✳️ UTMB’s DAZN deal and Trail Running’s Olympic Ambitions

A Trailmix of news, opinion on the business of trail running

Hey pals 👋 - UTMB are back in the news with more broadcast and sponsorship deals showing their continued desire for growth. Meanwhile Merrell wants trail running in the Olympics and new data shows just how much trail running podcasts have grown. Hope you enjoy! - Matt

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UTMB Enters a Broadcast Deal with DAZN

What? UTMB has signed a two year distribution deal with DAZN, an online sports streaming platform, where eight World Series Majors and the UTMB Finals will be streamed.

🆓 Freemium - The livestreams will be hosted on DAZN’s new freemium offering, whereby users can create an account and watch multiple live sports for free, with ads in between. As such, UTMB will not have received payment for their content.

One additional bonus is Viewers on DAZN will also have exclusive access to the official 2024 Dacia UTMB Mont-Blanc documentary “a 52-minute programme offering an immersive journey behind the scenes, following their sporting heroes in the lead up to and throughout the UTMB World Series Finals.”

• The calendar of UTMB World Series Events broadcast on DAZN:

• 26-27 April: The Canyons Endurance Runs by UTMB, UTMB World Series Americas Major

• 6-8 June: Tenerife Bluetrail by UTMB

• 3-7 July: Val d’Aran by UTMB, UTMB World Series European Major

• 17-21 July: Eiger Ultra Trail by UTMB

• 26 August-1st September: Dacia UTMB Mont-Blanc, UTMB World Series Finals

• 12-15 September: Wildstrubel by UTMB

• 3-6 October: Nice Côte d’Azur by UTMB

• 5-8 December: Doi Inthanon Thailand by UTMB, UTMB World Series Asia-Pacific Major

📺 Global coverage: The same livestreams will continue to be streamed on YouTube, UTMB Live, L’Equipe in France, iQiYi in China and Outside Media in the US and Canada.

Sponsorship shake-up: This week Hoka expanded their sponsorship with UTMB to become the title sponsor of the UTMB Finals and World Series from 2025 to 22028.

Hoka will take over from Dacia who has been title sponsor for the past year. Dacia will remain as the transport sponsor.

✳️ Matt’s Opinion: This won’t increase UTMB’s reach much more than YouTube already does, it’ll only be incremental. This is all about signalling. Being on DAZN, even if you’re not being paid for it and it’s in the free section, is a powerful test that sports media execs will look at when considering if UTMB is a viable broadcasting product.

Whilst DAZN is only a few years old now, it’s already created a vast library of broadcasting rights across international leagues and competitions. It’s attempting to position itself as the place for all sports viewer’s needs, and having a freemium option allows them to host multiple sports outside the mainstream who are seeking to prove they would be profitable, whilst drawing in more users to the DAZN proposition.

Florian Lamblin, Executive Director at UTMB,expects that in five years broadcasters will be paying for trail running. With broadcasters will be paying for trail running. With GTWS already having proven their popularity with Eurosport, It’s easy to see trail running being paid for, but it’s uncertain whether that will be UTMB.

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Merrell Revives Trail Running’s Olympic ambitions

What? Merrell launched a London to Paris relay and a petition to the International Olympic Committee to get trail running into the Olympics in Brisbane 2032.

🏅Olympic ambitions: In their open letter Merrell highlight that trail running is a burgeoning sport ‘that embodies the essence of human athleticism, endurance and a connection to nature’. It’s this combination that would ‘inspire a new generation of athletes’.

✳️ Matt’s opinion: There’s a curious belief across every sport that the pinnacle of it’s existence is to be in the Olympics. The Olympics are held up as a bastion of excellence, only the very best sports and athletes can enter it. Once you’ve made it, you’ve made it. Job done.

For Merrell, let’s not kid ourselves, this is a cost-efficient PR move that got Merrell into a lot of headlines. This effort will die down as soon as summer ends.

For trail running, the proponents of this argument claim that it would be a validation of the sports legitimacy, that athletes would get the recognition that they deserve. There’s no doubt that Olympics gets you more kudos from the outside world, and maybe more sponsorship opportunities for athletes.

There’s a tendency to inflate what the actual Olympic effect will be, without anyone actually knowing what that means. Will it be more like what happened to Basketball (international growth) or Rugby (nothing)?

History has proven that the Olympics doesn’t materially directly benefit the sport, with very little money trickling down from the IOC. Nor does it greatly affect participation in the sport, with most research papers agreeing that it temporarily increases the number of lapsed participants returning to the sport and current participants increasing their frequency, cycling every four years.

The classic question of who benefits is yet another conundrum. If we look at cricket’s inclusion in the 2028 Olympics, the IOC get to fill the India and Pakistan geographic hole in their roster. Yet the Indian cricket leagues, that would run at the same time as the Olympics, would have their best players competing in the Olympics, impacting their viewership and broadcasting deals. But would they even want to compete for their country at the Olympics? They’ll be paid a lot less and they know that it won’t really be a competition since in most team sports the best players don’t play at the Olympics. So the winners are… the IOC?

The same challenges would apply to Trail Running. UTMB, GTWS and Skyrunning would be effected (dependent on the event) when the summer Olympics sucks up all the best talent. Would athletes be paid more? British athletes likely wouldn’t be if last summer was anything to go by since trail runners weren’t even covered by British Athletics at the World Trail Running Championships last year. If trail running were to be included in the Olympics, the course would likely be a copy of GTWS flower format so that it is short and exciting for TV viewership (I’ll leave the opinions on whether that’s good for sport to you).

With trail running only professionalising in the past decade, the hype around inclusion in the Olympics is still in it’s frothy blind ambition stage, with few having a thoughtful discussion around what this would actually mean for the sport. To put it simply, will the juice be worth the squeeze?

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Trail Running Podcasts have Skyrocketed Since the Pandemic

What? The numbers of podcasts about trail running has tripled since the start of the pandemic, according to an analysis of trail running podcast RSS feeds by Trailmix (oh hey!)

How? After compiling a list of 20 podcasts where the majority of content was around mountain, ultra or trail running, I pulled data from their RSS feeds to look at the industry’s growth overtime.

Caveat: I may have missed some podcasts, a lot of podcasts have a blend of road and trail so a subjective inclusion criteria was made and some i couldn’t extract accurate RSS feed data from, so this analysis might not be complete. Please let me know if I’ve missed some.