Posted: December 14, 2004

Multisport: EnduranceRadio.com Interview with Creigh Kelly

From: EnduranceRadio.com http://www.EnduranceRadio.com

Tim Bourquin: “Welcome back to www.EnduranceRadio.com. Thanks for joining us for another interview today. We’re continuing to add to our little library of interviews with Race Directors in the hopes of getting some good information out there for you fellow Race Directors about how to organize promote and produce a more efficient race. The guest we’re going to have today, his names Creigh Kelley and he’s got a tremendous amount of experience in the Race Director area. He’s also an announcer and has got a lot of experience there as well, so we’re going to asking Creigh some questions about his background in racing and the state of the industry and maybe get some good ideas of ways that you Race Directors can improve your race organization in a number of different ways,

Tim Bourquin: “Creigh thanks very much for joining us today and talking with us, I appreciate you taking time.”

Creigh Kelley: “Tim it’s great to be here. It’s a little cold here in Colorado as it’s a transition time for us out here in the mountains.”

Tim Bourquin: “Sure, well you’re getting into the winter months here I guess, are you done with most of your races for the season?”

Creigh Kelley: “Well, we think we are except that we, quite frankly, on Turkey Day we have two events, one has between 8,000 and 9,000 people and the other one is a brand new one and there’ll be about 500, so our plate will be full through this week and then as we go into the winter months we will have two or three events each months until we get into March and then its gets busy again.”

Tim Bourquin: “Now is it just as much work to put on an event for 500 people as it is for 9,000 people?”

Creigh Kelley: “You know I’m glad you asked that question because I had the same conversation with Dave McGilvery, the Director of the Boston Marathon. We were talking about it the other day because he puts on lots and lots of events as well.”

Tim Bourquin: “That’s a pretty large event.”

Creigh Kelley: “Yeah, it’s a reasonably sized event. He was just at the marathon at Palm Beach where I was as well, where he directs that event for them down in Florida, but it was a question that came up, and the truth of it is that you do have to do all the same essentials to produce an event whether its 500 or 5,000, but you’re dealing with different scales and different time lines, but the work that you put into it is somewhat equal.”

Tim Bourquin: “Now what kind of time frame are you looking at when you’re putting on an event? I guess it may differ from an event that’s been going on year after year, but if you’re starting a brand new event how much time do you like to have prior to the race day to have to plan?”

Creigh Kelley: “Well, let me give you a typical call that we’ll get. We’ll get a call and somebody will say, ‘I’d like to put on a 5k,’ and when that call comes in our first response is, ‘Do you have 12 to 18 months to get yourself organized?’ and usually the response is, ‘Well we’d like to do this in about three months,’ and that is probably one of the things that bothers most of the people that are in this business, this kind of event mentality, its not just add water and you get a 5k. So as a function of that we like to have at least 12 months, that’s our preference; money talks. I mean if somebody wants to do an event and they insist then the option is to go to a competitor, we’re likely to take on that event for business reasons but with great caveats.”

Tim Bourquin: “So you’re talking that you’re gong to be almost setting yourself up to have a little more disorganized race if you just simply don’t out the time in to make that happen?”

Creigh Kelley: “Well you know its not so much the disorganization; what it is that the event won’t reach its true potential in the first year, it will be hand-struck by lack of marketing, lack of reach into the traditional market place. It just won’t have the same traction that an event that is given a longer time to grow up would.”

Tim Bourquin: “Now I imagine when you’re working with cities about closing down streets and that sort of thing, with bureaucracy being what it is, that’s going to take enough time alone?”

Creigh Kelley: “Yes, that’s one of the issue that you’re up against, but as a matter of practice most event companies that have been around; think of John Hughes with EMMI down in Orlando, or Dave McGilvery up in the Boston area; I could name dozens of these kinds of companies, they have relationships that have been nutured over the years so when they walk into a permitting office or into the Manager of the safeties office, or whoever administrates their permits, they’re not going to get a stiff arm, its going to be much more receptive, but having said that there is a process, there is a time line and then there’s also the added burden of if you’re limited to three or four parks in the city or metro area, they may already be taken.”

Tim Bourquin: “Right. Well that’s a good point because these days there really probably is no real true off-season, there’s races every weekend, almost in every area at this point.”

Creigh Kelley: “Absolutely. We talk to our friends down in Mexico; there’s a wonderful company down in Mexico City called Grupo Ac Supporta and they are probably the premier event management company in Mexico, and I said, ‘Well gee it must really get tough in the summer time here for events,’ and they said, ‘No, we’re still putting on events, we’re just sort of going to different kinds of events to make them fit into the matrix.’ But you’re right, it’s very competitive out there which is, ironically, a great healthy sign about the adult fitness market, but on the other hand we’re dealing with statistics on a daily basis that we’re failing in the fitness area as well.”

