The moment that sparked Patten to dream up Rev3 came when he was waiting in line to sign up for Ironman Lake Placid after finishing the 2008 race in 12 hours 15 minutes. “The thought came into my mind while I was waiting in line,” said Patten. “The supply of quality races must be very low if athletes are dishing over $500 one year in advance. And people were securing their accommodations for the following year while they were checking out of their hotel on Monday after the race. What sealed the deal for me was the fact that a lot of those athletes were complaining about having to commit so far in advance.”Supply and demand, two of the most basic terms in economics. Even today as the WTC hikes up registration fees most of their races continue to sell out. Clearly there’s more demand than supply right now, and the WTC understands that which is why they continue to raise race fees and introduce new Ironman races around the world. The past couple of years alone have seen the introduction of Ironman Cozumel and Ironman St. George, not to mention several other new 70.3 races.
It’s clear that there’s a large demand for more Ironman and 70.3 type races, but it must require large amounts of capital to really get a race series going. The Slowtwitch article hints at some of the Rev3 backers and the expected return of investment for the private company, but with the prize purses offered at Rev3 events it seems that the initial investment must have been quite large. I wonder how much it costs to run a full Ironman distance event itself… Just a couple years ago there were several independent Iron distance races around the country, but it seems like most of them have folded or scaled back their efforts to half-Iron distances. There’s still several good full Ironman distance races out there (Redman, Silverman, Great Floridian, Beach 2 Battleship), but they seem to be far and few between. Independent half-Ironman races seem to get swallowed up every year by the ever-expanding WTC.
I know a lot of people would rather support smaller organizations than a large corporation like the WTC. How this sentiment will extend to the smaller (but still corporate) Rev3 races remains to be seen. For local half distance races, the WTC has taken over most of the major races in the area (Racine, Steelhead, Muncie), with the Door County Half remaining independent. This year alone I noticed many more people I know signed up for Door County instead of Racine or Steelhead, and several indicated that this was due to the fact that Door County was NOT a Ironman 70.3 branded race. Some of them told me they preferred to support a local race organization while others said it came down to the registration fees (the Ironman 70.3 races were almost twice as expensive). For full distance races, Ironman Wisconsin is the default race for most athletes in my area simply due to its proximity.
A couple friends of mine competed in the Rev3 Cedar Point race this year and they gave it positive reviews. One of the big things they raved about was Rev3’s refund policy, which they felt was much more reasonable than the WTC refund policy. It does seem like Patten and the rest of the Rev3 crew are focusing heavily on the customer service aspect of races:
"When we decided to put on major triathlons, we made it our mission to truly try our hardest to put the customers first and understand our clients’ needs.”Customer service could be the secret ingredient to success for Rev3 as they continue to ramp up their races. If they can show consumers that a Rev3 race is a superior substitute to an Ironman branded race they should be able to steal market share away from the WTC and its subsidiaries. Heck, they just need a couple more incidents like the Ironman 70.3 Miami race fiasco to really push them over the top.
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