The Cost of Sport

Most people on this world have some affinity to sport. Whether an active participant, a dedicated supporter or someone who enjoys watching their kids playing football for the school team; sport plays a part in many lives. And a good one at that.

Many of us dream of a career in professional sport during the wonderful days of childhood when anything could be possible; but few will ever make it their career. The reality is harsh. The comprehension of the dedication and sacrifice required to succeed can be difficult for the young and old alike. Youngsters may miss out on the social life their friends are developing. As we grow older a total dedication to sport may reduce other career options, stifle new relationships or require sacrifice of other life goals. And, we must remember that only a few professional athletes achieve the highly paid status of those we watch winning Tennis championships, playing for a club in the champions league or driving for a Formula 1 team.

To climb the ranks through any sport takes dedication, motivation, hard work, sacrifice, aptitude and money. Many thousands have fallen by the wayside, or given up on their dream to compete at international level in their chosen sport, yet amazingly there are also thousands who push through the pain and the sacrifice and make it happen. the vast majority of these athletes you will never have heard of. They are deeply skilled, world class in fact, yet they don’t make the headlines, they don’t earn huge appearance fees or prize money and they hold down a full-time job at the same time as their sporting career.

Why do they do it?

Well, I can’t speak for everyone, only for myself. But I love my sport, I love the way in which I must engage and use every facet of human knowledge and ability to compete in a race. I believe as human beings we have the incredible ability to improve constantly, by training, by analysis, by practice, by daring, by never settling for just good enough. I want to be the best I can be, I am lucky that my aptitude is such that I have been able to ascend to the ranks of the top ocean racing teams in the world. I have been proud to build a team of coaches, operational staff and a technical team around me, and our project empowers them to push forwards with their own goals within the sport, pushing their own boundaries as well as the boundaries of every aspect of our sport.

I guess in a nutshell why wouldn’t I want to be the best I could be? Sport gives me the opportunity to excel personally, as a team and more recently creating a business.

But, all professional sport costs money to deliver. Most events are able to “wash their faces” they charge entry fees for teams, ticket sales to fans, they sell the rights to spectate to the media and of course they can sell sponsorship for the event.

Sports teams and individual athletes must however pay their costs in a different way. Just to enter the international events that we love to watch costs every team or every lone athlete some sort of fee. A friend’s child just qualified to take part in a national championship; it’s a great accolade for a talented child who has worked seriously hard for the privilege. But just to compete the child must buy team kit, which costs £120. And so, it starts.

There is no complaint about this, it is a fact of life. Professional sport, elite sport costs money. The further up the competitive ladder you climb, the greater the financial investment will be. It’s often an overlooked fact in sport. But the infrastructure that supports national and international level sport must be paid for and maintained. The equipment used by many athletes is state of the art and must be upgraded constantly. To be the best in the world you must work with the best in the world, coaches, biomechanics, technicians, engineers, psychologists – in any walk of life this expertise costs money. To train and compete all over the world requires, travel, logistical support both at home and abroad.

So why invest money in sport?

I think there are two answers to this question. The first one is similar to why we put ourselves through the ringer to compete in the first place. Because we, human beings, believe in excellence. We buy in to the whole concept of pushing the boundaries of performance. Whether that plays out player on player on the pitch, running laps around a stadium on your legs or running laps around the world in a well designed and built piece of human ingenuity. We are inspired by human endeavour; we are excited by what could be possible and it engages everyone with the concept of using our brains and our muscles to be better.

Sport has an incredible ability to cut through the deception, the conflict, the tangled messages of the world around us. It offers a pure and honest view of life. In sport, not everyone can win; we are all committed to try but we must accept that on the day only one player can be the best. And yet we still compete, ready to accept triumph through adversity and being willing to honestly acknowledge when we did not make the grade, yet still get up, vow to be better and get back on the race track again.

