39// World Trail Majors Present a Vision Without a Plan

On launching a product without a strategy

Hey pals,

Shortly after I posted last weeks newsletter, a mysterious teaser video popped up across multiple race’s social media channels. The hype was real, hopes of something groundbreaking in trail running were high.

Then the World Trail Majors were announced to a collective ‘eh?’

This week I outline the basics of the announcement before discussing why I think there was a mixed reaction to the announcement.

Hope you have a great week,

Matt

---

News

On Monday this week, nine race directors across the world launched a new trail running racing series, the World Trail Majors (WTM).

The vision for the race series is all about community and providing an alternative to global racing.

The organisation is centralised and flattened, meaning each race is equal in standing and all RDs have an equal say in decisions that effect the series. Additionally, each RD will contribute the same amount of money into a central fund that will support the admin and marketing of the series.

There are currently no sponsors, but Carlos Torrent, RD of Transgrancanaria, announced on a Q&A livestream that they are in talks with non-endemic sponsors to support the series. They cannot choose an endemic sponsor because that would clash with the individual race’s sponsorship deals.

There will be a ranking system that scores runners on their best two races in the series. How those points are delineated is yet to be determined.

—

Analysis

It’s fair to say it was a rushed launch.

The ranking system isn’t complete, the website has ‘lorem ipsum’ pages, the benefits for the average runner weren’t laid out in the PR announcements, they don’t know what the prize money will be for the winner, there isn’t a sponsor; I could go on.

I hoped the Q&A livestream would build some hope for me about the ambition behind the project. This wasn’t the case. Steve Brammer’s description of the series as ‘anarcho-syndicalist’ made it sound more like an angsty university student’s pipedream than a professional attempt at building an alternative vision for the future of ultrarunning. (I too, dear reader, had to google the definition of anarcho-syndicalist. Fortunately theres a Monty Python sketch on the topic.)

The founding team of race directors were keen to stipulate that this was not a rushed decision, that it has been being planned for months and that the timing around UTMB’s fracas in Whistler is purely coincidental. This could all be true, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that very key details around the strategy are missing.

I applaud the ambition, I welcome the competition to UTMB, I too want all of the things that they list in their lofty vision. However the strategy and execution are far off the mark.

A classic line I always go back to when analysing any strategy is ‘who benefits?’ (Or cui bono? for you classics/Cicero nerds). In the case of WTM, the question is who does this alliance benefit more, race directors, professional athletes or amateur runners?

Lets start with professional athletes. According to Corrine Malcolm, the PTRA were told 48 hours before the announcement that WTM was forming, before then most were in the dark. Not a great start, but that lack of foresight has played out in the make up of the competition format. To have no ranking and no communication about how much professional athletes would be supported or paid for their participation in the events is baffling considering the ambition of the series. To put it simply, there isn’t an incentive for runners to compete.

The argument from WTM is that they are small, they don’t have the funding now, this is the first year, it will be bigger in the next year. Again, fair comments. The issue is that your business model should support your ambition from the start. Otherwise it’s an empty purpose statement on a blog with lorem ipsum pages.

The team explained on the livestream that a portion of equal amounts of income will be pooled between the race directors to fund shared staff, athlete support, winnings and other admin stipulating that all the profit will be redirecting into growing the series. The size of the pool fund is therefore correlated to the amount of income they can gather through race fees and sponsorship income. I don’t know the profit margins of these races, but i can’t imagine they have a lot of spare change to fund the ambitions for this series fast.

The race series has five primary options to grow the pool:

1. Increase race fees

2. Increase the number of people in your races

3. Increase sponsorship fees or partners for individual races

4. Introduce new races

5. Introduce non-endemic central sponsors

The first two go against their ethos, therefore devaluing their positioning vs UTMB, so i can’t imagine that will happen. We know WTM are in talks with non-endemic sponsors at the moment which will help increase the amount of athletes they will be able to support and size of the winnings. Yet why wasn’t this done before launch to make the prospect of racing more enticing to athletes?

(A side conundrum - The centralisation of resources conjures an interesting thought experiment for each of the endemic sponsors as they indirectly fund their competitors races that they don’t get visibility on)

I would mention that monetising the livestreaming rights could be an avenue, but most races apart from Aravaipa don’t have any livestreaming, so that isn’t going to fund this vision for a long while.

To answer the question ‘does the formation of WTM benefit athletes?’ Currently, no.

For the amateur punter the proposition is even less tangible. The alliance is formed to support and grow local communities of trail running and they aim to provide exceptional race experiences. Once again, vision, great, top marks. What’s the plan? That wasn’t laid out in any of the press material. The team even struggled to lay out a clear reason why this tangibly benefited everyday runners on the Q&A livestream.

Does the formation of WTM benefit everyday runners? Currently, no.

Who this does benefit is race directors who get to share advice on how to grow and manage their races. This, in time, will benefit athletes and amateurs alike, building a better experience for trail running as a whole. Additionally they can set a benchmark for other races on what best practice looks like to increase the environmental sustainability and diversity of our sport.

I know none of the RDs involved in the WTM had any negative intentions and they acted fast because they wanted to strike whilst their competitor was down. Yet without having a fleshed out business model or plan of how they can bring their vision to life, it’s as if WTM brought a banana to a gun fight.

This criticism may seem blunt, but like all criticism it does not come a place of disparagement but of want of something better. We are at a stage in trail running where to bring it forward we need to expect professionalism as well as visionaries from our leaders. The biggest winner in trail running is UTMB not solely because they have a bigger war chest, but because they have a plan, a robust business model and understand their market. To offer a viable alternative, you need to have a plan.

The World Trail Majors has the skeleton of a legendary series - nine respected races in extraordinary locations.

By solving the issues around the communication of the benefits of this alliance and backing it up with a tangible competitive difference, the series would instantly be in a better place.

This could be solved through better resource allocation, capping the prices of your races so that they are lower than UTMB races, using sponsorship money to fund bigger prize funds than UTMB (which is a pretty low bar), therefore addressing the benefits of competing at these events. That’s just one solution out of many.

Regardless of the path taken, the World Trail Majors is another race series out of many we have in ultrarunning. Whilst this launch was rushed and ill-thought through, there are embers in the WTM of an alternative future for the sport.