Sport marketing guru

The Daily Sail catches up with FastTrack boss Ed Leask

With the increasing profile of sailors from Ellen MacArthur to our Olympians in the British public eye, it is not surprising that some serious figures from the sports marketing world are now showing more than a passing interest in sailing. Among them is the towering curly haired figure of Ed Leask, director of Fast Track.

Leask is mre than a little biased towards our sport. He is a keen yachtsman and owns the Swan 56 Magical, while daughter Inga, who heads the sailing side of Fast Track, has the middle position on Shirley Robertson's Yngling.

Professionally Leask has been in the sports marketing world since he first teamed up with partner Alan Pascoe in the mid-1970s. Their company API had some involvement with yachting in the past. They were responsible for setting up Land Rover's five year sponsorship of Cowes Week. They also arranged the memorable backing of the skiff circuit by the foul smelling Brut by Faberge.

Among their coups were getting soccer off the ground in the US in the late 1980s where they ended up as partners in the Pro League and and ran the Washington club DC United which won the Pro League in its first two years. Perhaps most significant was that from 1990 they held the full commercial rights to the Commonwealth Games and ended up the dominant sports marketing entity in athletics in the UK and Europe.

Five years ago Leask and Pascoe sold API to what was to become Octagon. At the time of the sale they had 300 full time staff in 16 offices around the world and a huge number of sub-contractors working for them for major events.

However following the sale Leask says they bought back a small involvement with British Athletics, who at the time were in administation. To run this he and Alan Pascoe set up Fast Track in April 1998. "We are trying to keep it very much more focussed," Leask told The Daily Sail. "But despite that we have two offices in the UK, one in Madrid and we have about 50 staff..."

Today FastTrack holds all commercial rights to UK Athletics. "All commercial income from UK athletics comes from us - be that sponsorship of televised events or of grass roots, the domestic or international TV licensing. And then we manage and run on behalf of UK Athletics all the televised events in the UK. So we hire the stadium, sell the tickets, contract the competitors - we do the whole shooting match," explains Leask. They also have the contract to exploit the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Recently FastTrack bought a chunk of equity in the AIM-listed company Clipper Ventures, headed by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who own and run the Clipper Round the World Race and also the present singlehanded round the world race, Arond Alone.

"We see sailing now as having a window of opportunity," says Leask. "Whether it will succeed from a sponsorship point of view with that window none of us know, but we think there is a bigger chance now than there has ever been. Broadband digital, etc it is all helping. I think we also have a huge move towards environmentally positive sports and it is difficult to say sailing isn't environmentally extremely clean - it is extremely clean, it is a drug free sport, all that is very positive."

He continues: "The demographics of people who sail suits a lot of companies. I think the UBS involvement at the moment in sailing is excellent along those lines. Probably one of the challenges is still to make sure doesn't appear to be an an elitist sport - the America's Cup for example might appear to the general public to be elitist."

Interestingly despite the high profile of singlehanded offshore racers like Ellen MacArthur and budding stars like Emma Richards and Miranda Merron, Leask says their interest in Clipper Ventures is primarily for the Clipper Round the World Race.

"We feel there are incredible TV programming and series you can develop out of it both in the crew selection and the race itself," explains Leask. "Our guys on that side are really excited about the opportunities. We are getting a very positive response for television. It is a little bit of watch this space at the moment."

They are also building a new fleet of 68ft Ed Dubois designs to replace the existing 60 footers. "We've done a lot of work on that race. We've restructured the way it is going to be packaged to sponsors for the next race. We have agreed to delay the race by 12 months, because we didn't believe we had time to market it in today's pretty horrendous sponsorship and advertising market. We are currently in the bid situation with ports. We're in discussion wth 20 ports around the world who would like to host the race."

Leask stresses that Fast Track's role is not laying marks and organising start times. Their role is the marketing of races and how to structure new television ideas for their events.

