Extreme Sailing Series Moves Sailing Closer Towards Being a Professional Sport.
August 11, 2010 by admin
Filed under Business, Cowes Week, Extreme 40's, Extreme Sailing Series, United Kingdom, video
Last week in Cowes, sailing fans got to see several forms of the sport side by side. Beside the amateurs, who disappeared off the start line into all corners of the Solent, was the 1851 Cup – an exhibition match for version 5 America’s Cup boats, the Artemis Challenge for the IMOCA 60 class and the Extreme Sailing Series.
Each of these events is designed for a different audience. the general racing is for competitors – participants who drive the grass roots of the sport. the americas cup also exists for competitors, just more wealthy ones – with spectators requiring sizable power boats to watch. On the other hand, The Extreme Series unapologetically places the spectators at the centre of their product offer.
Part of the product that OC Events is selling with the extreme series is a sailing format that rewards good sailors and punishes the smallest of mistakes.
There is a dark side of many spectator sports that tempts viewers to keep watching because there is a high risk of something going wrong. Just as a percentage of ice hockey fans want to see a fight or NASCAR fans want to see a wreck, the prospect of an extreme 40 flipping or breaking adds a different dimension to the sport of sailing that many other formats either fail to communicate or hush up.
Some may want to criticise the promotion of a 40 foot carbon catamaran sailing into a wall at 35 mph, but the 50,000+ Youtube views of Groupama’s accident at cowes week dwarfs viewing numbers of any other clip from the event. People are still talking about it, but they are also talking about the good news too.
I was asked again last week – “If you had a client with a decent budget, which sailing event would you place it with.” Like all good sponsorship consultants, my answer was “it depends” – because different sponsors have different objectives. However, the Extreme Sailing Series consistently delivers to its sponsors and partners and has aggressive plans for the future.
Regular readers will know that we have a problem with the phrase ‘the F1 of sailing’ because nothing in the sport currently comes close. But if the Extreme Sailing Series expands from its current European and Asian events into a couple more international markets, then the series may just be the platform to help sailing really go pro.
Yacht Racing Business Thoughts For 2010-08-08
- Seems that this new Twitter ‘Who you should follow feature’ is delivering us a lot of new followers – Welcome! #
- I uploaded a YouTube video — Dee Caffari At the 2010 Artemis Challenge at Cowes Week http://youtu.be/q7FPmbwSwG8?a #
- I uploaded a YouTube video — Extreme 40 Sailing Series – Cowes Week 2010 http://youtu.be/lcXaXvs882M?a #
Artemis Invest in Britain’s Offshore Racing Future.
June 30, 2010 by admin
Filed under Business, Featured, Open 60, United Kingdom, Vendee Globe
Sponsorship people will tell you that placing sponsorship can be as hard as raising it. While that might sound counter intuitive to sailors who see brands visibly spending money on marketing, getting the fit right between a brand an an audience and then finding the perfect vehicle to deliver that message takes time and effort.
Almost 12 months ago, Artemis took a step back from their sailing sponsorship programmes and asked themselves if it was working, how it might be done better and whether sponsoring something else might deliver the company’s marketing objectives better. Working with OC Group and other sponsorship consultants, Artemis set about evaluating how most effectively communicate as a British company to a British audience.
Mark Tyndall, Artemis CEO says:
For a business like ours, a British business, the traditional routes like football don’t fit. Football for example is very tribal – if you sponsor Manchester city, you might sell a lot of product to people who support Manchester City, but not to many supporters of Manchester United. Rugby is also very tribal. Other sports like golf and tennis, you get a small part of the action and you can’t really control the events so it is more difficult to give your clients an experience in which they can participate.
The demographics of sailing fit with our business, and our clients get to meet the sailors and participate in some of the events. There is also the fantastic ‘billboard’ effect which we have seen from the Open 60.
Sailing then is the preferred vehicle, but which events fit with the British nature of the brand? When you sit down and look at it, there are not very many British sailing events that provide the exposure required. While there are a lot of high profile and talented British sailors and campaigns, many spend the bulk of their time sailing in other markets. For example, Ian Williams a former World Champion competes in the World Match Racing Tour, but the series never visits UK shores.
Cowes Week is certainly very British and is notably without title sponsorship. Artemis have been involved with the long running regatta via the Artemis Challenge, a pro-am race around the Isle of Wight for Open 60s. Part of the new Artemis sailing sponsorship program will include increased support for Cowes Week. (More about that in a separate article soon).
So how does a brand like Artemis spend money in British sailing when the ‘right’ platform doesn’t exist. The answer is to create a platform that can be customised to deliver exactly what the company needs, which is how the Artemis Offshore Racing Academy was created.
The Artemis Offshore Racing Academy is not just good sports business, it is good business. Artemis along with OC Group have created a long term programme that is bigger than sport or marketing. Like the Oman Sail project, another OC Group project, there are legacy considerations built into the four year campaign. Sailing as a sport suffers from a lack of defined paths through the sport which sees talent drop out of the system. The RYA has 1000 sailors on its development programme, while there are only 40 at Olympic level.
