe brought a coach or a physio, you brought your bike, you add up all those costs, you're losing money. And so we were formed, ultimately, five or six years ago, to fix that problem, and that there wasn't enough compensation in a sport, as I said already, it's hugely valuable, it's got this amazing demographic, it has a business in the form of Ironman that has been traded for close to billion dollars in equity value, and yet the very top athletes, right at the top, aren't getting enough of their fair share. And that's really what the...

Finn (04:19.432)
Hmm.

Sam (04:36.13)
the PTO was formed to change or to help change. And in this, and this is why I give you this long rambling introduction, this is not unusual. This sounds like revolutionary and different, but actually every professional sport that exists had a moment when it moved from grassroots and amateur and the professionals took a greater share. And that doesn't necessarily mean economics share, it can also mean governance and ownership ultimately. But if you go back in all of sports, and I did a...

bunch of research before I joined the PTO at a personal level and saw that this happened in the NBA, this happens in NFL, this happened in Premier League football. There is a moment when the sport has enough economics that the very best people in it say, I'd like to have more please, you know, or I should have my justifiable fair share, as opposed to being treated as an as an afterthought. And until the PTO came along with a couple of exceptions, professionals were treated as an afterthought.

And for what my limited knowledge of ultra running is, I think it's kind of the same place at the moment, right? There's not a huge amount of prize money compared to where the value could be. And maybe we'll see that change over.

Finn (05:39.401)
And I want to I definitely want to get into the weeds about when these inflection points occur, what is responsible for generating those changes. But I want to go back to what you said about the top four only the top four athletes that last year's Ironman World Championships likely turned a profit on their endeavor. In trail running. It's interesting. I think it might actually go deeper than that. I mean, I would argue that maybe the top 15 or 20 at UTMB, which is sort of our sport Super Bowl.

Sam (06:04.078)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Finn (06:06.053)
At the very least, I think they broke even because there's so many contracts in our sport where at the very least the sponsors are, you know, covering airfare, travel, lodging. They're covering the physios. They're covering the coaches. At the very least they're covering all of the overhead to get over there and to race and to train for it. So it's interesting that in triathlon, like you really are dumping a lot of personal money into the sport and it's not being covered by.

the people around you.

Sam (06:36.718)
So there's a little bit of nuance to that, right? And we can be a little bit controversial. I said before we jumped on some of this might get a little bit controversial. Um, arguably what you just described, I don't think that's a good thing, right? So like the fact it's fantastic that the 15th person at UTMP is covered their costs, but should that be on the back of the sponsors and everybody else? So like, shouldn't UTMP pay for that? Right. They, they as the top race in this market are getting the benefit of these amazing athletes, they should have to compensate them accordingly.

Finn (06:42.333)
Yeah.

Finn (06:53.634)
Mmm.

Sam (07:01.61)
It's not like, let me take it, let's not be unfair on endurance sports. This is no different in other sports. Like if Wimbledon's prize money was based on Roger Federer being paid by Nike, would he go to Wimbledon, right? Like it's other sports have to pay them accordingly. And I think this is one of these interesting points in endurance sports that a lot of people will say, oh, it's okay, the prize money is low because the sponsorship is high. It's like, well, that's just an excuse not to pay prize money.

as far as I'm concerned, right? If you're adding value as a professional to the race you're in, you should be compensated accordingly by the race that's getting value from you. If you're not getting value, then don't do the race and they wouldn't have professionals, right? And there would just be amateurs. But I think it's, we've jumped in like 10 minutes into like the hornet's nest of what's potentially wrong in endurance sports, which we're trying to fix, candidate. And we see huge value in the professionals. If you don't have professionals in these events.

Finn (07:46.535)
Hahaha!

Sam (07:55.086)
I'm speaking more about triathlon now, I can't really comment on trail running, but the media is not going to cover the story of a bunch of 40 and 50 year old men and women running around a city center. They cover the stories of Jan Frodeno, Daniela Ryf, Lucy Charles, Christian Blummenfeld, the top athletes in the world going head to head. That's what's exciting. If you take that away, very quickly the sport loses its powers. And professionals have that value, but they occasionally forget because the organization of the sport doesn't want to remind them.

Finn (08:23.173)
Well, it's very clear, and again, what you said there about maybe sort of the unsustainable nature of the sponsors footing the bill for a lot of this is something that could change. Maybe that's what the PTO addresses in the triathlon world. But going back to sort of the inflection point, like you said that triathlon at one point was considered the new golf. And I think you've also gone on record saying that the state of triathlon now in roughly 2022, 2023 is comparable to where golf was in the 1960s.

what exactly changed for golf? Like what were the forces that enabled golf to like step outside maybe sort of like a participation model and become much more of a pro sport where all the economics of it focus on the pro part of things.

Sam (09:07.302)
Oh, it's a great question. And it's great to reference it to golf because it's like the classic example, right? Like fast forward 45 years later and whether we get into the politics of the PGA tour and live golf in the Saudi Arabia is a whole different subject, right? Clearly golf has managed to commercialize itself well and it has created sport, I believe sports first billionaires, right? In terms of, you know, Tiger Woods and folks. So if you go back to whether it's the PTOs inflection point or golf, it was both the same thing.

which is that the professional athletes got together and formed an organization that gave them value. And the point of that there is that you can have an individual athlete who can be very high profile, but it's still just an individual. Whereas if like in anything, if you get together and create an organization, you have enough critical mass, you can cause a difference. And that is a really, really challenging thing to do. And it takes an awful lot of time. And for any of, I doubt any of your listeners would be long historians of triathlon, but they would know that...

This has been what the PTO is doing now has been attempted in our sport multiple times over the last 40 years. And if you go back to like the guys that, you know, we know them well, the legends of a sport, Mark Allen and Dave Scott and Scott Molina, they talk about, Oh, this is, you know, the third or fourth time this has been attempted. And when I say attempted, it's like to bring an organization of pros together and then create, create their own tour. And it's really, really hard to do. Right. And one of the reasons for that is.

You're all professional athletes. They're all busy. They've got training obligations. You've got racing obligations, got sponsorship, you got family. And so to organize that in a structured way where everyone feels united behind a cause that is really, really difficult to do. And that was the big achievement that PTO really had informing was that whether it was because the situation was so dire that they were forced to, or that was just the right personalities that they wanted to get together that in late, oh, I'm forgetting the year off the top of my head. It's about five, five or six years ago.

there was enough critical mass with the professionals that they got together and said, we can make the sport better. Now, to me, no coincidence that it was also the time when triathlon was booming, people were seeing the growth of brands like Ironman, and the professionals were looking at their price purses and saying, well, look, these are not materially different to what they were 15 or 20 years ago. So factor in inflation, and we're making less. We can change that. How do we change it? We need to unite. And that's the important word. If we go back to golf.

