Race assets

What is your favourite race each year, you know, the one you mark in the calendar months in advance and then pack the car to journey back to, reliving past glories and seeking new experiences? Do you tell other people so they too make the trip next year, boosting event numbers and establishing it as a 'must do' race each season? This kind of on-going support for races is the heart and soul of sports, more so than the glitz and glamour that sometimes precedes events actually becoming successful. Strong races are good for the sport.

But strong races also stand out as being ripe for picking by big event managers, when they out grow the grass roots committees that were behind their initial success, and need a bigger and more accomplished management team behind them. The smart event managers will nurture and care for their popular events, knowing the value they bring both in dollar terms and prestige for their brand and reputation, thereby attracting more people to their other events. The net result is still good for the sport, with more quality event options for people to choose between.

But the risk is that established races lose their identity that made them so popular in the first place, and become assets and commodities that are assessed for their black-and-white value to the managing organisation, and become the subject of ownership battles for almost territorial rights to hold and run an event at a defined location, on a defined date. While the recent trend has been towards improving the quality of race experience, one wonders if there will a point soon of cost cutting and cost saving by event managers, seeking to maximise return for less outlay, relying on the good will built up over years of participating by many athletes.

In recent times there has been competition at play in the triathlon market, such as WTC buying out USM Event Management and thus securing rights to IM Cairns away from Challenge. Then, perhaps in a return shot, Challenge came in and pulled the WTC rug from under the historic IM Canada to establish Challenge Penticton in 2013. These are examples of both new and old events, but each with a deemed value in the marketplace.

For each of these races, they would seem to be essentially the same event except for the branding and associated aspects, each of which has a subtly different appeal to athletes. So once again, competition is good and although not necessarily like a case of picking your favourite brand from the supermarket shelf, does provide choice in a market that increasingly looks beyond the WTC formula for something new and/or different for iron distance events.

Then there are the cases where an established and iconic event, with a loyal following, is up and moved to a new venue with race organisers perhaps hoping for a “Field of Dreams” scenario of ‘build it and they will come’, relying on the associated race reputation to be the drawing card. In Australia we’ve seen it with IM Australia leaving what many (still) call the ‘spiritual home’ of Foster, to the nearby town of Port Macquarie, leaving many feeling like they were robbed of everything Foster offered the competitor. While athletes followed to the new location, it seemed there was some resentment about how it was done, forced onto the athletes at a time when the choice of events was more limited. The product of IM Australia won out, and athletes were at the mercy of the IM licence holders at the time, IMG, who we usually associate with big, greedy corporate organisation, for whom the bottom line is everything.

Whether or how much race organisers give consideration to the humble athlete we don’t know. Are they out to squeeze whatever they can from our pockets in the interests of “shareholder return”, or do they really have our interests at heart? The recent example of WTC cancelling entry to IN New York for 2013 shows some level of community concern, but that was only after backlash at the $1200 entry fee they tried to put over everyone. Whether it would have sold out is secondary to what is deemed as value for money...and an entry fee of > $1000 might have been a tipping point.

While I’ve got no problem in people running a business of organising events, heck, my brother does just that for his job, it’s when races are considered like assets on a Monopoly board that the line between what is in the best interests of whom becomes blurred. Ultimately supply and demand will sort things out, but soon there might be a wake up call on one side or the other about the lengths people will go to for a race...the playing field might be in for some levelling out, then.