Nick Shakinovsky: Telling Triathlon’s Story
Nick Shakinovsky is the Chief Content Officer at the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), a new sports organisation co-owned by athletes, which is trying to take professional longer distance triathlon to the next level. It’s also on the shortlist at the 2023 Sport Industry Awards for Sport Organisation of the Year.
After spending a decade in mixed martial arts at the UFC, making a move to triathlon may look like I’ve transitioned to the polar opposite. However, at the PTO there isn’t a day that goes past where I don’t see familiarity in the two journeys and the opportunity to bring another, misunderstood, under-appreciated sport to the global audience.
My job title is Chief Content Officer, but it could easily be Chief Storyteller. That probably underlines the importance we’re placing on storytelling at the PTO.
Beyond the four-year spotlight of the Olympics, longer-distance triathlon has been mainly participation-led with a commercial focus squarely on the amateur. However, the PTO thesis is that the world’s best professional triathletes deserve a bigger stage.
In the past, their stories have been largely untold through content and on broadcast, with races streamed to only tens of thousands. Despite appealing to one of sport’s most valuable audiences.
From a live perspective, our landmark deal in 2022 with Warner Bros. Discovery helped showcase the inaugural PTO Tour to a TV audience of 23.1 million. Our challenge now is to deliver athlete-led content which keeps our core fans engaged during the season, but also casts the net wider to bring more casual fans on our journey.
I want as many people as possible to understand just what superhuman athletes triathletes really are, engage with their personalities and then care (and watch) how they get on when they race. It’s why we’ve called our new season-long documentary series Beyond Human.
And with conversations about sports content, docuseries and Netflix reverberating around the boardrooms of all sports organisations, I don’t believe the path to storytelling success is a one-size-fits-all.
My three guiding principles are:
⦾ Build your Content department ‘inside out’ – I’ve built a 10-strong production, editing, design and social team in-house. As well as having triathlon specific knowledge there is also a wealth of other sport and industry experience within the team. The common thread throughout is that they’re passionate about making their mark and elevating the content output. All are crucial to our future success.
⦾ Authenticity is our currency – The first thing I say to our athletes is, ‘I’m not here to make you look stupid, but it’s hard to make you look good if you’re an edited version of yourself. Own who you are, whether that’s a showman or an introvert obsessed with the sport – we’ll do the rest.’
⦾ Learn from other sports, but don’t just follow them – Nike, Red Bull, Formula 1 are amongst a whole host of inspirational giants paving the way in athlete and sports content, with the PTO starting with a clean slate, it means we can cherry pick from others whilst we develop our own style. We are emphatic about trying and learning and having smaller budgets often leads to higher creativity!
We’re not ready for a Netflix series in the same way as golf or tennis are, both sports have been around for a long time. We’re only off the back of our first-ever professional season so it’s important we’re easily found across all channels. We’re building the plane and flying it at the same time, so the real-time fan feedback is invaluable.
Success should be about quality of engagement, which is why our organic results last year were so encouraging to see.
The second PTO Tour season starts with the new PTO European Open women’s and men’s 100km (2km swim; 80km bike; 18km run) races in Ibiza on 6th May. Bring it on.
Watch the first episode of the PTO’s new documentary, Beyond Human.