Finn (10:58.793)
Hmm.

Sam (11:22.262)
What golf did is the PGA tour was a breakaway from the PGA of America when the best professionals united around creating their own economic value with their own tour. And that is exactly what the PTO is doing now by uniting the athletes and creating not, not a union. We're not a, uh, an organization that's going into moaning at people or lobbying people for other things. We're taking our own economic ownership in our own hands by creating our own tour, which creates enough value to your question right at the beginning. How do we make money?

that we can pay the professionals better and they get a better livelihood. Prize money has gone through the roof since then.

Finn (11:54.877)
Given that it's in most cases unreasonable to expect pro athletes to multitask and on one hand You know be a great athlete on the other hand be this great business visionary Does the onus of all this kind of fall on the on the backs of like recently retired pro athletes that still want to stay in the sport or In the case of like trail running if you were going to extend this to trail running Who would who would the call to action be towards like would you actually be telling?

current athletes like a Jim Walmsley or a Courtney DeWalter to rise up and insert a, like take ownership of this, or would it be looking towards people like Scott Jurich, who are now 10 years out of the sport? Maybe they have more free time on their hands to take this up.

Sam (12:38.79)
Yeah, well, what a great question. I've never thought about it in that way, but it's a really great thing to think through because as you point out, this isn't easy, right? And it's very, very hard to do when you're currently an athlete. That's shouldn't be an excuse not to though, because, and this is where it gets tough for the ones that are just retired, you know, most of the economics that are in all sports, particularly in the kind of conversations we're talking about flow from prize money. So if anything, it actually really sucks for the guys that have just retired, right? Because they're then they're going to, they almost have an incentive not to make the change because they've gone.

and retired by then, they go and put a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort to do these organizations and what's the incentive for these folks who just retired if they're not gonna benefit from prize money. So it creates this kind of vicious cycle, which is one of the many reasons why this is hard to do. Where we benefited from and most other sports, if I think back to the, I mean, the PGA tour is a classic example of this. It's actually less from the athlete needs to unite with a common voice.

and then go and bring on people who have the time or the resources to be able to help. And luckily, these are all sports that attract business people that generally are able to offer their time either free because they're board members, which is the case of the PGA and things like that, or they go and find people that they can employ like myself and the team that we've built, right? Where they're not, I'm not worried about my performance at the weekend, those years have long gone for me. I'm just focused on how do we make triathlon a better product.

So, you know, our top professionals in the PTO, and we have several that are on the board, right? We have an elected board. They're not worried about the day-to-day commercials because we managed to raise money and we have a team, right? But they're very much focused on the governance and what we're doing. But it's, I don't have an answer to you on that, but it's a really interesting point.

Finn (14:18.465)
This is another basic question, but I think it's important to set the table for the rest of the conversation. Talk about the difference between a participation-based business model and a professional-based business model, and how those manifest in the world of endurance sports, and maybe why with the latter one, like the participation one, why it's difficult to realize a lot of the aims you have.

Sam (14:41.246)
Yeah, look, again, another really great question. And one of the sort of big aha moments slash like the investment thesis of the PTO is that you have this incredibly valuable audience, but it's fragmented by the fact that it's participation based. So what I mean by that, and, you know, a fragmented audience is never valuable. That's a fairly obvious point, right? If you've got, um, we might have all of these.

high net worth, wealthy, golf-like audience, but if it's so fragmented that we can't reach them, then it has no commercial value to be able to sell to sponsors or to cities or to governments and all the rest. And the way you solve that is by consolidation. And there are different ways to consolidate. You can roll up more races, which was the major play. There are a couple of different players in triathlon in particular. Ironman, obviously everyone's heard of, Challenge Families, another, Lifetime Fitness.

part of their strategy has been to acquire other events so they get scale, right? And that's one of the ways that you can consolidate an audience is you have enough events that you then have an audience that you can serve to sponsors. We think there's a more sophisticated way of doing it, which is to create a media property out of the sports, which is more based on other professional sports candidly. So making content out of the events themselves, telling the stories of the professionals, getting under the skin of what makes them tick and what makes them such exceptional people.

because the raw ingredients, this is whether it's trail running or triathlon, the raw ingredients of what it takes to do those sports creates incredible storytelling, but those stories are not necessarily being told at the moment because the business model of the industry isn't set up that way. And so we want to come in and change that. And that's really plays into the business model of what we're doing.

Finn (16:21.265)
want to repeat what you said there about how a fragmented audience has little to no commercial value because I think about again, my sport of trail running incredibly wealthy sport, I would I mean, I don't have the exact numbers, but I would bet that the median income in our sport is well north of six figures. But it's been historically and presently, super under commercialized. And I think what you said there about the fragmentation being the source, I couldn't agree more.

Sam (16:39.026)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (16:48.446)
And look, it's a difficult piece, right? Because the same time I'm speaking, and I've got little bit of experience of ultra running and trail running. Like I've been in Chamonix when UTMB is on. It's wonderful, it's amazing to see. I can see your triple C number behind you on this goal. I did that race four years ago myself, just about managed to get around. And one of the special things about the sport is that it isn't that commercialized yet. And so there's sort of that thin line between commercialization and then not losing the spirit of what something is.

We obviously believe that's possible. Like it doesn't need to be all about the money, but it can still be a more effective business model which might make the barrier to entry lower is one sort of nice benefit of a stronger business or more compensation to the people that matter, which is obviously our thesis is that the pros should be paid a little bit more. But back to your point in what we repeated a while ago, there is so much value in these audiences. And what I've seen is again, limited exposure to trail running, like some really great starts on

the content that can be made within ultra running is really amazing, right? Cause it's almost as much around the beautiful landscapes and the incredible places and vistas and going back to nature, that very, very few sports, if any, have as a good way of telling a story is ultra running in that sense. And so that's a huge opportunity if it can be produced in the right way.

Finn (18:09.181)
So one of the keys here to increased professionalization is making a media property out of the sport. I think one of the most difficult trade-offs that we have had to contend with in trail running to make this possible is the consolidation piece of it. Really making sure that every single start line has as deep of a field as possible, as compelling a field as possible. And there have been so many claims made in our sport as to why this is a bad idea or why the actors behind it are not acting in the best interest of the sport.

