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Hangin' With ... Air Race 1 CEO Jeff Zaltman

Air Race 1 CEO JEFF ZALTMAN founded the company in '13 to promote Formula 1 Air Racing. The sport has existed for over 70 years and is governed by the Int'l Formula One Air Racing Association. Prior to founding Air Race 1, Zaltman, a former pilot, saw a sport that was not reaching its potential. "I started to realize that people do these wild sports of air racing, and I wondered why nobody knows about these really cool sports," Zaltman said. He has expanded the competition beyond its annual U.S. National Championships competition in Reno, Nevada, to include events in Europe and Asia. In a sporting landscape constantly looking for new content, Zaltman believes his "pure" form of air racing can catch on globally with the right direction. He spoke with SBD Global about his role and Air Race 1's future.

On how he got involved in Air Racing ... 
Jeff Zaltman: We've been racing for a long, long time, but it's always been off in the periphery. Even though we get large, enthusiastic crowds -- we get 150,000 people to the races out in Reno -- it has just never expanded from there. ... In 2013, I started a company and approached the governing body as well as the French and British counterparts that govern the sport in Europe, and I got those three to allow me to develop the sport. So, I became the exclusive international promoter and organizer of all the international events and the national U.S. events outside of the existing one in Reno.
  
On what sets Air Race 1 apart ...
Zaltman: We race eight airplanes against each other in the same space, and the first one across the line wins. Air Race 1 is what we call "pure" air racing. ... The airplanes are quite different, even the pilots are a different species. Red Bull Air Racing takes aerobatic airplanes and puts them into an aerobatic type of slalom or time trial, whereas our airplanes are built by the team just to race. They are built to our rules, to our specifications, and the only purpose of these planes is to race. They're built for speed and pushing technology. ... Red Bull does their [air races] as a promotional marketing effort. ... We're not driven by a brand. We're driven by the sport itself, which makes it interesting for brands to get involved. We didn't create something to suit our needs, we're a clean slate for brands to get involved in.
  
On pilot safety ...
Zaltman: It is a motorsport, so like any motorsport it can potentially be very dangerous. We go to great lengths to mitigate that danger and make sure that we have all the precautions and measures in place to do our best to prevent those incidents. That includes the vetting and training of the pilots. The skill level and the qualifications they have to have as well as just monitoring it and making sure the personalities and attitudes are correct. We have strict rules which have been developed for 70 years.
  
On event operating costs ...
Zaltman: A lot of it depends on the host partner we work with. We've done events in Thailand, Tunisia and Spain and each event has its own shape, character, size and reach. It's hard to put a finger on the costs because of the way we divide up the event. We put a lot of the ownership on the host venue side. They're responsible for putting together the public side of the event. We focus on the sport side. It is less costly than one might expect. You think of all these planes, all the logistics involved and the people we bring, but it is pretty accessible for a host city. ... In Thailand, the national government, the ministry of tourism, is funding the event through the Sports Authority of Thailand -- they're funding much of it. Also, the airport we race at, the actual venue itself, is contributing and funding it and, of course, also giving their airport, emergency services, air traffic control and fuel.
  
On event promotion ...
Zaltman: They [local government] typically do the promotion locally to attract the crowd, but we'll do the promotion internationally. We'll do the PR, the publicity and then some advertising to get visitors to visit the venues. We also do the TV production and distribution, so we'll be on TV in over 100 countries.
  

Source: NAOMI DSCHAAK
On TV coverage ... 
Zaltman: We'll do the pan-continental platforms … we'll have Europe-wide and Asia-wide and should be on Fox Sports in the U.S. We've got the TV, which is a good step. It's not live, it will be live in Thailand with Thai national television, but we may this year extend that out to be a live broadcast to global channels. We're just having that discussion right now.
  
On streaming ...
Zaltman: We're having that conversation because the other side of the coin from the live broadcast is doing it online. We're costing that out. We’re 95% sure we're going to do it, it's a question of when and how, and what capacity and what platform. But yes, we're going to do live internet broadcasts. There's the cost and capabilities but also the time zones to think about because the U.S. market is quite important to us.

On upcoming events ... 
Zaltman: We have the annual event in Reno, the national event in September. ... The next actual Air Race 1 World title event will be in Thailand (Nov. 17-19). Not everyone on the street can race an airplane, so there's not many of these pilots around. There's probably a pool of about 100 in the world that are capable or qualified that can do it, which leaves about 30 active competitive pilots available. So, we're bringing 16 teams, maybe 18, to Thailand. That ensures the races will have eight teams in them.

Hangin' With runs each Friday in SBD Global.

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