Sam Renouf is the CEO of the Professional Triathletes Organization. The PTO is the most successful of all the groups top triathletes have formed over the years and there have been a lot of them, stretching back to the APT in 1982.

The obvious difference maker is a big investment in the PTO by Welsh billionaire Sir Michael Moritz, one of the world’s foremost venture capitalists and a principal at Sequoia Capital. But there’s more than seed money to the PTO and it’s not obvious to the casual observer what the plan is. To the investors the PTO is an affair of the wallet and not of the heart, which I hope my conversation with Sam reveals.

SLOWTWITCH: I thought I’d start by recalling the last conversation you and I had, which was about the value proposition pro triathletes and the sport of triathlon offer to the investors of the PTO. I find it interesting that this investment didn’t come from a foundation or other charitable arm, but from the business development bucket.

SAM RENOUF: The whole point of the PTO model is to create a television product. This is a business now. We have a 3-year partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery. This’ll be the most important television deal triathlon has had in 40 years. The Canadian broadcast [The Collins Cup race in Edmonton] was done in 23 languages. We placed the start time to be directly after the Tour de France, 6:30pm Euro time, directly after the Champs-Élysées finish to the Canadian telecast. You can have those kind of discussions when you have a broadcast network that's a partner.

ST: Is it fair to say there’s a lot more to be written about this, and in a month there’s big news coming?

SR: Yes, and I can say that it involves additional investment; We’ll be announcing a series B in the coming months.

ST: And that the big news is not just the sum of money raised, but that the source of the money is as big a story?

SR: Yes, exactly.

ST: This is the discussion I want to have, because I and others have asked quite often, “What’s the value proposition?” What's the value for investors? Is it a vanity play? Is it a feel-good for those who’ve got a soft spot for hard working triathletes? Or is it a business? And we see that it’s the latter.

SR: Yes, exactly. One of the threads to this story I’m surprised doesn't get told: Sir Michael is a major investor in STRAVA and the major investor in Outside Media. One could say that all these are different plays on the same audience.

ST: And PTO is a content play.

SR: All professional sports are content plays. You might buy a ticket, watch it on a broadcast, buy a jersey, but it’s all content or I.P. Anywhere a middle class develops, triathlon follows.

ST: Whoa. Let’s follow up on that.

SR: Some examples. Booming in the Philippines.

ST: Stop there. Yes, I agree. And in Vietnam. Emerging economies. But is that an IRONMAN phenomenon, or something else?

SR: IRONMAN is a beneficiary of a broad trend in endurance sports. A desire for health and wellness. You’re beginning to think about your lifestyle. Take these countries, or Singapore. Marathon was first, triathlon follows. Triathlon is arguably the best sport for health and wellness. From Babbitt: “Triathlon is a fountain of youth. You can do triathlon into your 80s."

ST: I was looking at the USAT National Championships and saw Madonna Buder in the 90-94 age group.

SR: I was reading about her being old 20 years ago, and she’s still doing it!

ST: Would you say that when Sir Michael sees the financial performance, what will he see will warm his cockles? Or are we too early for that?

SR: We can go further than warm cockles; this is a media model, a TV model, with The Collins Cup we were several years ahead of schedule. Our first-ever event we were live in 103 markets, and that’s a linear TV audience; not a streaming or Facebook audience. That’s last year. On the back of that we just signed with Warner Brothers Discovery. In the early days when he and Sequoia backed technical properties, they looked at users, not revenue. They focused on the property first, profits later.

ST: I used to think that was kind of silly until I changed my thinking, and began to focus on the size of an audience, and what I could do with that audience if I had their attention. That’s when I – even with my pea brain – could see that the size and desirability of an audience was currency.

SR: This is where triathlon is important. It’s incredibly valuable,. But it’s fragmented. Hard to reach.

ST: In our last conversation you said something notable to me, that the median income of golfers was $96,000, and the median income of triathlon was about double that.

SR: Correct.

ST: I could see how investors would find that attractive.

SR: Correct. If you’re the CMO of Goldman Sachs, if you [sponsor] a triathlon, it’s 3 to 5 thousand people [that you reach]. If it’s golf it's 2 million. That’s why it’s got to be a broadcast business.

ST: So if I put on your hat for a moment the goal, the urgency, is to coalesce the audience. It’s not to find grandpas sitting in armchairs and getting them to watch triathlon, it’s to actually get existing and future triathletes to watch their own sport.