Have you had a similar issue in triathlon, solving the consolidation part of this?

Sam (18:44.354)
So, and it's, I suppose it's, make sure I use the words in the right way, it's consolidation of a fragmented audience. And it works in the same way, also with fragmentation drives to, this is a second order effect, but you'll see where I'm going. If you have a fragmented audience, you have fragmented racing. That also leads to less money, right? Because it's fragmented. If there's less money, that means there's clearly gonna be less compensation or incentives. And that actually fragments further. It's a virtual cycle. So, sorry, it's a vicious cycle. So what I mean by that is,

And this is very much playing out in triathlon until the PTO came along. It's that if you have a bunch of races with low prize money, you actually create an incentive for athletes not to race each other. Because, you know, why would I go and compete with the three best people in the world for $5,000 if there's a risk I can't win that $5,000 check, I'm better going to another more regional local race. Now, the second order effect of that, it's fairly obvious if it's not too detailed for a podcast like this, is that...

You just fragment the racing, which means you never see the best people go head to head, which means you'll never get a great product, which means you'll never get any good media and on you go. Right. And so does that make sense? Like it's kind of a winding answer, but it's one of the risks.

Finn (19:52.693)
It for sure. It for sure does. And I guess the natural follow up I have is, you know, triathlon, at least the modern version of it has existed for a couple of decades now. And there have been people in the sport with the resources to make it happen. Why haven't the incumbents in the participation model wanted to build this themselves? Like, why did you in 2016 have to be the one to finally come upon this?

Sam (20:18.042)
that's a deep philosophical question. So like, why is there an incentive to pay professionals lower if you can get away with it, then you will if you're a for profit business, right is the candid answer, right? So like, you're never going to incentivize someone more unless you need to if you see if you feel you need to, then you'll pay them more. Right? That's like, there's, there's a reason why there's an arms race for NFL coaches in America, right? Like, it's a market, right? Pay more than you'll then you'll go to even me in

Little old London, I know about that. It shows how far that media kind of spreads. But if you don't need to incentivize behavior, then you won't put more prize money. You won't put more investment. It doesn't matter whether it's prize money or anything else. And so that wasn't necessarily the competitive need to. Now, what we would argue though, is that you take a step back, is that that's actually holding the sport back. It's not even a competitive issue. It's like you're then in a cycle that...

the sport will never get out of being a participation sport. Now, in contrast, if we could jump to sort of the more positive aspects of it, or sorry, the positive side to the story is that if you can buck that trend and create great racing, which means the very best athletes going head to head. And this doesn't, this isn't unique to endurance sports. Every sport is underpinned on this. We want to see the very best in the arena competing, whether it's javelin or whatever, right? Like you want to know that whatever competition you're watching is the very best, if you have that, you begin to get more interest.

you'll get more of a following that will lead to more media that will lead to more sponsorship that will lead to more prize money. And it's a very natural model that will evolve. But sometimes it needs something to sort of buck the trend and cause the catalyst. And in our case, we believe that the space triathlon market was too fragmented. And if we could come along and consolidate the professional audience and create really great racing, then

Finn (21:58.505)
Thanks for watching!

Sam (22:01.086)
We would solve the question that we were often told the right at the beginning, which the triathlon can never be a spectator sport or not the question. It was the criticism people told us. This will never work. This is an eight hour, nine hour product. This will never work on TV. And we just fundamentally didn't believe that we thought, look, these incredible athletes, they're just not set up in the right way. So let's go and change the competition structure to do that.

Finn (22:09.916)
Yeah.

Finn (22:15.142)
Yeah.

Finn (22:20.941)
Well, and one of the reasons I ask, and I'm not sure if you are familiar with this name, but Paul Rabel, who is sort of like the CEO of the Professional Lacrosse Players League, he talks about this a lot, how maybe five or 10 years ago, Professional Lacrosse had this thesis that they were going to grow their league, they were going to grow the sport sort of bottoms up and they were going to invest a lot of resources in youth programs and at the collegiate level. And that by virtue was going to like sort of grow the fans of the sport, participation in the sport.

But they had, they've since realized that it actually does truly come down to like creating an entertainment product, having sort of a trickle down approach from the professional side of the sport. And, uh, yeah, I think that's why I wonder, like, if, if we've already kind of seen the proof in other leagues, why haven't we seen more transference into triathlon and trail running and stuff like that? So I don't know, I guess.

Sam (23:11.126)
I think there's a really easy answer to that point. It's just the youth and the sports. This stuff takes time, right? So golf happened in the 1960s and a sport that was been played since the 1890s, right? For like historians of basketball would know like early 1980s, the NBA was practically bankrupt. I mean, maybe it's slightly earlier than that. Like this is a very short time period that sport has matured and triathlon is 40 years young, ultra running in a professional sense is barely a baby, right? Maybe 10 years, 15 years.

Finn (23:16.124)
Yeah.

Sam (23:42.806)
And so I think it's not necessarily a negative and people shouldn't take that as a as a really bad thing It's just it just hasn't matured yet, but it's almost With I personally think it's inevitable But one would say based on looking at every other sport that it is inevitable that at some point That's the sport matures and that's when the professionals take a greater role and etc Etc as we talked about at the beginning of the interview

Finn (24:05.417)
So the money doesn't come until the audiences coalesce. That's kind of one of the big takeaways I have here. Is that why getting to broadcast TV is so important versus maybe evolving things at like a YouTube live stream level in the sport?

Sam (24:19.698)
I don't think you necessarily need to jump to broadcast. If you can, it's obviously easier to get a bigger audience. So our model, and we're very open about this, we've accelerated our journey by raising money. So we set up a model, although the PTO is a nonprofit, as I mentioned, we have a commercial entity that is co-owned by investors and the nonprofit, and that startup money was basically acceleration money.

right? Like it was being able to go to market faster to incentivize the pros earlier. So we came out of the gate with the largest prize purses, because we believe that if we had the best money, we would bring the best athletes incentivize them accordingly and get the audience. You know, we've talked about that already. Um, you could do it slower. And candidly we assumed when we launched that at least for the first two or three years, we will be a YouTube Facebook live only product. Um,

we were really encouraged that in our first year, in contrast, we were live, oh, it's been a few years now to remember the right numbers, but we were live in over a hundred markets on TV. We had an audience of over 6 million people on broadcast and that surprised everybody. That surprised our investors, surprised us. I think the only people that didn't surprise was the broadcasters themselves, who did give us the feedback that we 100% recognize the value in the audience of Endurance Sports. There just hasn't been any high enough quality product for us to put on our airwaves, but.

the PTO comes along and offers at this level, they were willing to put their money where their mouth is from a broadcast perspective and give us that exposure. And that's why the PTO has been able to move probably quicker than most people think. Like we're sort of three years into the journey and we've got really decent TV numbers already because the broadcast has really bought into it. But could this be a YouTube product first? Absolutely. There's no reason why it's still a wonderful way to reach an audience.

