Sport or circus? Part two

In our second installment OC boss Mark Turner looks at how he plans to grow the iShares Cup

This article follows on from part one here

There is also a potential problem, as they also have on the Audi MedCup that the circuit comprises a mix of private and corporate funded teams, which don’t always have the same needs. With the iShares Cup it is easier because they have laid out their stall – it is unashamedly commercial and those who sign up for it do so to be part of that. While on the MedCup privately backed boats are now in the majority, on the iShares Cup there is Eric Maris’ Luna and possible Gitana. The rest are paid for by sponsorship.

With the racing arena set up close to shore, OC have also been trying to develop the shore-side ‘village’ to ensure the best spectator experience. There is of course commentary and a VIP tent. At Cowes Week this year they pushed the boat out and had a two storey building with VIP area upstairs and a public bar downstairs. Turner acknowledges that there is some way to go with this and upping the game will be directly proportional to the degree of support coming from the venues. At present the circuit mostly comprises events such as Cowes and Amsterdam where OC are effectively still paying to lay on their events. But the bar is set to be raised at the last event in this year’s iShares Cup, in Almeria, Spain over 10-12 October.

“With Andalucia this year that is our first proper venue partnership. They studied the event over the two previous years and then they decided to go for it and signed a three year deal. It is a real partnership which they are working really hard on. That final event of the year promises to be a whole new step up for us. It is hard with slim budgets and an evolutionary process. If we had 50% of the MedCup budget we could grow this very very quickly. But that is where we are at, we have a great title sponsor in iShares but that is not a consumer brand and understandably the budgets that are there go into the VIP and media side of things, so we need consumer brands and consumer cities and venues to help us get to that next stage.”

At present the circuit is televised, but it is not live and nor are there TVs shoreside. We feel that the on-shore spectator experience would be vastly improved by more stats (all sports events need stats) and a variety of live feeds from the boats, for as they have found with Formula 1 the view that everyone wants is that which the crews are experiencing.

“Live TV will become part of it and in Spain we may have that,” acknowledges Turner. “And the format does lend itself to that. There are not too many pauses. We don’t have long drawn out races and there is normally stuff going on and we can put cameramen and presenters on board all of the time. It is certainly made for TV in that respect.”

Growing events beyond this may require additional attractions. There is already discussion about Moth races filling in the gaps between the Extreme 40 races. Maybe it will become like watching indoor sports events in the US when a band, or equivalent entertainment, strikes up during half time or other breaks in the action. The America’s Cup venue in Valencia for example had an outdoor music venue and it could be that the iShares in the future goes the same way.

“I think we’ll grow our numbers by growing the entertainment package and that might be around music, it might be around other elements, but with sailing at the core,” says Turner. “So grow the entertainment side but people will still come to watch the sporting event at its heart which is a bit different. Sailing is still a great image and great positioning for more cities and brands. We’d like to get to the stage where at each event people feel compelled to go to it and people fly in to see it.”

However even now it does appear to be working at some venues. Turner cites their event in Kiel last year when 80,000 watched the racing in person…“and that wasn’t people buying candyfloss, it was 80,000 people stood watching a sailing event. I don’t know anywhere else where that’s happened. They were standing there for four hours watching the boats go up and down. I’ve never seen that before.

“A non-sailor who is prepared to stand there watching what is going on the water: that is the core value of this and one we need to protect and nurture. But to get more people you need multiple reasons to get people down to the venue and we are still at the beginning of that and we’ve had no money to invest in that public side until now. In Kiel and Spain we will be able to improve that. 99% of the sailors in the world don’t give two hoots about that - that’s fine, but we’re not doing that.”

We suggest prize money might be beneficial, but Turner says he is not a great fan and besides they don’t have the budget at the moment. He rightly points out that at present prize money in most sports is usually there to attract the top competitors – this they already have. In fact we get the impression the last thing they need is for their circuit to get any more competitive.

