"Land Rover is a great case study for sailing. They did a lot of research on what sports they should be in as a global premium brand. They settled on three sports: sailing, equestrian and rugby."


Series - depending on how you are measuring it, financials or numbers of employees - it is 40 to 50 per cent of the business. SRM: How has the Extreme Sailing Series evolved? Mark Turner: In 2007 the iShares Cup was a commercial activation event based around iShares' commercial objectives which were very hospitality focused; but it has evolved a lot along the way. In 2009 iShares were sold when we were half way through a two-year contract which we had managed to sign at the height of the economic crisis and at a time when there were queues of people being made redundant. There wasn’t a single sailor within iShares - it was a business deal that was really working for them, and they were very happy with how it was going. But when we signed it in 2008 as two-year deal, they put in a break clause in case of them being acquired, which was obviously in the pipeline at that stage. A year later they were acquired and the new company put a block on everything on the marketing side until they worked out how they wanted to absorb the company and the brand. All that was very disappointing for us.  At that point in 2009, the series was a European product and our deal was based on a European budget - so there was no global aspiration and no extra money to help us go global. We had a very tough year in 2010 because it was late in 2009 that the break clause was activated. Holding it all together cost a lot of money - which someday we might get back. We actually had a great year in 2010. We had to go to some venues that we didn’t want to be at in terms of positioning, but it was the only way to keep the circuit together.  At the end of 2010 we had some decisions to make and I made some plans to go forward in a positive way. I merged operations together with a start up that I had been helping called Thirdpole. With that I got a talented, young and ambitious CEO named Remi Duchemin who is still the CEO today. Bringing Remi helped to broaden our horizons. To keep the Extreme Sailing Series not just going but developing, we did a deal with Ernesto Bertarelli [head of America's Cup syndicate Alinghi] to come in as a major shareholder of just the series. This allowed us in 2011 and 2012 to take the event to a global level. Then our final phase was to buy that back last year and bring other investors in to strengthen again our ability to grow in other outdoor sports events as well as sailing.  So there have been a few different evolutions along the way but the Extreme Sailing Series through all of that has been the major engine - expansion, risk, stress, growth, excitement - all of those things are all wrapped in there. Taking it global, Bertarelli's faith in me and in our team to take that on, was very important for us. In the end it suited him and his team that we were able to step on and out from that [deal] and he has remained as a team in the event and he very much enjoys it. It has been a phase that has been very positive and has enabled us to get to a different place. I knew we needed to get global - I was absolutely committed to the global strategy - and it will take time to get our investment fully back. SRM: You just signed your first title sponsor since iShares all those year ago - tell us about the Land Rover deal. Mark Turner: For now the Extreme Sailing Series is one of the few products that has a global footprint, that is annual and supports business value when looked at from the outside. It is the leading product inside the company - not


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