Finn (26:03.037)
One thing I find interesting, even existing inside a participation model, you will still find people, myself included, who will find a way to be hardcore fans of the competition that does exist and the pro athletes that exist inside that model. But when you think about it in terms of like concentric circles and like that next version of fan, what have you discovered casual fans want?

from a triathlon viewing experience that, you know, might go beyond sort of the hardcore fans like ourselves.

Sam (26:36.998)
Oh, so another really great question. And something we're only just getting started on, right? So this is not as simple as, so turning a sport into a, into a broadcast sport, kind of two or three different things that have to happen. Number one, of course you need distribution. So we talked about that, how like we've been encouraged by the distribution we got earlier than we had anticipated. But even if you have that, it's not like a simple case of you can just put the cameras on and suddenly you have great TV. You've got to have fantastic storytelling, which is, you know, a skill set in itself. But we can, we can touch on that in a minute.

But it actually goes further. And this is one of the reasons why triathlon and most endurance boards haven't been turned into great television products is you need to be able to have the data to be able to explain what the performances you're watching on the screen are and how they're contextually relevant, right? Because I might see the, and it may be, it's a little bit different in ultra running candidly because of the topography that you have that clearly, if you see someone running up a mountain in Chamonix, like that is amazing in itself and you know what it is, but.

Finn (27:20.446)
Mmm.

Sam (27:33.654)
In Triathlon, if I have the world number one and the world number two just running along, they're going fast, the average, as you say, the hardcore viewer knows immediately what's going on, but the average, the avid, sorry, not the avid, the casual fan has no contextual relevance to realize that this is an amazing performance unless you have data to be able to go and validate that. And in this case, we are exactly like every other sport. I would argue that if you...

If you turned on Formula One and you didn't have any data on how those cars were driving around LA or Vegas, sorry, Las Vegas or Miami or anywhere else, Formula One would be incredibly boring to watch. It would almost be impossible to watch, right? You'd have two and a half hours of just cars zipping around. Now in contrast, Formula One, very mature sport, arguably the most commercially savvy probably out there, have the technology that you know that Verstappen is 0.7 seconds ahead of Hamilton and the rest. And all you're focused on in the broadcast is

the 0.7 seconds becoming 0.8, 0.9, 0.10. Now that's really detailed, but that's what's missing entirely in endurance sports at the moment. But we need that if we're ever to become true broadcast sports, because our competition is not, the competition of the PTO is not Ironman or other organizers of triathlon. The competition is the NFL and the NBA and the NF1. Those are the companies that are on TV and there's only so much time in the day. We all only have so much disposable time.

Finn (28:44.967)
Mmm.

Sam (28:51.838)
If I'm going to get someone to watch the PTO on a triathlon, they're not watching NFL or they're not watching NBA. And therefore the standard that we have to apply to is, is those kind of rights holders. It's not other players and endurance sports.

Finn (29:03.573)
The data piece is fascinating. Another one that I see a lot in trail running, I'm not sure if you see this in triathlon, but for whatever reason, there is this overemphasis on performance-based storylines, like how fast somebody went or how close they're coming towards a course record. At the expense of competitive-based storylines, like where someone is in the context of the race, who they're competing against, is that something that you have had to

also change the culture around when it comes to sort of like what the broadcasters are discussing, what the commentators are discussing.

Sam (29:38.602)
Yeah, it's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it in that way, but you're 100% right. What matters is competition, right? It's who's ahead, who's behind. It's a battle of wills. It's having the best people together and seeing what matters, so what comes from that competition. And that is where sport is all the same, right? Sport is, you can boil every sport down to caring about who wins, who wins and who loses, and it doesn't matter what the sport is. That to us is infinitely more important than a record. And a performance and a speed, now that...

performance and speed and all these things are still important narratives to have because, you know, they're exciting and we want to see human performance and the rest. But if everything is just about how fast someone can go, then it kind of removes a lot of the special nature of what competition is. Or you just turn it into a time trial and it's really different. But from my, as I said, very, very limited experience of trail running and ultra running, the competition is, it might be a competition against yourself, but the competition is everything, right? It's not about who can run the fastest time. It's who's achieved this amazing.

um 17, 18, 20 hour achievement and has worn their competitor down through psychological, you know, warfare frankly without making it sound too dramatic. To us that's just as important as the athletic performance itself.

Finn (30:49.853)
Are there any other examples that come to mind for you on how you're expanding on or improving athlete storytelling in competition or out of competition?

Sam (30:58.566)
So the really interesting thing to us for this was that, and it's changing fast, to be fair. So like, I don't want it to feel like anyone that like the PTO is the only person doing it. So it's happening very quickly is that if you go back three or four years, basically nobody was doing any storytelling like the athletes. Like there were a few athletes that were going out of their way who are pioneers in the sense of creating their own YouTube channels and having people come and, you know, content creators and go and make content for them. But if we go back to that time period,

basically no one was telling the stories. And if I use a very good example where I'm trying to forget the exact year, I'm gonna say it was 2018 or 2019. It was the men's world championships in Ironman and Kona. It was the first time that Jan Frodeno, who's a legend of the sport, I'm sure anyone who's on this podcast would have heard of Jan Frodeno, was competing with Alistair Brownlee, who was a double gold medalist who many folks hadn't heard of.

But Alistair and Jan had raced many times in their career at a short distance and had never gone head to head in long distance. And so one would think that was the story that should dominate the sport. And it was barely covered because it was more focused on there's another race opening up this weekend. You can go and do Ironman in Poland or in Russia or any other place because it was more focused on promoting registration and participation. Whereas to us, we're like, this was one of the most epic battles between two athletes. That's the story that captures the interest.

And if it's told well, it transcends the sport and gets captured by the mainstream media, which is ultimately the long-term job of the PCO and everybody else, right? We wanna make this mainstream and have the world recognize how unbelievably talented the best ultra runners are. And every so often it does, right? You get a Killian Jornet kind of moment and then everyone's heard of them. But it comes from storytelling.