But there is another reason to invest in sport – a business reason – a symbiotic relationship between teams, athletes and business’ that expresses so much more than a logo on a shirt. Sports sponsorship demonstrates business values in a way regular advertising and communication cannot. Following elite level sport, watching the highs and lows, engaging and believing in the constant drive to perform and to excel, speaks to the heart of human endeavour. Logos will be forgotten but stories will linger. It is just the real sports geeks who will remember positions and rankings for time immemorial, but everyone has a favourite sports story, which represents to them the epitome of great human qualities. A come back from adversity, a lifetime of dedication paying off, a competitor gracious in defeat. These moments are real, they are not contrived or acted and they demonstrate so much of what we, whether individuals or businesses aspire to be.

At the Vendée start with corporate guests 2024

It is not always easy to understand what sport costs – and then why it costs that much. But here are some figures I found on the internet (not extensive research and no fact checking!) to give some ballpark indication of the costs of some international level sport.

· Standard Chartered is reported to spend £50M per year on sponsorship of Liverpool Football Club

· It costs between €13M and €20M per year to run a cycling team that competes in events like the Tour de France

· Title sponsorship of the six nations Rugby costs £15M per year – that’s the event… not the teams

· Ineos self - reported they invested £110M in the four-year British Americas cup program

· Each F1 racing team has an annual budget cap of $165M which they find ways to work around….

· UK sport have just committed £23.9M to fund the British Olympic sailing program for the next four years.

· The top seven IMOCA teams in Europe spent an average of €3M per year over a four year cycle – plus the cost of a new boat which is around €10M

Aside from the UK sport funding every one of those events and teams is funded by commercial partnerships. These are the life blood that allows sport to progress and develop, and allows people the world over to participate either as a fan or an athlete.

When I entered the top ranks of world sailing, I walked in to a commercial world I had no knowledge of, and was not ready for. My chosen sport receives no grass roots or national funding – so few sports do, and if they do it is seldom covers athletes’ expenses, normally just the training and infrastructure to support them… ask any athletes you might know.

It’s a whole different job, raising money. And when you get to the level we are at, the commercial part of a sports team must grow, develop and perform in exactly the same way the physical and technical team do. A commercial partnership must be exactly that – a partnership that offers genuine value and a tangible return that outclasses any budget that could be spent on other marketing, communication, sales pipeline, internal engagement, client hospitality, brand awareness opportunities. We must be accountable, reactive and we must deliver.

This is something I have had to learn, and like I bring in designers, coaches, specialists to help drive our sporting performance forward, so I have made a team that includes a creative, ingenious and determined commercial team who want to give back to our partnerships with the same passion I want to win yacht races and break world records.

When I look back on our last four years we have a lot to be proud of. Not just the huge leap we made as a team in the International world of ocean racing, but also in the genuine commercial value that our team created, all in house, and all from our own hard work and creativity.

It has been a tough first half of the year, the team needs to find a title sponsor to continue racing at International level. We have so much more to give and the story is far from over. It’s hard to stay positive when faced with climbing the financial mountain again and so it’s important to look back at what we have achieved across the board. The sporting performance, the technical performance and the commercial performance. We have written a report, detailing our achievements over the four years. It’s been a worthwhile exercise for me and the team that remain. It has reminded us what we know we are capable of and inspired us to keep pushing forwards as we can feel our potential bursting through the seams of our being.

In an unusual move, I have decided to share the report with those who are interested. For two reasons… Firstly to help people understand what it costs to run a team like ours competing in world class international events, and hopefully give a bench mark against other teams competing in the same arena. Secondly to demonstrate the return we have quantifiable given to our previous partners…. Maybe just maybe it might inspire a new sponsor to get involved.

I know in a world where AI is picking up and dissipating all original content to a thousand people hoping to make work of their own, this report may be used and reused as other people’s work in the future. But I have decided to share our success, because it is ours, we stand by it, we created and delivered it and if you put our words under scrutiny we can tell you what they mean because we have lived every page of this document.

If you would like to read the report, then I invite you to download it by following this link (http://bit.ly/3GNaMbq). If you are someone who donated to the campaign, I warmly thank you and am proud to share with you the results of the last four years of competition. If you think this report might impress a potential sponsor, then please feel free to share.

Charting a New Course