Fast Track are also looking at how to move forward with Around Alone. At a somewhat shambolic press conference in Tauranga before start of the present leg, they proposed that Around Alone 2006-7 would be limited to Open 60s and the new Open 50 class of 48-50 footers (thereby removing the Open 40s) and would feature prize money - only to be shot down in flames by Thierry Dubois, who said they, the skippers, did not take part in Around Alone for the money.

"We're not involved with this Around Alone race at all," says Leask. "What we're involved with is how does one structure the next Around Alone? We've done a lot of research. We are coming to conclusions, but they are not finalised yet. We feel there should be a pot of prize money. Some of that should be for those who wins legs and who wins overall. But equally there is no reason why each leg you finish you, you shouldn't get prize money. Thierry had a good point that what he would like to get the entry fee refunded after you cross the start line."

They have set up an advisory group including Bernard Stamm, Mike Golding and Brad van Liew to look at how to take the race forward. "We want to collectively see how we can make the next race more sucessful and, from the race organiser's point of view, financially viable because there is no way Clipper could afford to run the race on the same terms as they have this time - there is no income. We all recognise it is a fabulous race, but somebody has to pay for it."

The principle reason for the relatively low number of entries in Around Alone is because of the clash of dates with the Route du Rhum. "We've got ideas that we think could work but they are not far enough discussed with other bodies to go public on," says Leask of what they plan to do about this.
The removal of the Open 40s is likely to limit entries further, but the move says Leask is to attempt to make Around Alone more of a Grand Prix event and particularly to reduce its duration. "There are 50s and 60s. There are some pretty high tech 50s being built, I understand. And one has got to chop the time span of the race by about two months, unless someone can tell me another way of making the numbers work..."

Decisions for the next race are likely to be made by the end of August.

Aside from their association with Clipper Ventures, FastTrack last autumn launched Europrix. This is a new offshore event sailed clockwise around the coast of Europe, with stopovers, starting in Italy in May 2004 and finishing in Stockholm, to be sailed in IC45s.

"We were approached by David Low and David Coe [who had the Farr 52 Loco], to do consultancy work on a European race project - this is going back two years," says Leask about how the race came about. "We worked on it for quite a while and came up with a good strategy. We then put our toe in the water to invest in that company with them and now we are the majority share holder, although they still have a substantial shareholding."

The event looks like being an inflated version of the Tour de France a la Voile.

FastTrack also run the glamorous Laureus Sports Awards Regatta in Monaco, this year being held on 18-20 May and sailed in Swans. This event attracts stars from Michael Douglas and Sean Connery alongside top sportsmen from Boris Becker to Daly Thompson - with the winner getting a Mercedes.

Generally Leask feels that in terms of sponsor hunting there needs to be more co-operation between event organisers and potential competitors in sailing. "Organisers have to put together with the proposed sailor or team manager a package of benefits that sponsors want to receive. With major campaigns it is unfair and impossible for the sailor to do this on his own. It is up to organisers to help competitors raise money."

At an individual level, there needs to be a development of yachting personalities out of the sports pages and into the lifestyle press. "I see the challenge of everyone promoting sailing over the next few years is how do you move our stars, our Ben Ainslies, our Iain Percys, how do you move them on to the lifestyle pages?

Ellen in this respect has obviously been the big success story. "We've watched with admiration. I take my hat off - excellent - I hope we've looked and learned. But I hope lots other people have looked and learned because what we need is the whole industry to be doing that."

In terms of pushing Olympic sailors into the public domain Leask believes this should be more of an RYA led initiative. "The problem at the moment, is that there is no one really with that responsibility. In athletics - we have 3-5 people in the press team 12 months a year promoting athletics in UK. And unless you do that, you don't get the stories cropping up all the time.

"In athletics our responsibility is to have the rapport with the sports editors to help create the space for the reporters. Similarly with sailing, the rapport should be with the editors who should then be more generous with their reporters in the space that they get."

If Leask is able to apply the same magic to sailing as he has to athletics, then it will be a huge shot in the arm for our sport.

Feedback: What's your view, is Fast Track on the right track with sailing?