Finn (32:23.471)
Hmm.

Finn (32:43.089)
This is another weird question, but I think about this a lot because again, and it could be a stereotype, but I tend to find like, especially in like pre and post game interviews and culturally, like baseball, basketball, football players to be, I don't know if it's more interesting, but at the very least more expressive about sort of their time and place in the sport. And I'm wondering if, if you've experienced something similar in triathlon, like whether there's anything cultural about the sport that makes

athletes more withdrawn? Or is it just is the onus on the media people like myself to draw out the interesting facets of these people to then connect them to a general audience?

Sam (33:24.834)
So I think it's a couple of different points and I think you hit on a very relevant one that I think the core underlying needs of a sport like triathlon and especially ultra running, like you're gonna over index into introverts, right? Because this is a sport that requires you to disappear off on your own for many, many hours of the day, right? It's a very different stimulation to a team dynamic when you're almost naturally extroverted in contrast, right?

So I think the underpinning sort of nature of endurance sports probably leads more to introverts. That isn't to say that there aren't and you know, you can still be a great personality of an introvert, right? Let's not like put people in that box by any sense of the word. I think the most important thing and this is where the media does play into it is whether you're extroverted on the extreme scale or introverted on the other, you've still got a story. Everyone has a story and that's where it's down to the rights holders or the administrators, which is, I guess, the PTO in this case.

or the media to find that story and help the athlete tell it. And then that ultimately builds into having a personality. And I don't mean by that as a statement, but just to make sure that I don't get misconstrued to say that people don't have a personality. It's more, you have to own it though as an athlete, right? And be the, you could be the brash American or the shy Brit, right? But you can own your personality and build a profile around that. But the storytelling behind it.

I think people forget, they don't realize that you peel the onion back even on the quietest people, and they've often got these amazing accomplishments and journeys that they've been through. If I go off on a tangent slightly to give you a good example of one that like no one has ever heard of, well, sorry, obviously they do now because we talk about it, but I was really surprised when I got into the sport to hear about the world number one at the time, sorry, the world number six at the time. She got into triathlon because as a 25 year old, she was backpacking in...

Finn (34:58.269)
Please.

Sam (35:15.79)
Asia and she was shipwrecked and had to swim six hours to safety. And the very sad part of the story is most of the people that she was with died. The good part of the story is that she survived and she proved that she had an, uh, predilection for endurance sports and she became a professional triathlete. Unbelievable story. And yet how is that not a Hollywood film, right? Because there aren't people that are telling these. Now I use that the lady's called Els Visser. Um, I use that as an example. I guarantee there are 50 of these stories in trail running already. We just don't know about

Finn (35:47.698)
Yeah. First of all, that's amazing. Hopefully that does get scripted soon. That's incredible. And again, this is, because I know you mentioned Formula One Drive to Survive earlier. Well, I watched that a couple of years ago. And one thing that stuck out to me is, again, from the competitive storyline angle, they're not just focused on the battle for first, second place. Equally compelling is the battle between seventh and eighth place,

Sam (35:52.33)
Yeah.

Finn (36:16.157)
the whole storyline around avoiding relegation. And maybe this is something that endurance sports can learn from too, like there are other parts of the race that you can latch onto that are competitive and compelling, but maybe not necessarily like the for the win storyline.

Sam (36:30.166)
Yeah, I mean, that's you've just hit on like what drive to survive achieved for Formula One was to show quite how many stories there are within the sport. And that's partly because of the level of, um, of reward and incentive, right? It's like, it really matters to finish 12th or 15th or 16th in Formula One work because the incentive is there. Now, if the money was so high in our sports that it mattered back then, then I think there would be more focus on it. But at the moment it's very, you know, pointy end at the top, but

There are so many stories that go into this, where it becomes challenging as a broadcaster, and this is why Drive to Survive is actually a very powerful product for Formula One, is that it's very hard to do it live. Right, so obviously in a real-time live environment, you're focused on who's winning first, second, and third, because there's just so much going on. You don't necessarily realize that there might be unbelievable nuanced stories right at the back of the field that are potentially more compelling than what's happening at the front, but it's very hard to put all this all together.

That is the challenge of a broadcaster and a rights holder or a group like us, we're by no means cracked it. We're so far off cracking it yet, but we're getting to the point where we feel better about it. It's down to technology. It's even knowing where somebody is. I mean, let me, I'll use this as a sort of a jokey story about how bad endurance sports are compared to others. I'm sure it's a fat time, 99% it's the case with ultra running in triathlon until we've made some changes recently.

The only time you would find out how somebody is performing is whether they would run across with their championship or their RFID chip, they run across a timing point, right? And you know how they're doing. And that's how the entire sport operates, even up to the Olympic games. But that means in theory, you don't know who's winning until they've run across that particular point. So at any given time, we don't know who's winning in a competition in the Olympic games. I mean, the comparative to that, and it sounds a little nuanced, it's like watching a tennis match and only taking the score every fourth shot.

you're like, oh, yeah, we don't know yet. Now we know because we've got the results, right? It's insane. And yet, and I use that as a funny example, because that's what our producer who came into the PTO from Formula One, interestingly enough, and heard that, hey, no, we'll have a TV show that will show two athletes next to each other, but we're not going to know who's officially ahead until they go over this mat. All right, that's just crazy. And yet that's, unfortunately, the technological, there are many reasons, as I said, why these sports have not become mainstream broadcast yet.

Finn (38:37.021)
Hehehehe

Sam (38:45.782)
because of challenges like this that need to get solved. And so working on real-time GPS, real-time power, real-time heart rate that you can have in a second screen environment, that you can have it in the TV, these are the kind of things that need to get solved and what we're working on.

Finn (38:59.709)
One comment and one question, the comment, you know, I'm laughing because we're even more reliant on the timing mat and ultra trail running. And it can be this, it can be the case oftentimes where, you know, commentators on a live stream are waiting not just minutes or a half hour, but, you know, multiple hours to get information on, you know, where the race is now and who's ahead and what's transpired between time, you know, it's crazy. But what you just said there reminded me

When you think about the level of data that we can possibly achieve in the years to come and just how much information a viewer and the broadcast can collect on athletes, how far do you want to go with this? Like one thing I often fantasize about is like putting, for example, uh, like microphones on athletes and being able to like listen into their breathing or what they're saying in the competition to people at an aid station or two competitors as they're passing each other.

What do you think about there? And so what is the level of like sort of infringement on privacy that we're willing to accept to craft a really compelling viewing experience?

