Profile
Cowes Week 2010 Photo: Paul Wyeth
Mark has walked to the South Pole himself – “a fraction of what Mike does,” he says – but that and living in the mountains where
people do “extraordinary things” does give him an insight in the world of adventure
20 cywinter 2011
it. He doesn’t demur when it is suggested that he has long been trying to devolve away from the sport. “I’ve had a few attempts at it,” he agrees. “With different things in the adventure world. But each time we’ve tried we’ve had another big, successful sailing event or challenge. I’ve tried to put energy into other things – like putting sponsorship together for Mike Horn, the South African adventurer who has walked to the North Pole and the round the Arctic Circle and all sorts of things – I realise how much energy branching out like that into another sector needs.” Mark has walked to the South Pole himself – “a fraction of what Mike does,” he says – but that and living in the mountains where people do “extraordinary things” does give him an insight in the world of adventure. “My personal sport,” he says, “is
cycling. Not that I get much time to do it, but that’s my own sport these days. And it’s expanding. Amateur cycle road-racing is in massive expansion, with the 35 to 45-year-old city guys. Then there’s cycling triathlons, trails, extreme running events – they’re all expanding incredibly quickly. And they’re well off people in professional jobs. This is the nature of society today – they need to go and do stupid things to their bodies! “And the really interesting thing about it, for us as a business, is that they are all
mass participation events and they have a different business model from professional sailing, which is fundamentally sponsorship based. “There’s still sponsorship involved, but
it’s maybe a quarter of the revenue, not three-quarters to 90 per cent. And that’s a much better model. Being almost entirely sponsorship based is a tough thing to manage, because you have very diffi cult cycles. You don’t know if you’re going to nail a project; then, if you do get it, it may have a three year or four year life to it, if it’s good, but actually putting new projects on stream, the revenue is very diffi cult to predict before it’s in place. Then it may be very good, but it obviously always comes to an end.”
Extreme
Like the Extreme 40s when the iShares sponsorship came to an end? That must have been tough. “There’s good and bad with having a
year without a sponsor. It’s cost a lot of money – we’ve put a huge investment in it this year to keep it going without a title sponsor, but it allowed us to concentrate on the venue income. “We’ve always had really good teams with a really great level of sailor. What we want are teams that come to us for the long term, are totally commercially funded with good brands backing them.” The 2011 Extreme Sailing Series kicks
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