40// Greg Vollet on the Business behind GTWS

An interview with Greg Vollet, Director of the Golden Trail World Series

Hey pals,

Having never met before, I went into my interview with Greg Vollet, Director of the Golden Trail World Series (GTWS), expecting to get PR responses to rather interrogative questions on the business behind the series.

Yet i got nothing of the sort. Greg is an honest and judicious leader who carved out the middle distance racing category of trail running in one bold marketing move almost 10 years ago. That idea has created one of trail running’s most exciting series.

We talk about the business model, Eurosport, the criticism they received over the format of this year’s final, how Greg wants to grow the series and his thoughts on UTMB and GTM.

It’s a long one, but well worth reading Greg’s perspective on the sport.

Matt

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On how Golden Trail World Series makes money

We are not making any money. That's the thing. I think we have a business model that is completely different from the other series’ because Golden Trail is owned by a brand and this series is made to get to the brand credibility and leadership in this trail running world. What we want is not to just put a flag on the race organisation, but to develop the sport. We believe that if we develop the sport, we will develop the number of consumers, new consumers, and reach a large audience of people who don't know what trail running is today. Of these new consumers coming into the market, we believe that 30% of them will buy Salomon. This is the percentage we have in the market today in trail running and this has been pretty constant since 10 years ago when I arrived in 2010.

When I joined, the trail running world was a lot smaller than it is today and my role was to develop the sport. So at the beginning we were doing a lot of community events, grassroots activations, travelling around the world with Killian, creating content, storytelling and pushing the barriers, you know, like developing the ‘how to trail run’ workshops, this kind of stuff that was educating people to start trail running.

Since 2010 we have always kept this 30% market share in trail running. That's why we are pushing the boundaries with the Golden Trail World Series. Simply because we are working more as a communication agency than an organiser. So when we are coming to collaborate with a race organiser, we are coming with our full package, which means that when we are doing live TV, for example, in addition of our social media channels, our PR management, all this kind of stuff, we are coming with a team of 40 people. It's a big machine. Behind that we are able to reach millions of people.

On the impact of the marketing strategy internally

It has became one of the main strategies of Salomon because we are redefining the sport. Thanks to the Golden Trail World Series today, there are many athletes that are able to be professional athletes. Not only in the Salomon team, Nike, Brooks, Adidas, all the brands today are recruiting professional athletes to be part of the Golden Trail World Series, because this is where you have the biggest visibility in trail running. The level of these races are higher than the World Championships because we are having this huge communication in addition of some good bonuses.

If the Salomon ownership of the series has been questioned by broadcasters and streaming services

No, simply because today we are giving our TV production to all the TV channels around the world for free. We are released in 138 channels around the world and we don't want to give any exclusivity. That's why we are not selling our image. What we want is to develop the sport, so it must be free If we want to reach the largest audiences possible.

If we talk just about this years final It's the biggest viewership of the year for us. We reached 6 million views only on Eurosport.

If you compare, it's already at the same level or even better than mountain biking, or the Volvo race.

I was with them (Eurosport)last week in Paris, and they love the format and concept. This is really what they are searching for in terms of programming and they really want to help us to develop our series, because they see a big potential for them as well. We are thinking that we will be around for the next two years on Eurosport. We will aim to add one more race at least every year, live.

Whether GTWS built the course format in this year’s final for TV viewership

Yes, it was a test. Today Eurosport are asking us for a two hours programme. But it's difficult. When we are going live on the Mont Blanc Marathon, for example, we are filming just the last two hours of the race live. We introduce at the start of the broadcast a race recap of what happened during the first one and a half hours that were off-air.

It's a bit of a shame because most of the attacks or the movement has been done already. But still, there is some interesting competition for men and women until they finish because in this kind of short distance there is just a few seconds between athletes, and not many minutes. So it's always keeping the suspense till the end. Thats why this kind of flower format works, simply because I wanted to have a fan zone or a little bit like in biathlon where the runners can come back and enjoy the crowd celebration with the public every 5, 6, 10 kilometres depending on the loops. It was a test, and it was a big success.