Sam (40:08.238)
So there's a legal answer and then there's like a product answer, right? Or like a, um, a forecast answer. Um, the, and to me, they both link together, um, which is the, without taking away from the athleticism, right? So you don't want to make it into a circus, right? We don't want to undermine what we're watching. Um, this is where arguably some of the.

Finn (40:12.475)
Yeah.

Sam (40:27.71)
I'm not a fan of the celebrity boxing trend that's happening at the moment, that we're watching influences. Yeah, exactly. And whoever, it doesn't matter whoever they are. Because I just don't think it's athletically relevant, right? It's a massive audience watching two things and that's okay. Whereas to me, sport is not just to me, this is a very, very common theme. It's about seeing the best do incredible things. And so I think if you take the lens of, as long as you don't take away from that.

Finn (40:32.201)
Shake Paul.

Sam (40:54.262)
we should be going as much into detail of whatever we can find out about what those athletic journeys and the competencies are, because then it tells the story better. Heart rate, biometric data, having it live, and this is the thing I get asked quite often when we're going through some of the conversations with the athletes is that we do need to have real time data of an athlete and we need to be able to show it live because we want to show what amazing achievements they do. Now, obviously there are...

GDPR and privacy issues and things that we have to work out. And we need to work through those hoops and jump through them in a way that is, you know, protects everybody. But the reason why we need to do that is to going back to that point that if we wanna make this a mainstream sport and grow it more, our competition, our sports like Formula One and NFL, the rest that are going to do all of this, right? They're gonna push the barriers. And so as a sport, we have to be able to keep up and make this entertaining. I'd love to see in Triathlon's case, this is where it gets, you know.

To be fair, trail running across the topography that the sport has makes it very challenging, but imagine throwing in swimming and then cycling at high speeds in addition to running, right? Like there's just so many things that make these things hard, but that's not an excuse. You have to go and find the right innovation and technology to be able to surface this up and turn it into an entertaining product.

Finn (42:11.373)
You know, one thing I've heard you talk about a lot is just how important it is to create a coherent end to end season long narrative for the sport of triathlon, not just to make your own business model work, but really to create more fans and to evolve the sport. What do you mean when you say end to end season long narrative and you know, like how, how might this make sense in trail running?

Sam (42:35.87)
Yeah, absolutely. So look, this is where you're talking about right. What we're doing at the moment, which is, you know, we're three years into this. We've had some great events that we put on. We've had some great results in terms of broadcast viewership. And we thought we'd be taking the sport further. But in doing that, we've learned a lot, which is why I started with the opening statement that we're still learning every day. And, you know, by no means perfect. One of the things we've learned is for this to be truly mainstream. You need to be able to grow the fan base to grow the fan base. They have to understand the storytelling of what's going on.

And part of that is having enough content that the broadcasters can really get behind it and tell those stories. And if you have a fragmented audience, sorry, if you have a fragmented product, then that's incredibly hard to do. So in contrast, if that sort of adds to the sort of context, what we're working on at the moment is a new 10 stage, it will evolve to 10 stages in a couple of years, 10 stage world tour that has a season long narrative that starts at the beginning of the year, finishes at the end, and it builds up in crescendo of points to a champion.

And that sounds really simple, but if you think about it, if you're a broadcaster, you're now knowing that you're getting consistent racing at the very best people at regular intervals where you know who's gonna be performing, not necessarily winning or not, but like there's a certain sort of momentum of what's going on. And therefore you're willing as a broadcaster to put your marketing dollars behind those storytelling. And the classic, we've talked about Formula One a couple of times, that's the classic example, right? It's the 20, unlike in triathlon, this is what happens at the moment.

And indeed in ultra running in Formula One, it's not different drivers every weekend, right? It's the same 20 drivers going head-to-head all the way through the year And so that creates a momentum of a product that you can get cut through and Max Verstappen becomes a household name It'll take many years before triathlon The top triathletes are household names But this is the kind of product we need to be able to do it the difference Oh, sorry consistency to Formula One and something that I think is very similar in trail running

is also taking those 10 events and putting them on in beautiful locations that showcase what they are, right? Which is this is not a sport, in both cases, sorry, trail running and triathlon, we're not sports that are in a stadium that could be just anywhere. This is showing off incredible topographies, incredible locations of where these things are, and that becomes an essence of what the product is. So that's really what we are working on at the moment is this 10-stage world tour all around the world, season-long narrative in beautiful locations because

Finn (44:57.121)
Mm.

Sam (44:59.37)
We think that will give, and it's a really long answer to your question, but we think that is the product that helps the sport get cut through.

Finn (45:07.013)
To me, and again, maybe this is more an issue in ultra trail running than triathlon, but to me, the biggest bottleneck is the toll that high frequency racing takes on these athletes and then that dilutes the product as a result. So I guess my question, I guess it's really just for trail running or for triathlon, but how do you, how do you weigh this appetite for more and being in the content business in needing this year long programming against athlete welfare?

Sam (45:33.954)
Oh, I mean, you've hit on the core of like what we do, right. And it's a really difficult trade off. And obviously athlete welfare has to win over the commercials because if you have an amazing product that ends up killing the athletes, and I don't mean that in the literal sense, but damaging the athletes that they can't perform, then you don't have a product, right. It doesn't sustain at all. So what we've done and one of the first things we did actually was look at the distance, look at the format so that we can have it in a way that was, would be sustainable. And so of our, um, our racing is over a new distance. It's a hundred kilometers.

And so two kilometer swim, 80 kilometers bike, and then 18 kilometer run. It's too long in the evening for me to convert that to miles for you straight away, but I have one and a half, 50 miles and 11 off the top of my head. So that's roughly. And the point there is that it's short enough that athletes can race that regularly through the year. They're not golfers, they're not tennis players. It's not like they can do it every weekend by any sense of the word, but.

Finn (46:23.873)
Mm.

Sam (46:28.702)
It's short enough that the recovery and the buildup is enough that you can do that 8, 9, 10 times a year. Not possible if you're racing for 9 hours. That's a given, right? And so I think a different dynamic with ultrarunning.

Finn (46:43.053)
You know, another thing I think about in, you know, more mature sports from a professional standpoint is the off season plays such a big role in the entertainment value of the sport. Like in baseball, basketball, football, I feel like ESPN has, you know, created so much engagement around, you know, who's a free agent in this off season? Who's going to sign with which team? You know, what are their expectations heading into next year? How are we evaluating them based on last year? You know, how are they gelling with their teammates? You know,

What are the pre-existing rivalries looking like? All that kind of stuff. How do you, with the PTO, think about the importance of the offseason, again, within the confines of this season-long narrative?

