29// It Takes More Than a Livestream to Make a Race

On the importance of building an ecosystem around a race

Hey pals,

My race plans for the year took a dive after getting a stress fracture in my left foot. No Lakeland 100 for me this year. Gutted, but we move on.

Fortunately summer race season is upon us and there’s plenty of livestreams to watch! After speaking to a few editors and content creators about their plans for WSER, and watching the event unfold, i wanted to take a moment to reflect on the significance of the collaborative effort of the community to making an event memorable (especially for those that can’t be there in person).

Hope you have a great day :)

Matt

A common lament of people in the broadcast industry is that most TV is not appointment viewing anymore. The idea of waiting for individual weekly episodes or watching an entire event live has slowly been undermined by the rise of Netflix and other streaming services that simultaneously release entire 13 episode TV series as well as new shows every week.

Shows and events such as The Sopranos or the Oscars became appointment viewing because people knew everyone else in their social circle was watching them and they didn't want to be left out or have an opinion after the conversation had moved on. FOMO, before FOMO became popular. There was one opportunity to follow along, if you didn’t, you missed it.

Now we have a confusion of shows launching weekly, or all at once, depending on the whims of the publisher. Also we can follow events in hundreds of different ways during and after an event (for instance, last Saturday I was simultaneously following WSER updates and a potential Russian coup on Twitter). Consequently the idea of people of the same social circle all watching, let alone following, an event live has slowly crumbled away.

Western States (WSER) has always been a pillar of the American trail running community, but through the work of Billy Yang and the Western States livestreaming team it’s become one of trail running’s most-watched events. On top of this effort, more and more publishers and creators have coalesced on the event, building on the coverage and content to enrich the ecosystem around the race and making it an unmissable event for the wider culture, however people want to follow it.

Understandably, the main reason creators and publishers go all in on Western States coverage is because of it’s centrality to the professional side of trail running. WSER, alongside UTMB, the Spine, and Barkley are the fundamental events any ambitious content creator will seek to build their presence around to capture the large international audiences they each attract. Grow the audience, grow the revenue.

Although with the growing media coverage around the sport, there is more competition for attention in the run-up and during the event. According to John Trent, board member for WSER, there were 25% more applicants for press passes this year vs the last.

Before the race, between Singletrack’s podcasts from their makeshift Airbnb studio in Olympic Valley and Dylan and Corrine’s official WSER pre-race interviews that they posted on Freetrail, there was over 12 hours of podcasts any eager fan could consume. That’s not including all the other many trail running podcasts that created WSER themed podcasts.

Then on the day, there were three main sources of news coming from Singletrack (who took a more social-first approach employing 6 videographers, 6 photographers and 3 Starlinks dotted across the course at aid stations capturing content of the top 10 men and women and posting to almost all social platforms), IRunFar’s tweets and photos, and the official WSER livestream commentary.

All in all, there was a cornucopia of written, video and audio content built around this one event in California.

Before the race I was doing some pre-race emails to content creators and editors across the industry to see what their plans were in anticipation for this heightened competition, making the assumption that there was a shared concern around attracting the same attention as last year. This perspective bristled Megan Hicks, the new editor in Chief of IRunFar, who instead reframed the idea of competition in trail running media as if they were side by side, not face to face.

Meghan made the point that they were not in competition against other creators, but in competition with them. That it was through this rising tide of new creators and publications that the quality of coverage increases.

Despite this sentiment, IRunFar ran the same playbook that they’ve employed for the last few years - pre-race video interviews and transcripts, opinion columns and race previews with tweet updates across the course posted from their trusty smartphones. It’s a successful formula developed through years of race day experience that works for their team. With only Singletrack seeking to compete at a similar level of investment, innovation in the race content will be slow, but is emerging.

Take the WSER prop betting sheet created by the one man content machine, Liam Tryon of the AidstationFireball Twitter account. Curating a series of ‘bets’, such as ‘first up the escarpment’ that viewers of the WSER livestream could make to enhance their engagement with the stream was a fantastic example of the small things that can be done to keep viewers and non-viewers paying attention to the race.

Not everyone wants to make ‘bets’ on a race, some would rather just read the race previews and reviews. It’s through these layers of video, audio and written content, ideas, thoughts, comments that enrich the ecosystem around a race, make it accessible to multiple audiences and make it into that ‘appointment viewing’.

Having a livestream in trail running no longer makes it a ‘must-see’ event. It takes the community to make it something special.