endurance.biz spoke with Michael D’Hulst, co-founder and CEO at Super League Triathlon. We discussed a range of issues, starting with Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the major challenges this poses to all event organizers. The conversation also explored the role of pro triathletes, broadcast of triathlon, building an event brand and committing to staff…
A summary with some of the discussion points is written up below. To hear the conversation in full, please check out the full interview via Soundcloud.
EnduranceBiz: How are you doing?
Michael D’Hulst: Hi. As OK as one can be with these unprecedented circumstances. It’s been very busy, with Coronavirus and how this impacts the business.
We were aware early on about the impact of Coronavirus because we had an event planned in Asia, in Indonesia, for April. In late December and the beginning of January we started to monitor. We have an office in Singapore, and we were looking at the impact of Coronavirus on our staff and also the events.
Early on, we decided to postpone our Bali event. We also had a showcase event planned in Saudi Arabia. That one is also postponed. Now, we are postponing more and more events. We’re communicating with all stakeholders and governments. It’s a critical situation.
In terms of staff, we implemented working from home early on, getting Zoom up and running and spending our time on Zoom. Luckily at the moment all of our staff are in good health; and all the information I get from athletes so far is positive.
EnduranceBiz: We’ve seen how interconnected everything is across the endurance sport industry, with events being pivotal, how do you see this crisis playing out?
Michael: It’s a very fluid situation. It’s too early to predict any future really. The approach we have chosen is, for the Bali, Salinas and Saudi Arabia events these are all in climates that work all year round. So, ultimately, we are in a position to postpone them; and it doesn’t affect the quality of the racing us such – with safety obviously being the high priority.
The other [Super League] qualifiers we have are slightly more difficult. The Poznan [Poland] event, for example, is obviously dependent on the European summer; and frankly speaking to postpone one of these events now until July or August is very, very high risk.
For us the next big question is around our Championship Series events. They’re planned for September. Here, we have decided to not grow to the extent that we had originally planned.
We are looking at four venues instead of the five-six that we originally had in the pipeline. We’re looking at making a decision around that in June-July. This is probably the right way to get a bit of a better feeling how the world might look in September.
EnduranceBiz: What do you feel is the role that the race director should have at this time?
Michael: This all puts any race director into a very, very, very difficult situation. Because the race director is obviously passionate about organizing a race, but is most concerned about the health and wellbeing of the athletes, the fans of the event. It’s also an economic decision because a race director invests in an event, six months, seven months, before the actual event happens.
The announcement that Challenge Roth made – with it being a massive event with massive costs – and asking athletes to support and maybe not be reimbursed – is a difficult decision that every race director now faces.
We’ve been in a similar position. We cancelled racing last September in Jersey because the weather conditions were impossible. Overnight the whole race set-up was destroyed because of gale force winds. We gave the age group participants the option to defer, be reimbursed or even donate to charity and then some people took that option.
It’s a difficult one because the individual race directors have a lot of money already invested and there’s no way for them to get that back. They are between two very different and challenging directions.
EnduranceBiz: For events, so much seems to comes down primarily to communication, on social for example. Any advice when it comes down to managing the communication to athletes?
Michael: Communication is very important. We have a web page for people to check the latest updates on all races and see what is happening.
For some of our races where we still have registration open – we are clearly communicating, if the race might not happen, what the process will be for athletes to be reimbursed. I’m talking here about age group athletes. We also have to think very much about our professional athletes. I’ve had a lot of conversations with managers and with athletes.
For pro athletes this is dramatic – because, if they don’t race, they don’t get exposure. They can’t win any prize money but also they can’t generate any value for their sponsors.
So, I feel an obligation for us to get something going in whatever shape or form, to get our professional athletes, the ones that inspire and who show our brand to the world, able to create some visibility for themselves.
EnduranceBiz: Perhaps you can talk about your model, with elites at the forefront and with a broadcast approach. Do you feel that there is now an opportunity to build engagement with fans?
Michael: It’s always been a focus in our long term plan. The strategy has always been to first go to the platforms that are, let’s say, easy to engage – like social media. Then, after building a following on social media, we leverage broadcast as an audience acquisition model.
That’s very much the phase that Super League is in. The next step is to start to own and create our own channels – so that we’re not dependent on others. And from that we can start to create ways of engaging directly with the consumer.
Now, we’re looking at fast-tracking some of the opportunities that were originally planned for a bit later.
EnduranceBiz: Any comments on how Super League’s short course racing sits alongside PTO’s longer course focus – with both having broadcast playing a role?
Michael: Our focus on broadcast is more of an audience acquisition tool. The rights fee model is very tricky for the moment. We see how this world is transitioning. If you’re not soccer or one of the bigger sports it will be very difficult to make money from rights fees.
We decided that broadcast is important because we want to build a brand and we want to showcase the athletes – who we are committed to making household names. We are not doing broadcast because we are under the assumption that this will deliver us millions of dollars of rights fees.
I very much embrace that PTO recognizes the value of professional athletes. I was drawn to triathlon because Luc Van Lierde won IRONMAN in Kona back in 1996 and I saw how it created a hero. The inspirational aspect of creating heroes – the inspiring of people to pick up a sport or do an activity is what builds brands – and I love to see that PTO is bringing that back.
EnduranceBiz: You mentioned IRONMAN, which is being now acquired by Advance. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Michael: Well, I’m a I’m a big fan of the IRONMAN business. It’s what brought me to the sport of triathlon in the first place. I’m also very happy to see it go back to the older owners, with Jesse Du Bey becoming again very heavily involved.
I was also a little bit surprised about the timing of the transaction. I knew that conversations were ongoing. It’s obviously a massive transaction. But there’s nobody who knows it better then Jesse Du Bey and Andrew Messick, and I do believe that there’s a strong vision.
EnduranceBiz: Do you feel that when we come out of this pandemic we will hang on to the collective element of endurance sport; or do you worry that this will change our attitude towards experiencing things together?
Michael: For me, I think that actual events and bringing people together is always going to be something that is very desirable. I was actually speaking at a conference in Glasgow a couple of months back and we looked at this point about the virtual world and the physical world, and how they interact.
I’d like to develop that with Super League. The physical event is like the icing on the cake. For us we’ve always said that we would build a brand around professional athletes. They will inspire.
I also like the model of CrossFit, which gets people to engage in their own gyms, for example. There’s an opportunity now for us to look at how can we implement that with Super League. How can we, earlier than we planned, give people the experience of Super League in a different way?
Perhaps their first experience of Super League is in a different way than a physical event. But we bring them together ultimately at our physical events – where they can be a part of racing that’s for everybody. It’s for the youth and juniors, through to our pros.
The crisis that is developing has been very testing and it has forced us to really reconsider our plans and maybe re-shuffle a bit.
Our decision is to stand by our team. I see many businesses laying off staff. We’ve taken the direction to really commit to them – to leverage our brand and come up with new ideas. When we come out of the crisis, this will deliver us value and put us one step ahead. We have the support of our board to do this and I’m very grateful for that.
