The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) has extended its relationship with sports marketing agency Two Circles to include partnership sales for the T100 Triathlon World Tour.
Two Circles has worked with the PTO since 2022 on a digital marketing brief and will now lead on partnership development for the 7-leg T100 Triathlon World Tour. This year’s tour has already been to Miami, Singapore, San Francisco, London, Ibiza and Lake Las Vegas and will be climaxing at the Dubai T100 Triathlon World Championship Final next month (November 16-17).
Two Circles CEO Gareth Balch said “We were very vocal about how we leapt at the chance to work with the Professional Triathletes Organisation when we started with them a couple of years ago.
“This was because we saw a lot of parallels between our mission to rewire the sports industry and their ambition to unlock a new model for their sport that was built around elevating the best professionals, but also driving participation, rather than simply positioning it as the usual sports media rights play.”
“Their subsequent launch of the T100 global series in January, which includes a season-long schedule of multisport festivals in iconic global cities, is consolidating a valuable audience and giving them the opportunity to both watch the world’s best triathletes compete head-to-head – in person or through a new TV product – as well as compete on the same city-centre courses themselves.
“The PTO’s progress this year has provided strong validation of the commercial offering, and we believe presents a very attractive offering for non-endemic brands to connect with a highly engaged, high value and global demographic.”
PTO CEO Sam Renouf said “Triathlon has one of the most valuable audiences in sport – and has been referred to as ‘the new golf’ for many years.
“But what the sport has lacked to go more mainstream is the right sporting product to reach and consolidate that audience through a season-long offering. This is what the T100 has been created to solve and now, as we approach the climax to our inaugural season, we have the right product to take to brands who want to harness the incredible opportunity from our highly engaged and valuable fan base.
“Since our inception, we’ve been supported by industry leaders who see the untapped potential of triathlon – partnering with Two Circles to deliver our partnership strategy is a logical extension of that approach.”
The collaboration with Two Circles on partnership sales will the agency field a dedicated team led by Sales Director Simon Hoppe who has background selling partnerships for Manchester United and is also a triathlete.
“I don’t think people realise quite how global and engaged the triathlon community is,” Hoppe said. “It’s clip of Swiss triathlete Imogen Simmonds failing to successfully grab water bottles on the bike leg at the recent London T100 race has amassed over 70 million video plays on Instagram – which comfortably makes it one of the leading sports clips on the channel this year.”
In 2023, the PTO claimed to have delivered a dedicated TV and streaming audience of 24.6 million worldwide across just three races that year. PTO’s journey has also attracted attention from outside of sport, with its majority investment coming from Silicon Valley’s Sir Michael Mortiz.
According to PTO he was… ‘Moved to get involved not just because of the business opportunity but also because of the unique governance structure at the PTO which sees its pro athletes, the talent, as co-owners in the business and incentivised to make it a success.’
www.protriathletes.org
www.T100Triathlon.com
www.twocircles.com
