PTO 2.0? Decoding the latest on triathlon’s big bet with Age Groupers and not TV now the key

“We are going to make triathlon, the PTO T100, one of the biggest sports entertainment products in the world. Fact.”

That was the bold claim of the PTO Executive Chairman Chris Kermode when the T100 Triathlon World Tour was launched at the start of this year.

Six races have now taken place and ahead of the Grand Final in Dubai there’s no doubt that plenty of progress has been made but has there been a pivot – or even a U-turn – in recent months in terms of the business model of the Professional Triathletes Organisation?

For speaking to Tom Bassam on the latest SportsPro podcast which was released on 31 October, the PTO’s CEO Sam Renouf placed a far greater emphasis on mass participation, insisting: “We built this business to be media rights agnostic.”

Three pillars now for Renouf and PTO

Rather than a reliance on media rights, Renouf suggested the three main revenue streams for the PTO at present are sponsorship, hosting fees and mass participation receipts.

That’s not to say the broadcast product isn’t still hugely important, but is there still the emphasis that Kermode put on in back at that London launch in January?

He spoke then of a simple “recipe”, with the key ingredients including “a season long narrative, a ranking system that you can understand, culminating at the end with a winner.”

They’ve largely been ticked off and the winners – who will also be crowned World Champions thanks to the PTO’s relationship with World Triathlon – will be determined in Dubai.

Other vital aspects were the best racing the best on a regular basis and iconic locations, both of which even the PTO’s harshest critics would surely acknowledge have also been delivered.

And there’s no doubt the broadcast product is in a better place now than it’s ever been – with live data more to the fore and a settled, insightful commentary team with modern day GOAT Jan Frodeno the undoubted star but the likes of Chelsea Sodaro adding a huge amount too during the most recent race in Lake Las Vegas.

What does TV and media product bring?

But are we anywhere near to Kermode’s parting shot in London when he said: “I stand here today and say in two to three years time the PTO T100 will be in the top 10 greatest sports entertainment products on this planet.”

That’s a moot point but Renouf’s interview with SportsPro suggests a shift, or at least clarifies exactly what he feels the media product brings to the table.

For following on from his claim that the business was built to be media rights agnostic, Renouf explained: “Now that’s not to say that media is not an incredibly important part of the business plan, because it is. For us it’s the way that we consolidate the audience, but it’s not economically important.

“It’s sort of the flywheel that drives all the other parts of the business. So our partners like Warner Bros Discovery are incredibly important, but they’re not important because they’re writing a cheque. They’re important because they help us bring this audience together.

“The whole commercial basis of the PTO is very simple. Triathlon has one of, if not the most, valuable demographics in sport, but the audience is fragmented by the lack of media and the lack of real content. So if you’ve got a really valuable audience, but you can’t speak to them at scale, it doesn’t have any commercial value. So we thought could we come and fix that and bring that together.”

Mass participation a cornerstone

Private equity firm Divergent is one of the PTO’s investors and their chief executive Francis Bento tells SportsPro on the same podcast: “So mass participation for us, when we looked at PTO, that aspect was an essential aspect of our investment.

“At the inception, it was not as developed as it is today – London, 5,000 participants, Dubai 10,000 – but at end of the day, the more people participate, the bigger communities you create. And as you know, somebody who participates on a yearly basis is twice as likely to follow that event on a weekly basis on TV.

“Undoubtedly, mass participation de-risks investment, right? Because when we looked at PTO, we looked at it from the bottom up, looked at the revenue streams, cities collaborating or paying for these events, millions of people following it, sponsors will get attracted, but having thousands of people who participate and that there is a second and third derivative around it. One person participating will be bringing with him two or three other people, friends, or speaking about the event to other friends. There is a ripple effect, which is very, very important.

“So when we looked at that, obviously it was a way to contribute to de-risking investment quite substantially. Media rights are the cherry on the cake, but we never integrated the media rights in our business projections when we analysed this business.”

So while most of the broadcast focus in Dubai will be on who are crowned the first two T100 World Champions, it’s arguably the 10,000-plus mass participation athletes – the largest figure yet at a T100 event – who could prove more significant in the long term.

It’s something that here at TRI247 we’ll be speaking to Renouf about after Dubai as we look ahead to 2025 and beyond for the T100 Series.