Sam (47:25.726)
Um, so slightly different answer to your, to your question. I would argue that it's a, I would agree with you that it's interesting content, right? It's exciting. And the rest, um, I would argue that the sports are so commercial that like ESPN does that because they're trying to get as much money back from their rights fees as possible, right? Like they want to make this into a year round thing and make sure we tune in. And that's not a negative thing, right? That's not a negative at all. That shows how well professional these sports are that they become interesting enough that we do that. Um, and off season.

Finn (47:40.433)
Yeah.

Sam (47:52.338)
there's sort of two things around an off season. One is obviously that you need an off season to have an on season, fairly obvious point. So you need the athletes to go and have a rest and have a suitable time that they can recuperate and charge. So I don't think you can be covering all of that with reality TV series and following people all the time because it just wears people down after a while. So there has to be, it goes back to that sort of athlete duty of care and athlete welfare point that there needs to be an off season.

In the case of triathlon, it's probably three or four months maximum. Right. So it's you go back and you're racing away through the year, which it might sound like not very much, but I, uh, I'm going to forget the exact days, but I think in professional cycling, they're racing for like even more now. I, it's 180 days of competition. That's unbelievable. What some professional athletes can do. Not to say it's more physically tolling. They just have more infrastructure around them to allow them to do it. Right. There are entire teams that allowing them to recover and get across the world and have physios.

this kind of stuff. So I think it partly depends on the sport.

Finn (48:52.741)
Maybe one more question on sort of like the fan creation side of things and sort of like athlete welfare side of things.

Why do you have to be, why does the PTO have to be multi-continental to show who's best? Because I think about sports like the NBA and the NFL where players from all around the world come to the United States to do battle and that's recognized as sort of the cream of the crop. But again, this is kind of a thing for all endurance sports. We've sort of accepted a scenario where we do need to be in Europe. We do need to be in Asia. We do need to be in the US or North America.

to sort of do battle. So talk about that decision.

Sam (49:33.002)
Yeah, so that's a very interesting way that you've referenced that question. And I would probably start with the point that we are commercializing the sports now, right? So we're talking about the sort of where the sport is going. We're starting from a, sorry, I'm saying it the wrong way. We're starting from a point where the sports are already global. And so suddenly go domestic or national would be counterintuitive because you're only serving some of that audience.

Finn (49:56.975)
That's a good point.

Sam (49:57.998)
Right. If you flip it to the other examples you use, they would have started predominantly as domestic sports and then maybe grown overseas. Right. That's probably the main reason. Could this sustain, could there be a national triathlon tour in the States that's as strong or as strong or a subsidiary of the PCO? I would love to see that eventually. But in the short term, one of the really nice things about ultra running and triathlon and golf and tennis, and there are not that many other sports is that they are actually global.

Finn (50:03.988)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (50:26.894)
they're played by people all over the place. And so if anything, it's something to celebrate rather than sort of pull back from.

Finn (50:32.649)
Cool. One last sort of overarching topic that I want to make sure we discuss, and I want to be respectful of your time too, is sort of just your relationship in the triathlon environment with Ironman. And I think the first question I have is, how do I put this? Like, is the triathlon vertical big enough where the PTO can both survive?

and you can justify all the investment dollars you're getting or at the end of the day, somewhere down the line, does this vertical need to be a winner take all scenario between PTO and Ironman?

Sam (51:08.93)
Hmm, interesting. Um, so, or put it in another way, like, I suppose, is the strategy to very, very basic example, there's a cake and are we slicing up the cake or are we growing the cake? Right? Is another way of putting it right. And in our absolute our way of looking at it is that we're growing the cake considerably. And actually, it means that the very best thing for Ironman in the long term is the PCO success. Because we're coming into the sport, we're investing huge amounts of money in profile building and storytelling of the professionals.

that will ultimately grow the sport. And because the PTO's very public strategy is that we don't wanna have 190 events around the world, we wanna have just the very, very top, right, the majors. That means that all of those new triathletes that come into the market, when they can't do a PTO event, or even indeed in addition to a PTO event, they will go and do Ironman. And so Ironman becomes a massive beneficiary of our success. So very much not a zero sum game. We were created arguably because, you know, the sport wasn't...

Finn (51:53.809)
Mm.

Sam (52:07.234)
paying the professionals enough. We're thrilled over the last few years that even within the sport it's changed, right? So Ironman announced their own pro series recently with another 1.7 million off the top of my head going into prize money, which is just an amazing thing. The first thing we did was to celebrate that. We didn't come out going, oh no, it's competition because it's not competition, right? Where the focus of the PTO is to grow the sport of professionals. And so anyone who's putting more money into the sport is a good thing for us. Definitely not a zero sum game.

Finn (52:36.657)
Cause one thing that I've just been curious to see is like on the PTO side of things, obviously it's, it's started as sort of, you know, emphasizing the professional business model, but now we're seeing the PTO include age groupers and then on the Ironman side of things, which I've always seen as sort of the participation model, we've seen them announce this pro series. So does that in any way, like, can you see how that might confuse onlookers about sort of like the relationship there?

Sam (53:02.658)
Totally, yeah, very much so. Like it's very easy to get confused by the nuance of it if you're not living and breathing it. We often remind ourselves internally that we're in the triathlon echo chamber. How does this look like from the outside? If you take a step back. We had always intended, look, one of the special things about both trail running and marathons and triathlon, and there are very few other examples, are that you can have mass participation alongside professional racing. We've talked about Formula One a bunch.

You can't go and ride on drive around Silverstone after Max Verstappen, right? Like this is always a professional product only. And in tennis, you can't go on center court in Wimbledon after you've seen Venus or Serena play. In triathlon, you can do that. And in ultra running, you can do that. You can aspire to be as good as the professionals. And that's something really unique and to be celebrated. And so our business model was always to have mass participation. The difference is that it represents a...

small, you know, 20, 30% of our business as opposed to it being the lion's share, which is how the participation model works, because we're focused on TV and corporates and various other parts. But it doesn't mean that age group participation isn't a very important part because that's your community. And that's the most sort of diehard fan. And so we want to create amazing opportunities for those athletes. Um, even though the professional piece is what we think is the real flywheel for the whole sport.

Finn (54:20.345)
Is there ever a scenario where you would welcome that current age group share becoming ultimately the dominant share of sort of the PTO business model?

