34// UltraSignUp’s Content Strategy Pivot & UTMB’s Vague Viewership Numbers

The last ramblings about UTMB 2023

Hey pals,

UTMB week is both a week of racing but also seemingly a B2B conference in one.

I spent most of the week meeting a lot of you lot, talking to brand leads, media heads, and journalists, and they all too said they they were speaking to brand leads, media heads, journalists… you get the picture.

The entire industry descends on Chamonix for that one week, yet conversations all happened in private hotel rooms, around booths and often featured a stop at Moody’s. Seems like theres an opportunity there for at least one event on the business, media and marketing of trail running. Hit me up if you’d be interested in partnering up for next year.

This week, we have UltraSignUp’s content strategy pivot and UTMB’s vague viewership numbers.

Enjoy,

Matt

Shortly after Stian Angermund won OCC after running from Orsières to Chamonix,  I was on a stroll around Chamonix with David Callaghan, Partner at UltraSignUp, talking about content.

More specifically we spoke about their plans for the growth of UltraSignUp, how they’ve spent many years focusing on the race director side of their marketplace and want to serve their participants better, and part of how they wanted to do this was by advancing their content offering. But this plan hadn’t gone as expected.

These plans started at the beginning of 2022, led by Matt Hart, a prolific journalist and trail runner, who was tasked with developing “soulful” content that would fill what they saw as a gap in the market. This would include writing about the back-of-the-packers, the people with a story, the why behind why we run these stupid amount of miles. Internally they called this ‘brocolli’ content, something that is fulfilling and reminds you of why you do this mad sport.

The reason that a race sign up company wanted to get into the content game was simply to inspire runners to sign up to more races on their platform. “We know that runners care deeply about the trail running community and we set out to share the spirit and passion of the community in written media, without simply adding more noisy coverage of gear and major races.” David described to me in an email.

The content was a hook to keep runners interested in the community, to make them feel like there are people out there just like them that are running these incredible feats. The more sign ups UltraSignUp inspire, the more revenue they generate per runner.

Over the course of the past 18 months they were testing different types of content sent out through their “Trailhead” newsletter that reached everyone who had signed up to a race on UltraSignUp. From race reports, gear reviews, athletes stories to podcasts. This wasn’t all of their own content, but an amalgam of the wider trail running content ecosystem enabling them to become curators for the masses of trail runners who can’t keep up with the torrent of trail running content published weekly.

What they found when looking at the metrics is a tale I’ve covered many times over - most trail runners don’t read ‘brocolli’ content, they read race reports, gear reviews and pro-athlete stories.

In one instance, a training article published in April of this year had 35 times more views than a poignant and thought-provoking "soul" article published nearly 16 months earlier. This anecdote is similar to the one Zoe Rom told me earlier this year about a well-researched sports journalism piece that received significantly less engagement than an article on Camille Herron's training advice.

The results prompted a reassessment of UltraSignUp’s content strategy and team, leading to the dismissal of Matt Hart in late August. The content strategy is still evolving, but David believes they will continue to serve the community by leaning more into service content.

“As we look to the future, we believe that there is still a way to deliver meaningful community stories about trail running, but we know we need to listen to the data and build a content strategy that also provides runners with the resources they want, need, and ask us for all the time.” David added. “This is likely to result in a content structure that balances training tips, race guides, and runner profiles, while always finding ways to inspire and highlight the heart of the running community.”

The move is yet another datapoint of the many out there that there isn’t enough demand for online sports journalism in trail running to sustainably invest in it.

The likes of Like The Wind and Ultrarunning Magazine prove that there is a sufficient cohort of runners interested enough to sustain subscription based print magazines on the topic, but few have been able to replicate this at scale online.

Yet when we look across to YouTube, the majority of popular videos on trail running are long form personal narratives - stories about the hardships and lessons learned through a lifetime of trail running. Our community does care about the trials and tribulations of others, just when expressed in an aesthetic, slow motion video set against jaw-dropping scenery.

UltraSignUp’s reliance on data to inform their content strategy makes sense for it’s intended purpose - to retain trail runners in the sport for longer. If no one is reading the content you’re investing heavily in, then it’s not doing its job.

Whilst it may feel cold to hear data being the guide for the content that we see online, any content designed to support commerce has to balance what brings readers into the door and those that enrich the community.

The data suggests that the majority of trail runners just want support for their races, to be a better runner and to have the best equipment that will give them the best chance of finishing in the time they want. There’s no harm in supporting the community that way. It’s just another step back for sports journalism in trail running.

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The day after UTMB had finished, their press team swiftly published the viewership data behind the race:

“Nearly 52 million views and 1 billion minutes of video can be seen on the live.utmb.world platform and the official social networks of the Dacia UTMB Mont-Blanc, the equivalent of 1,900 years of UTMB videos consumed continuously! ”

As some of you OG’s may know, i published a comprehensive report on UTMB’s viewership and social performance last year, so this kind of data is useful for us to benchmark UTMB’s performance.

[side note: I wasn’t planning on making another media impact report this year, but if it’s useful for your job or you just really want me to make it, respond to this email and if enough of you are interested i’ll make it.]

Last year UTMB broke out the performance of L’Equipe’s broadcast viewership (3M) to big up the popularity of their event and demonstrate their ability to attract an audience to broadcasters and streaming platforms alike. This year, they didn’t, bringing their year on year performance into question.

One thing we can confirm is that they attracted over double the overall viewership from 25M in 2022 to 52M this year. On the surface thats great, albeit expected for a company that has grown at an exponential rate.

However, by not stating where those 52M views came from, it leaves more questions than it answers.

Did their greater emphasis on their owned UTMB Live platform this year cannabalise it’s L’Equipe or YouTube viewership? Or is it performing lower than expected?

Did their partnership strategy actually attract new audiences?

What we do know is their YouTube viewership over UTMB week, which increased 35% YoY to 2.3M. Impressive, but that only accounts for 4% of the total viewership UTMB provided - and that’s their mass reach channel. If we are to assume L’Equipe’s viewership remained the same as last year, their other partnerships attracted 1M and UTMB Live saw another 1M (generous, i know), then that still would only account for 14%, the rest would all be social views.

UTMB have a far more well equipped PR, marketing and media team behind them than last year, so this opaque press release was not a mistake. I want UTMB to succeed and be growing it’s livestream viewership, but this lack of reporting continuity just adds fuel to an already sceptical audience.

(For anyone who wants the nerdy details behind UTMB’s media strategy, gentleman and fellow subscriber Michael Long has written an exceptional piece in SportsProMedia)