Tim Bourquin: “That is an interesting item. We hear on the news every day that America is getting fatter yet the participation in these races is increasing, so I’m sure how to equalize that.”

Creigh Kelley: “If we look at Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Team in Training and Joints in Motion from Arthritis Foundation and others that have contributed so many new participants to our marathons principally, we have to step back and realize that what we have done when we have done that, and I am very much a proponent, I sit on the Board of Trustees here in the Rocky Mountain region for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society; what we’re done though is we’ve sent out the message that finishing is all that is required. I come from a deeper tradition, having grown up with the sport for a number of years, and I still think its important to sweat, I think its important to workout, I think its important to have a training regimen that is beyond problem, so that you can develop a person into the best possible athlete they can be, notwithstanding their work schedule and their family commitments and other outside interests.”

Tim Bourquin: “Creigh, getting back to our discussion about larger and smaller races and the work involved; economics wise can a successful Race Director expect to put on a first time event and actually be profitable, or should they just be happy to maybe even break even just to get that first one going?”

Creigh Kelley: “I guess it would depend on the market Tim, but one of the things that I know that we tell; we have a way of doing business here in our local market that is fairly straight forward. Let’s say that Tim calls me up and says, ‘Hey, I want to do the Good To Me 5k and I want to make a lot of money for my Good To Me Foundation.’ We go, ‘Well you know Tim that’s great, do you have sponsorship in place because otherwise you’re going to need at least 500 to 600 people guaranteed to sign up for this event to break even, that is just to zero out your expenses, and then you can start making money over the top of that,’ and usually that makes eyes roll and hearts palpitate a bit because people truly believe its just a cash flow machine and it simply is not, and that’s the truth of it. What we do here in the local market is that we will send out a Line Item Operating Budget to a potential event group, even if we’re bidding against other people, and we say, ‘Look, you know, we’re going to show what an operating budget looks like, we’re going to show you what a time line looks like, we’re going to show you what your volunteer plan might look like for this typical event, and if that’s attractive to you get back in touch with us and then we’ll move forward to a meeting, but if that scares you away or you find something that’s better then by all means choose that option.’ This is free is charge, no strings to it. At the end of that usually eight out of ten events will either go with us or they won’t do the event. That’s the reality. You need to have real numbers or real sponsorship to make it work.”

Tim Bourquin: “Sure, you’re got to have that reality check in place before you actually go out there and produce one of these things. Obviously it’s a little bit easier I guess to attract sponsorship to an event that’s been happening for five or six years than it is for a first time event, but I guess if you were a first time Race Director having a company like yours on board with you probably can give you some of that credibility you may need to go out and attract sponsors I would imagine.”

Creigh Kelley: “People suggest that you should surround yourself with the best possible players so that you can have a lower risk of failure and a higher probability of success and to some degree that’s true, but I’m like several others that I know and try to be quite clear that we’re not promoters; yes perhaps our reputation will assist, but at the end of the day they’ve got to do the heavy lifting to get the word out to their constituency. Now consider that most events are driven by some charitable element, it seems to be a United States instinct, you won’t find this very much in order countries, to some degree you’ll see if in England, but for the most part charity doesn’t drive these kinds of special events nearly as much as business does. So when you consider that they have a built in constituency of people that should be like-minded or interested in the success of the event. Nobody has proven this better than the Susan G. Colman Breast Cancer Foundation with the Race for a Cure series. That certainly attracts thousands and thousands of people that simply do not do any other event that particular year and they do it because they care about the cause; so that’s the first thing.

I think the second thing is that we should not forget, those of us that are running aficionados and love the sport, that we are developing a platform that brings together the very best possible consumers that you could ever put a net over, I mean people spent thousands and thousands of dollars, direct mail campaigns and so on, to try and hopefully get to our runners, but not knowing who they are. Well what we’ll do is we’ll gather them in one place at one time and said great things about your product or service and that’s target marketing, that’s rifle shot target marketing; its fantastic. But we don’t sell it that way very often. I mean we forget to sell it, we forget the obvious and so corporations that may not have any interest in running may overlook this whole market because they’re not familiar with it, maybe they grew up in a non-sports environment and they just never saw it. If you look at the demographics, if you go to www.runningusa.org or you go to the Road Running Information Center, talk to Ryan Lamp out in California, you can discover that the statistics of the individual participant, I mean this is the kind of person you want a chance to sell your product to, they spend a lot of money.”

Tim Bourquin: “Sure. It seems like definitely the right demographic. Well Creigh, we’re about out of time, but I want to thank you for your time and of course anybody listening can go to Creigh’s website at www.bkbltd.com, we’ll be linking to that right below the link to this audio, and also to a couple of the links that Creigh mentioned. Creigh thanks a lot for your time.”

Creigh Kelley: “Thank you Tim, great to be here.”

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