Sam (54:29.89)
No, because economically it won't work, right? For a very simple reason. And we would argue that this is where the sport was going until we've come along. You can't have the sport built on the backs of just age group participation. Because all that means is entry fees get so high that it puts people off racing, right? So if you make this so payment, let's put it in a, let's not talk about triathlon. Let's use a different example. And arguably to a certain extent, it's getting this way with some American sports. If the spectators, if the ticket fees have to pay,

If the tickets are so expensive to pay for all of the other infrastructure in the sport, then the NFL wouldn't work, right? The NBA wouldn't work. I know those tickets are very expensive to go and watch, but they're lucky that they get enough money from corporates and media rights and the rest that they're able to function. And at the moment, that's how endurance sports largely is, right? It's all on the backs of age groupers. Whereas we go out of our way to reduce pricing, because we think that actually those are your most loyal fans, you should be incentivizing them to do more of the sport, not the other way around. And it's on us.

and the various other organizations in the sport to go and get more revenues into the business, go and get TV rights, go and get sponsorship so that you can subsidize age group participation. So it's kind of the complete opposite of what you described is how we're thinking about it because we think it's a very dangerous model if you just charge people too much because everyone has some price, some level of price elasticity that they'll say no.

Finn (55:38.995)
Yeah.

Finn (55:48.481)
What do you see as sort of the principal challenges to get pro triathletes in the sport to care about and participate in PTO events instead of Ironman events, especially in the scenarios where the weekends are overlapping or they're in super close proximity?

Sam (56:08.246)
So we, we're only three years in and we're already seeing some of the best fields out there. So I think it's sort of, it's beginning to work. It's a combination of a bunch of different things. It's not just about money. Everyone just assumes prize money is the most important thing, but if you're going to go to speak to most of the top professionals, they would say they want to race their peers, right? They want to be, they want to have battles. These are this is a editorial sport is glad editorial. And so they want to be able to compete with the very best people now.

it's a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario. If you have good prize money, it means you have a good feel, which means you create that nice virtuous cycle in a good way rather than the vicious cycle we talked about earlier. So that's one part is as athletes, they wanna race the very best. And then secondly, and I think this is becoming increasingly more important is in racing the best and performing well, they want their stories to be told. And so having a body and a partner that's gonna promote that and get them on television and make them household names, that's a very positive thing.

We don't prevent people from racing Ironman. We don't prevent them from racing challenge. We encourage them to go and race elsewhere. We just want them to be on their very best game when we're putting on races so that we can grow the sport and promote them.

Finn (57:18.141)
Maybe just a few more questions and I'll preface this one by saying, I think it's super cool that, you know, as sort of a business in it, I think it's super cool that you guys are using sort of like the Silicon Valley based venture model to grow the PTO. But I do know, and again, just from experiences being in businesses that have been venture backed, there are certain pressures. Sometimes, you know, you have to take on viewpoints and directions that don't emanate from like you yourself or the original visionaries. Are there any signs that it's going to be hard for

the PTO to get the return it needs from the triathlon vertical. And maybe that requires moving into a space like gravel cycling or trail to meet sort of like growth trajectory projections.

Sam (57:59.118)
Um, so it's a very, very fair point. And we've already added actually for not necessary economic reasons for actually reasons of atmosphere is we've already expanded beyond triathlon. So when we have, um, no, it's, there's no problem. You wouldn't necessarily know this unless you're very, very close to the details. So we've generally said that at many of our events, we will have mass participation for triathlon, swimming, cycling, and running.

Finn (58:09.959)
Hmm. I apologize.

Sam (58:21.846)
But the reason for that is not necessarily economic. It's not to go and get more people, to get more entry fees. It's because we want to have a critical mass of more people at an event because it just makes it more exciting and more of an atmosphere. So they become more like multi-sport festivals. I suppose you should never say never, but I can't see that expanding to trail and gravel just because it's so hard to do, right? The logistics of adding those kinds of things. But we do it for two reasons really, right? One is atmosphere. And then secondly,

We want to grow the sport. And so we believe that the very best way to convert a new triathlete is to go and get a swimmer, cyclist or runner to see how great triathlon is and then convert them the year after. And so to us, it becomes, you know, again, uh, the funnel exercise. Um, that's how we're doing it.

Finn (59:03.269)
I know it's a little out of order actually. Do you mind if I ask you sort of a, just a few more questions about sort of like athlete welfare and how, okay.

Sam (59:10.64)
I've got four minutes, but if we can do.

Finn (59:13.89)
Okay, last question. And again, just coming back to sort of the basics, how are athletes compensated in the PTO model versus how they were compensated in the Ironman model?

Sam (59:25.258)
So it's actually very comparable. We're moving towards some new methods next year, which we've been open about, which is that we want to have contracted minimums that athletes know if they're racing the PTO Tour that they're gonna have an income, which we think is an important step for the sport to take. If you think about it at a very basic level, the vast majority of athletes based on prize money can never get a mortgage, they can never get a car loan, they can never get anything, right? It's all that all of their salary is, all of their compensation, I should say, sorry, is variable.

So we've been moving towards having the concept of minimum guarantees and contracted amounts for the very, very top athletes. And to us, that's a very justifiable ask in return, sorry, give in return for their time and exposure and growing the sport. Right. Because we obviously have media commitments from the very best athletes and the media always tend to want to talk to the very best guys. So they should be compensated accordingly. But beyond that, it's mainly prize money. That's just how most sports operate. That

which is very meritocratic. We have prize money in our events and then we have the PTO rankings at the end of the year, which rewards not only people who do PTO events, but all the way down and doing any race that has a ranking score, you can go and get a points and then you will be paid at the end of the year if you make the top 50 men or women. And we have $2 million in the prize purse.

Finn (01:00:39.881)
Sam, it has been an absolute pleasure and honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for shedding light on what you're doing in the triathlon scene. And I'm sure there are a lot of people listening who you've kind of gotten ideas spinning and yeah, hopefully you've ignited a further conversation in our sport, so thank you so much.

Sam (01:00:53.447)
Yeah.

Sam (01:00:57.218)
Well, and the prediction here, and this isn't unique me saying it, but this will happen in ultra running without doubt. Right. It's, it's happened in every sport. It happens in slightly different ways. As I said, right. Collected bargaining agreement, breakaway organization, union, et cetera. But it happens in every sport and it sounds like ultra running is growing incredibly quickly and it's time for the professionals to unite and get their fair share.