Rod Carr says:
What we need to do is have a number of routes and obvious ladders so people can say – I know where the bottom of that ladder is and I can start to plan. When they are sailing at age 13 and they see Ellen (McArthur) or Mike (Golding) they can say – I know how to get there.
Although there are several well proven Open 60 sailors in the UK, most are without sponsorship. While creating another crop of new competitors might make it more difficult to raise money from a finite pool of brands with the cash to back them all, Artemis thinks that the academy will raise the profile of the sport and attract new backers.
Mark Tyndall says:
Increasing the level of talent through an academy gives sponsors a wider range of talent to choose from and hopefully will help the Open 60 discipline to attract a larger share of sponsorship.
Mark Turner, CEO of OC Group says:
We are missing out on a lot of sailors who might have gone through the Olympic programme and who drop out of the system. Part of this is because the leap from a sponsorship perspective to go from a funded RYA program to an Open 60 budget. It’s commercially a big leap, technically a big leap and mentally a scary thing to do. This limits the number of people who are willing to make the step.
Extreme Sailing Series Europe 2010 Open For Entries. Calendar TBC.
January 21, 2010 by admin
Filed under Business, Europe, Extreme 40's, Extreme Sailing Series
For the last few years, professional commercially backed sailing as a media friendly event has had two stand-out performers – the Volvo Ocean Race and the Extreme Sailing Series Europe (previously known as the iShares Cup). The Extreme Sailing Series Europe (ESSE) has all the elements to make it attractive to sponsors, media and a more mass-market audience. The boats are fast and exciting to watch, the races are held close to shore against unique backdrops, some of the sport’s top sailors compete and innovations like the 5th man VIP position have been copied by several other sailing events to give sponsors a real differentiator from sitting in a stadium.
Yesterday, the ESSE issued their notice of race and opened the event officially for entries. Of a potential six races, five are yet to have specific venues attached to them and only one (Andalucia) seems to be the same as 2009. In an environment where sponsors are risk-averse, consistency of events and locations is key to providing long term stability. With the absence of a title sponsor and an unconfirmed calendar, the ESSE will be a harder sell in 2010.
With or without a title sponsor, OC Events have shown that they can put on great events. Just as the company is self-funding the embryonic Asian series, the ESSE can still deliver exciting sailing. Mark Turner, CEO of OC Group said in the statement:
“We continue negotiations with various potential main partners to support our long term plans for both the European and Asian series. However, securing new partners before the European season kicks off is not absolutely necessary and won’t affect our plans for 2010 – this year will be another spectacular season of Extreme 40 racing, racing that continues to change the way sailing is seen. We are keen to grow our original brand – Extreme Sailing Series – regardless of developments on the sponsor front as we go through the year.”
One of the ways in which the ESSE is trying to be more sponsor friendly is to change the rule relating to branding of the boat and sails. The sail branding rules have been amended one step further for the season, as planned when the 2009 50% branding rule was introduced. Race Director Gilles Chiorri said:
“Looking back through the photographs and TV footage from 2009, it was clear that the boats with their sails 100% branded were the most dynamic and stood out amongst the fleet, therefore we have introduced a new rule for 2010 that all boats’ mainsails shall be 100% branded, so that there is no penalty on the teams already doing this.”
Notably absent from the proposed calendar is Cowes Week (Though one of the proposed dates does fit). Mark Turner has publicly said that the destination on the Isle of Wight where OC is based is not economically viable for the Extreme Sailing Series. Commenting in Island Business Online Turner said:
“The business model doesn’t work without venue host deals for us. We are investors, always have been, we take risks, we do things a bit quicker than perhaps a bigger business might do, or whatever. So we’ll quite often start and kick start things if we’re in the right venue. But its not sustainable to continue with venues that don’t necessarily want us there.
“The average each of our events contributes (to a venue) is a seven figure sum into that economy, be it through direct spend, be it through media coverage, be it through developments that happen because of the high quality people we’re bringing into the circuit. In terms of the Cowes event specifically being inside Cowes Week we’re looking at something like two-thirds of the media coverage for the entire Cowes Week is coming from our event. That in itself has a direct impact on what Cowes Week can do in the future as well.”
Despite the professionalism and commercialism that OC Events brings to sailing; not being able to announce a full calendar makes it difficult to convince sponsors that ESSE is akin to a high-end motorsport series or any other competing sponsorship platform. The markets in which the events take place have a huge bearing on whether or not the sponsorship is a good fit with a brand.
In order for ESSE and other sailing events to be taken really seriously, there needs to be long term storytelling consistency. The dates needs to be in the diary every year. Same Extreme 40 time, Same Extreme 40 channel. With many European companies closing off sponsorship budgets at the end of November, the announcement of a partial calendar in late January increases the level of difficulty by a significant factor.
The calendar as announced yesterday looks like this:
There will be five, possibly six event weekends at iconic venues and cities in locations including the UK, France, Germany and Spain.