First, because the athletes were able to feel the energy of the public six times during the race, they were not running at all on the same trails. They they were not bothered [by the format]. It was not loops, they were still exploring the area and having the improvisation in technical parts that is needed to enjoy the running. This is what they lost in mountain bike, for example, making loops.

[Next year] The final will stay the same format. And we will have one race [in the figure eight format] and one race in flower format.

On how Greg wants to grow the series

The idea is to create a kind of balance between the legendary race and new formats that we want to develop. That will represent maybe more the show we want to propose in trail running because what we want is to create a TV show, and this format is certainly the best one today to answer all our needs.

I think we are creating a new universe. It's almost a new sport, I would say.

We are creating a kind of a fission between the ultra distance and short distance, it's becoming really two different sports with different skills where the athletes will take a lot of risk to go as fast as possible in every downhill everywhere, and they know that every second counts.

The vision for the ‘Chasing Dreams’ documentary series

At the beginning, it was our biggest tool to reach people because we hadn’t launched the live streaming and we kept it simply because we were able to reach a larger audience. We were able to be released during offseason too. There is a lot of advantage for us to be able to communicate all year long. We are covering many months of communication today with that content.

I think we will continue the TV series in the same format. We will add something new [this season] like a kind of highlights recap before the season starts that will be released on Eurosport for like 52 minutes, but will remind people of what happened last year before the new season.

The issue with UTMB’s communication strategy

There are many series like Spartan or UTMB, or the new World Trail Majors, they want to communicate on every distances, you know? They want everything. To me this is a big mistake of communication and communication is major. We must focus just on the one story.

If you want to reach the people with a clear message you must stay on one communication. After UTMB you remember who won UTMB [Mont Blanc]. Do you remember who won each race of the UTMB [World Series]? This is what I mean, we are creating stars and to help us to grow we need to flex Remi Bonnet, Sophia Laukli, or whoever. We are creating communication around them to push them up to try to reach a larger community in their country and to that end, to promote the content through them. They are our locomotive as well.

As you have seen, when we are creating content, we are not creating content only around the Salomon athletes, we are creating content around all the key athletes of the series because we are talking about the trail running story. We are not talking about the Salomon story. What we want is to develop the sport and to develop it we need the other brands, and we need the best actors in the world. These actors, they are taking part in the show and they must be paid for it.

It's like creating a movie or cinema. You need actors. You need suspense. You need a story that will give you tears or emotions. That’s what we are working on.

Greg’s thoughts on UTMB starting to compete at middle distance races

We don’t have the same business model. What they want is to have the biggest registrations and to sell them at a high price at many races around the world. We are the opposite. The stage race race of Madeira was 20 euros per day. We are working in collaboration with organisers and it is those organisers who collect most of the fees. Even if they get additional money from sponsors it is for them, not for us.

The Golden trail series is not in competition with UTMB simply because they are long distance. They are not doing a series, they are doing qualifier races around the world to be part of a final. They have one race in the year that they are doing big communications around, but beside this race, the others are not relevant. It is a different approach to us.

On our side we are trying to respect the trail running values as much as possible and with the development of the mediatisation we need to adapt a little bit, but we will not make loops on the same trail and become cross country. We will maintain the improvisation and the technical part of the race.

On the World Trail Majors

What i have seen is a reaction against the UTMB who is trying to create an industry of trail running and what i like is that i have only seen nice races. Transgrancanaria, Mt Fuji, Javalina, they are all big races. Races that are on your bucket list.

If you take the UTMB World Series list, there is not a lot of races that are really on the bucket list, they are more races they partner with that are able to pay, beside Western States and some others.

I think that this new series will be interesting. We will see how it works. I believe it will interest a lot of athletes because today they are not happy to be forced to run a race to get a stone and they are going to compete without desire and this is not okay.

If they (World Trail Majors) have a world ranking and if they are competing at long distances, then this could be it for UTMB.

I believe UTMB will react now with something, maybe with more bonuses to attract athletes. I like that it (the World Trail Majors) will create some movement. On my side i don’t feel attacked. We are a little bit alone on our sector.