“It does attract media attention but in some countries it is positive and in others it is negative. In France if you win a $1 million, it is not necessary taken positively. And I think in the countries where it does work you have to have a sum that is media-worthy. If you look at golf, the Open de France, they really struggled to get major players because they couldn’t offer them enough prize money– the golfers come according to the prize money and the appearance money level. That is not a great place. I think we are a better sport than that. I think sailors going purely where the prize money is, is not a good thing.”

However as Turner states, growing events and the size of the circuit as a sport entity is limited by budget. At present they have iShares signed up for another year, part of a two year deal done at the end of 2008. However in June iShares, was bought out by the giant financial house BlackRock when it acquired parent company Barclays Global Investors. “That has made no impact at all at present,” says Turner. “Possibly it is positive as Black Rock is bigger and more global than the iShares brand and that might help us accelerate it. iShares is at present limited to Europe.”

At present the annual budget for the iShares Cup, Turner states is around 15% of what is spent annually on the Audi MedCup, despite the same number of albeit shorter events being run this year. “We have been organically growing that. This year we have taken a few investment decisions beyond the event budget to do a few things better. Now it is a question of whether we can go any faster in developing it. We have gone from four events in Europe in 2007, to six this year and we are looking to have seven next year. Probably no more than eight ultimately as a European circuit. But we have dabbled in developing venues outside of Europe and we are continuing to do that right now.”

Despite the desperate economic times at present, prospects for the future are looking good with 52 cities regions contacting them to enquire about the possibility of staging an event in their venue in the future. OC are tackling this through a tender process. Another key development to come this winter is the staging of a circuit for the Extreme 40s through Asia and the Middle East, where OC already have strong ties with Oman through the Oman Sail project. Over previous years Extreme 40s have been in Oman, where Oman Sail have kept their two boats, but have also visited Sydney and San Francisco. Originally the plan was to stage two separate circuits in Asia and the Middle East, but this winter a circuit will be staged across both regions, as there are considerable links between them in terms of tourism, trade, sport, etc. Turner says they have yet to decide how large they will launch into this. “It might exhibition races with three or four boats to get it going or it might be bigger. We have eight different venues and we are looking to use three or four of those in a circuit that will be over the first three months of next year.”

Muscat in Oman is certain to be on the list and this will be at the Muscat Festival over 19 January until 12 February 2010, in fact very close to the time the America’s Cup is being held in nearby ‘RAK’. Venues after this could include Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai and even the Maldives (the Minister of Tourism for the Maldives went sailing during the Cowes event).

Key to this, as with the iShares Cup Europe, Turner states is also to get local teams participating. Ultimately this is good news for the Europeans circuit too as the sailors on it, probably more than the existing teams themselves, will certainly end up crewing on boats competing in the Middle East-Asia circuit.

“It is pretty important to us to grow teams in the regions we go to and hopefully the global brands we do have here, some of them we hope might go. But the idea isn’t really that we have to have the teams that are in the iShares Cup Europe in those other circuits. Some of the sailors will end up being involved, some of the sponsors maybe.”



Aside to raising the game with the venue deals, getting strong consumer brands in, ones that are ideally global, is also considered vital. “It is great having Ecover coming in this year. That is a nice commercial story. Economics dictated a change of budget level for them. We have a product that goes to all their key markets. They have a lot of B2B work to do as well. They are a consumer brand. It was a nice way for Mike to keep that project going. So we need more consumer brands. We have a good number of high level brands, premium B2B or financial sector brands and we have those guys interested, but it is a bit chicken and egg. Some of those consumer brands only come in when the public and media foot print is bigger, yet we need those guys to help us grow the public and media. We have been doing it without them so far and now we have got the interest and we have got the bigger brands coming to us and being able to see that we are only a couple of steps away from having big public events that are consistent event after event. And that is the step we have now got to make.”

iShares Cup has done well to get to where it has with such a limited budget. Beyond this Turner certainly has the dynamism and vision to make the iShares Cup work in the long term. However while the iShares Cup is already something made-for-YouTube, OC need to take care that it doesn’t shrink away from the sports pages at the same time.