- Event 1: 27-30 May – LOCATION TBC
- Exhibition Event: 19 June: J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race
- Event 2: 14-18 July OR 31 July to 5 August – UK – LOCATION TBC
- Event 3: 26-29 August – Germany – LOCATION TBC
- Event 4: 9-12 September – LOCATION TBC
- Event 5: 23-26 September – LOCATION TBC
- Event 6: 9-12 October, Almería, Spain
Final venues will be announced one by one over the coming weeks.
Despite question marks over the calendar, the ESSE still provides one of the most compelling marketing platforms using sailing. OC Events will continue to provide a full PR and Media programme throughout 2010 including a host broadcaster service, TV news and a TV series for global broadcast media. The 2009 series delivered a media value for just the six territories the series visited, of over EUR5 million (despite a 10-15% drop in equivalent advertising rates) and the 6-part TV series was aired in 130 countries across 29 international networks resulting in 38 hours of TV programming in one month.
Off the water, the teams, sponsors, media and VIP guests will be hosted and entertained in bespoke hospitality facilities offering teams the opportunity to mingle with their guests before and after sailing in a choice of settings, from general access to made-to-measure private corporate entertainment suites.
The closing date for entries to the 2010 series is 15 March 2010.
iShares Cup Looking for New Title Sponsor for 2010.
October 21, 2009 by admin
Filed under Business, Europe, Extreme 40's, Extreme Sailing Series, United Kingdom
We’ve held up the iShares Cup as one of the great examples of how the sport can be shaped into a platform to deliver real results. As well as providing a great return for sponsors, the Extreme 40 European series has brought the sport to a wider audience and provided economic benefit for the venues hosting the events.
OC Events, the company that organises the Extreme 40 series in Europe has officially announced that title sponsor of the event, iShares will not be continuing their backing in 2010. Nevertheless, the series will be back next year, with negotiations underway for a replacement for iShares.
iShares signed a two year renewal at the beginning of this year, a time when banks and financial institutions were under extreme pressue to justify their sponsorship decisions. Unlike many sponsorships which rely on a connection between senior executives and the sport, iShares had no emotional attachment to sailing and so were able to show that the investment in the iShares Cup was purely commercial. The deal included a 10 day window exit clause following the final event of the season and the aquistion of iShares from Barclays by BlackRock Inc is cited as the reason for the company taking the break option.
Rick Andrews, head of iShares marketing, Europe, commented:
“With a change in company ownership of iShares coming on 1st December, we are unable to commit to the sponsorship of this event in 2010, and we have had to use a break clause in our 2 year contract with OC Events.”
iShares success may impact on OC Event’s mission to find a replacement. The company were partners in the event’s formation, influencing the markets that the series visited and creating the platform to achieve their specific objectives. iShares will benefit from the title sponsorship for a while to come, just as Skandia still benefits from their long term backing of Cowes Week. Until a replacement sponsor is announced, one imagines that it will be easier to refer to the event as the iShares Cup than the Extreme Sailing Series Europe. Rick Andrews doesn’t think it will take long for someone to step up and replace them as title sponsor:
“The iShares Cup has been a phenomenal success for iShares and it is with much sadness that we have been obliged to make this decision. Client response from surveys has been phenomenal. They are just absolutely blown away by lots of different elements. However, we are confident that such an outstanding property will not be on the market for long – the value for money, the exceptional client experience and the return on investment from this property have really helped propel iShares forward, and I am sure that OC Events will be able to capitalise on our experience with a new partner shortly.”
One imagines that Mark Turner, CEO of OC Group, one of the sport’s most commercially savvy operators will have had some contingency for this outcome. He said in a statement:
“Disappointing of course, but this is the world of commercial sponsorship – the Extreme Sailing Series concept will continue to be developed in Europe next year, along with all the stakeholders that have shared the success of 2009 – teams, sponsors and host venues. We have built up a benchmark sailing sports entertainment product, at the highest sporting level, providing excellent returns for all concerned. Fortunately the event now has many stakeholders and many different revenue streams, so while we will obviously bring in a new title sponsor for 2010, things are very different to 2007 when the title sponsor represented nearly all the income. We have team sponsors, host venues and other event partners already contractually committed through as far as 2012. The Extreme Sailing Series will be back in 2010, and we plan for it to be even bigger and better.”
OC Events also announced yesterday that the The Extreme Sailing Series Europe 2010 has confirmed three venues and five teams. The platform has shown that it can provide real value to a title sponsor, though while OC Events have been investing in an innovative product, sponsorship values have been falling steadily throughout 2009. It’s a buyers market, with sports like F1 that were previously out reach for some brands now offering deals previously unheard of.
Perhaps though, Mark Turner is looking to break the mould again for sailing. The sport is dominated by sponsors who use it to market to other organisations (B2B). For sailing to really get visibility amongst a wide audience, it has to be seen as a way that brands can promote their products and services to consumers. Turner said in the official statement:
“…we can also see this as an opportunity to bring in a more consumer focused brand as title sponsor to help us take it to the next level again. We now have the scale and reach to deliver for consumer facing brands as well as those more focused on business to business.”
