Growing the Tour tenfold

Peter Gilmour shares his vision of the World Match Racing Tour

The World Match Racing Tour is set to undergo a metamorphosis over the next few seasons following the sale in September of the majority stake in its parent company to a group of investors based in the Far East.

To wind the clock back a little - the World Match Racing Tour in its present guise is a group of independent match racing events around the world that over the years have been brought together to form a championship in the form of the Tour.

From 2000, when it was created, until 2005 it was sponsored by Swedish Match and known as the Swedish Match Tour. Up until March 2004 the series was run by sports marketing giant Octagon, but after this it was taken over by Scott Macleod’s company Force 10 Marketing, essentially the Octagon employees who worked on it making the jump to the new firm.

Traditionally the Tour itself has been owned by the company ProMatch Tour Ltd of which Force 10 held a 60% stake with the remainder held by the Match Racing Association, a co-operative of the events on the Tour, but also including a few others such as the Congressional Cup and the Knickerbocker Cup.

In terms of its status, in past years the World Match Racing Tour was independent, operating outside of the ISAF umbrella, but in January 2006 this changed when an agreement between Force 10 and ISAF was finally signed, giving the Tour ISAF ‘Special Event’ status. With this came a name change to the ‘World Match Racing Tour’, and the winner of the Tour could officially be crowned ISAF World Match Racing Champion (previously ISAF held their own match racing world championship separate from the Tour).

In September this year, Force 10 Holdings, sold their stake in the World Match Racing Tour to a Hong Kong-based private company Regal Faith Ltd, in a deal spearheaded by Australian match race legend and businessman Peter Gilmour. In recent years Gilmour has also added ‘event organiser’ to his list of credentials, having set up the WMRT’s pinnacle event, the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia.

Shareholders in Regal Faith are Malay entrepreneur Patrick Lim, who is the major investor as well as being Gilmour’s partner in the Monsoon Cup, Gilmour himself, plus two other background investors, one based in Beijing, the other in Hong Kong.

In addition to his shareholding, Gilmour is also at present ‘Acting President’ of the World Match Racing Tour, taking over this responsibility from Force 10's Scott MacLeod. Gilmour told us at the World Yacht Racing Forum last week that they are looking for a capable person - "someone like Knut Frostad" - to fill the President’s role and drive the series forward.

The day to day running of the Tour continues to be carried out by Craig Mitchell and Yvonne Reid from their office in Lymington, and whether it will continue to be run from there may or may not depend on where the new President operates from, says Gilmour.

While over the last four years the Tour has continued to develop with the introduction of new giant events in Malaysia and Korea, it has been otherwise just been trundling along, lacking a major sponsor to drive it forward. But all this is now set to change, Gilmour and his colleagues having major plans in store for it.



Gilmour says of his vision: "In sailing, whether it is multihulls, kite boarding, ocean racing, match racing, America’s Cup, whatever, if you promote your element of the sport very very well - that is to make it compelling and attractive, the closeness of real top line competition, where reputations, stakes and money are all on the line – that is what makes compelling viewing." He cites the example of a finish in one America’s Cup match where the boats were just 1 seconds apart at the finish line. "That is what the match racing does - it provides that moment in sport, where someone squeaks out a bit of magic from somewhere that gets them over the line, and that makes it a compelling product."

The big question is how to grow it. Gilmour says that compared to the old regime they have a very different approach. "Before it was a case of keeping prize money low and spreading it out across other areas. We believe that if the prize money is very high, the other areas fall in below that. You have more money for PR and advertising and signage and so forth. So it is an operational difference of opinion."

To give some indicator as to the scale Gilmour is contemplating, he sees his group investing in the order of US$ 10 million per year for at least two years until they expect to see a real return. His personal target is to grow the Tour from being the US$ 15 million entity it is at present to something ten times larger within five years and on from there.

This revenue Gilmour says will come from traditional areas such as sponsorship and event rights fees as well as less traditional ones, such as competitors’ ‘tour cards’ gaining a value. "Let’s take Adam Minoprio, he can become a campaign, maybe own his Tour card and be able to market that himself,” says Gilmour. “But if you look at it, the World Tour is a master franchise and each of the individual events are basically supplying to that."

The events themselves have to grow from being organised by yacht clubs to being run by professional entities with cities bidding for the right to host WMRT events. Typically in other sports - we recently had a conversation about this with an old friend now running the Ladies European Tour for golf - the events forming a tour are run by the Tour themselves, however Gilmour says they don’t have any plans to organise their own events. "There are complex issues with each venue, business to business, government, etc. So it is far better to have a local operator to manage and deal with those issues. We will set licence fees, probably for five years that is the ideal span for an event to operate."

So the lidea Tour event, in Gilmour’s view, should have live television, tracking and all the trimmings. It would come with prize money comparible to major golf or tennis events - say US$ 1 million. And this he feels would ensure that the very best of the world's top match racers will show up.

For this has been a problem with the Tour. On the one hand it has been a great proving ground for future America’s Cup skippers, but equally once they have made the leap up to the America’s Cup only a small percentage return and only then when they aren’t tied up with the Cup. Thus while Adam Minoprio is this year’s ISAF Match Racing World Champion - is he the world’s best match racer? We suspect that James Spithill, Ed Baird, Russell Coutts, Dean Barker, Chris Dickson and a few others might contend this, only they didn’t compete on the Tour this year. Gilmour reckons that the increased prize money could be what sees some of them return.

"The aim is to get them back absolutely and for it to be so compelling that when they sit down and look at the couple of thousand a day they get paid to do a TP52 thing, they turn around and say ‘if I came third in that regatta, that could be $50,000 in prize money, plus my sponsorship’. The essential thing is to make it as compelling a business model as possible."

He also reckons that participating on the Tour also helps them when it comes to their performance in the America's Cup. "I have often said that if Dean Barker had spent more time on the World Match Racing Tour he wouldn’t have made that mistake at the finish of the Cup race that took them out [he refers to Valencia]. If you are match racing a lot you simply don’t do a tack to relieve a penalty, even if the wind has shifted that much. If he’d gone through and done his gybe, he would have been two boatlengths away and finish."

However a fundamental issue with match racing is that it does limit the number of entries. Gilmour says this isn’t a problem as there are so many Grade 1, 2 and 3 qualifying events.

"Basically you go and prove yourself to be an out and out winner, then come to the Tour. If I am a tennis player - I can’t just go straight on to the ATP. Part of the other dilemma is that it is not just about the sailing component, it is about the whole campaign. It is about getting your sponsor together and your team together. That is all part of it and it is important. It is really preparation for an America’s Cup life. You are either coming with your America’s Cup team or you are on your way to an America’s Cup team and if you can cut it at this level, you can cut it in the America’s Cup."

While many Tour events have qualifiers that allow the top one or two to go through to the main event, we reckon it would be a good idea for each event to have a youth and a women’s regatta beforehand with the winners of those qualifying for the main event. After all, women’s match racing is now an Olympic discipline and the WMRT to date hasn’t done anything to cater for the increased participation and interest in this side of the sport.

As to the boats, Gilmour says he is happy if there continues to be a different fleet at each event, from the IODs in Bermuda to the DS37s used in Scandinavia to the Foundation 36s at the Monsoon Cup. "Part of the skill, and I think it should remain part of the skill, is that the boats shouldn’t be the same all the way around the world. So you land in wherever and learn how to make that boat go fast. It is like going from grass to hard court."

One of the greatest concerns for Gilmour over these past months has been defending the rights of the World Match Racing Tour, and we will look at this issue tomorrow with comment from ISAF Secretary General Jerome Pels.