SR: Yes. But what people often miss: Existing and previously. You for example.

ST: Hold your horses there, buddy!

SR: Okay, not quite yet! Triathlon is so damned hard, you’re always going to be emotionally invested in the sport. But it’s hard to watch unless I get high value production that’s accessible and easy to use. Our competitor is the NFL, not a triathlon livestream. Where it gets to in the future, if we can create a highly interesting, polished product, it’s an advertisement to do a triathlon if you’re not a triathlete already. By showcasing the talents of the athletes we’ll inspire new athletes.

ST: That’s reminiscent of the most obvious great linear audience, the Wide World of Sports broadcast of IRONMAN, which was a huge recruitment tool.

SR: It arguably created the sport. One could argue that IRONMAN was created by television. If Julie Moss wasn’t captured and broadcast to millions the sport wouldn’t be what it is. When we talk about the athletes, we always go back to UFC. It’s not obvious, but what UFC did was consolidate the fragmented combat sports market. We view triathlon exactly the same way. Triathletes are the ultimate endurance athletes. Easy to understand, swim, bike, run. The other thing UFC did was not focus on the sport but the top athletes. Rhonda Rousey. Triathletes ate the same way. Jan Frodeno, Daniela Ryf, Kristian Blummenfelt.

ST: For 35 years I’ve spectated, analyzed, lived, written about the professionalism of the top triathlete, and I was just asked by a brand who’s doing something with Jan what I might say about Jan. And my answer had nothing to do with his athletic performance, except to say that I have finally come to accept that he might be the GOAT, as opposed the person who I always felt was the GOAT. What I did say about Jan is that he’s notable for his professionalism. When he comes to a race it’s like Nadal coming to a tennis match.

SR: would say he’s the Federer.

ST: Point taken!

SR: Federer turns up in a private jet. But that’s in his approach to his craft. They’re all getting to this point.

ST: Exactly. My thesis is that Lionel is different from Jan in striking ways. But in his own way, and in ways Jan lacks, Lionel is also a professional like we’ve never seen in tri and I mean that in the best sense. Is the PTO only possible now because of the caliber of athlete we have now, and it took this long for pro triathletes to, as a group, mature up and into this moment?

SR: I would agree with that. The sport of triathlon is 45 years old. That’s not very long. Pro golfers existed a lot longer than the PGA. Every sport goes through this moment: a union, an aspirational organization, or a collective bargaining agreement. This was inevitable. But the difference is in the size of the pie.

ST: So, the gamble here, and the hot seat on which you sit, is that the money won’t come until the audience coalesces.

SR: And that’s exactly what we’re doing with the PTO tour. The sport’s media rights markets is one of the most valuable. The NFL just renewed its TV deal for $100 billion. Triathlon, can we be 5 percent of that? Two percent? Either way that’s the game changer.

ST: One other thing I ask you. Before I thought this through and talked to you at length, I felt the obvious revenue stream was putting on your own age group races. I think about the ITU, now World Triathlon, and the early World Cups they used to produce in Japan and elsewhere and how it became pretty obvious pretty fast to race organizing committees that they needed AG entry fees to fund their pro prize purses. But I see that’s not applicable to the PTO’s success. Nevertheless, what is the future of AG races produced by the PTO, and if that remains a future what part does this play in PTO’s plans and strategy?

SR: AG racing is integral to the PTO’s strategy, short and long term, but not for any financial reason. One of the special things about tri is that amateurs and pros can compete in the same event. That’s unique to triathlon. Age group triathletes are the most loyal and ardent fans. But they don’t race at the same time as the pros.

ST: Why not at the same time?

SR: It’s not feasible with the kind of product we’re making. The broadcast infrastructure. Drones. Helicopters. Also, we want the participants to spectate the pros.

ST: Some component of that AG field spectates the pros.

SR: All the AG field. Assuming they want to come. Grandstands. Food stands. Like going to the US open. Play tennis in the morning, watch Serena in the afternoon.

ST: Is there a moment in the future where IRONMAN and the PTO see themselves as 100 percent strategic partners, each moving forward to a common goal? Or will there always be an undercurrent of friction?

SR: It’s not a zero sum game. Arguably the second biggest beneficiary beyond the athletes is IRONMAN, because they have the biggest triathlon inventory.