What’s your name and position within the organisation?
Hugh Roberts, Chief Executive of SweetSpot Group, creators and organisers of the Tour of Britain, the Women’s Tour and Tour Series professional cycling events
Give us a brief overview of the Tour of Britain as a rights holder in general and your approach to sponsorship and partnerships specifically
The Tour of Britain is Britain’s biggest professional cycle race and now a cornerstone of the British sporting calendar. We also have the women’s equivalent in The Women’s Tour, which we created and launched in 2014 and is now seen as the ‘gold standard’ of women’s cycling worldwide.
We like to have partners working with us across both of our main Tours – as well as our other events – and we work very hard with those partners to listen to their aims and objectives and to tailor solutions to what they need. We are lucky that cycling events enable us to meet a range of objectives, whether that be brand awareness, CSR campaigns, targeting a large family friendly audience or unique hospitality experiences, the list is endless.
What approach differentiates the Tour of Britain and makes your sponsorship strategy unique?
There are several unique aspects to our events, not least that we can offer men’s and women’s equivalent races each standing alone – rather than the women’s supporting the men’s event, as usually happens. Usually these would be in June (the Women’s Tour) and September (men’s Tour of Britain) nicely bookending the summer, though in 2021, because of COVID-19, they will take place in October and September respectively. We hope that this year they will provide a great opportunity for celebration and a chance to look ahead with optimism. Together with British Cycling we plan on using both races as a way of saying ‘Thank You’ to our key workers and community heroes at each location and engaging all the new members of the cycling community that have either taken up cycling or got back on a bike in the last 12-months.
The events are both completely free to attend and between them attract around 2 million spectators in a typical year. That is right across Britain, and there is simply no other event or platform that can do this and bring our ‘moving stadium’ to a small town or community in the heart of Wales one day and the next be in the centre of London or another of our major cities.
We also produce the television pictures for our races for broadcast in the UK and worldwide, and this gives us the unique opportunity to shape our own coverage. As a bike race the scenery, the heritage and the communities that we race through are so important to the overall narrative – for both our host venues and sponsors – and so we have this ability to shape and influence how it comes out.
How has your approach to sponsorship changed during COVID-19? Have you created any new initiatives or altered your operations to reach sponsors and audiences in new ways?
We had been working with partners to discuss creating a virtual edition of one of our races prior to lockdown, so, in some respects, were ahead of the game when we had to postpone our events and chose to create a virtual edition of the Women’s Tour. Thanks to ŠKODA’s support this became the ŠKODA V-Women’s Tour and we were one of the first women’s races to hold a virtual event – all streamed live by BBC Sport and on our own channels.
The virtual event also gave us a chance to work with some new partners such as Lucozade Sport, California Raisins and Mind (as one of the two official charity partners), and to create new rights packages. Being an entirely digital event, it gave us a great way to connect with our fans at home and to learn more about them as an audience too.
With an absence of in-person events over the last twelve months, how have you adapted to deliver virtually/digitally for sponsors?
The ‘time off’ – if I can put it that way – from our usual busy calendar of events has given us the chance to step back and to assess what we do, particularly when it comes to the rights that we offer and the ways we connect with our audience. We firmly believe that The Tours offer a compelling prospect for sponsors, and the more we can connect with our audience, the greater the benefits for current and potential partners.
We recently announced a partnership with technology firm DotModus to assist with this and the ways in which we use data going forwards – to not only learn about our audience at the roadside, but also to connect with them.
The biggest adaption, clearly, was the creation of the ŠKODA V-Women’s Tour and that is something we are keen to replicate across all of our races, enabling us to broaden the shoulders of our events into the winter months.
Who are some of the brands/sponsors you have worked with on recent campaigns?
We are currently in the market for a new title partner for both the Men’s and Women’s races, and hopefully will soon find the right partner that wants to put these amazing events at the heart of their campaigns going forwards, as we present a great opportunity for a brand to ‘own’ cycling in the UK.
Most recently we worked with OVO Energy for three years with a big focus on initially raising their profile with customers across the UK and then reinforcing their commitment to sustainability. That campaign in particular helped us to address how we can make our events more sustainable, and that will be a key pillar of what we do with any partner going forwards.
Our longest running partner is ŠKODA, and in 2021 we will be celebrating 10-years of working with them as our official car partner and King/Queen of the Mountains sponsors. This year in fact will see us using their hybrid vehicles for the first time and I am sure it won’t be too long before we have an electric fleet of ŠKODAs at the Tours. As you’d expect from a cycle race, we also work with a number of major cycle industry partners, for example Vittoria, Fenwicks and Brother UK.
How has sponsorship changed for the Tour of Britain over the past few years, and what predictions can you make about how it’s going to change in the next five years?
The biggest change has been the creation of the women’s race – the Women’s Tour – and how that has gone from strength to strength to now sit alongside the men’s Tour of Britain, so we have two world-class events each with their own strong identities.
This year we intend to add live television coverage to the Women’s Tour for the first time and would like to extend the race to eight days, while, for the Tour of Britain, our aim is to become the ‘fourth Major’ and the biggest race of its type outside of the three Grands Tours during the 2020s. We are aiming to work with a new long-term partner to achieve this and to really build a community around all of our races that shows that they are much, much more than ‘just’ an elite cycle race when it comes to inspiration, promoting healthy living and sustainable transport – and, of course, celebrating Britain!
What are your plans with the Tour of Britain and other events for 2021?
We have an exciting route for the men’s Tour that will take us from Penzance to Aberdeen, through England, Wales and Scotland, while the Women’s Tour will have its first individual time trial that will attract a lot of attention and, for 2021, an October date that should make it the grand finale to the cycling season. We are confident that both events will be a great celebration of Britain and come at a time when people are able, and keen, to get out and celebrate their communities.
To that extent, we are planning at both races to have a ride ahead of each stage that gives us – and the communities we visit – a chance to celebrate and say thank you to our key workers. We have all been touched in some way by the past 12 months, and this year’s Tour of Britain and Women’s Tour will be our chance to put on a celebration and have these heroes at the forefront.
We are also continuing to explore other philanthropic activities such as The Great Tour, which is our 64-day charity ride around the British coast. We’ve put on the event three times – and I have ridden the entire 6,700 kilometres myself – so we know what a great platform it is to both raise money for worthwhile causes while also celebrating our fantastic coastal communities, which need our support now, as much as ever before.