As chief executive of the World Triathlon Corp., Ben Fertic oversees all aspects and operations of the Ironman brand, whose global reach extends to 34 races worldwide, including 29 qualifiers for the Ford Ironman World Championship, held annually in Hawaii. The championship event has grown from its original field of 15 entrants in 1978 to nearly 1,800 triathletes this year.
Before his current position, Fertic, a triathlete himself, developed the organization’s Web site (Ironmanlive.com) and helped bring in such sponsors and licensees as Ford, Unilever, Timex, Philadelphia Insurance, Gatorade, Foster Grant, Saucony and Cannondale. Fertic recently spoke with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
Education: B.S., mechanical engineering, University of Florida
Favorite vacation spot: My house
Favorite piece of music: “Hawaii ’78” by Iz
Favorite quote: “The only constant is change.”
Favorite movie: “Braveheart”
Favorite book: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins
Favorite off-day activity: Kite surfing
Athletes you most enjoy watching: Michael Jordan and triathlete Cameron Brown
First job: Lifeguard
Best professional advice you received: To make sure I surrounded myself with people who were great and smarter than I was
Best decision: To follow my passion
Biggest professional risk: I quit my engineering job and started my own [IT] company. That was a huge risk because I walked off and started from scratch.
Greatest accomplishment: Depending on where my wife is, the two things I’m really proud of are my marriage and Ironman. If she’s close by, it’s my marriage.
How did you go from mechanical engineering to the World Triathlon Corp.?
Fertic: While you typically think of engineers as designing bridges and processes, we’re really trained to problem-solve. I’ve taken that to another extreme in that I apply it to all kinds of things. I always looked at the problem of whatever business I was working in at the time and worked toward an operational solution. A triathlon is nothing more than a complex operational structure. We have events in 17 countries all over the world. We have probably over 50,000 athletes competing in our events worldwide next year, and there’s a whole process that goes along with that. About six months ago, I sat down with a group of other event-management people, and all of us were engineers.
Is this a way of combining pleasure — although I can’t imagine a triathlon being pleasurable — with business?
Fertic: For me, yes. It was always my lifestyle. I saw Julie Moss cross the Ironman finish line in 1982. From that moment, I knew that I wanted to be involved in triathlons and maybe one day compete in Ironman. I did my first triathlon in 1985 when I was 16 years old.
Throughout my career, no matter what job I held, I was always racing or always training for triathlons and also for 5K and 10K races and marathons. I’m primarily doing the running events in order to make my triathlon times better. So, for me, it’s been this lifelong process. It’s combining my problem-solving skill set with my passion for triathlons.
Were you an athlete at the University of Florida?
Fertic: I was a swimmer and went on recruiting trips to Vanderbilt, UVA and Georgia Tech, but then decided I wanted to concentrate on my studies and not swim. I did play water polo, though.
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| This year’s Ford Ironman World Championship in Hawaii drew nearly 1,800 competitors. |
That’s the most difficult sport of all.
Fertic: It’s a great sport. It is a workout, though, and a blast.
Wouldn’t you like to see baseball players, golfers and bowlers play water polo?
Fertic: I’m an avid golfer, but I don’t equate that to being in shape.
What is the mission of the World Triathlon Corp.?
Fertic: We’re a very vertical company. We handle a lot of our PR. We hire our own cameramen and video-editing studio and produce our television show (which has won 13 Emmys) on NBC. We do about 10 events a year live. We have four helicopters and show the entire course of the Ironman Championship live online.
A lot of people haven’t witnessed an Ironman event up close. In the meantime, they can go online or watch OLN or ESPN International or NBC and they can get a flavor for the event. That really is our mission: to share the experience and to enhance it.
What’s your biggest challenge?
Fertic: Dealing with overcrowded communities. We are a business that’s growing incredibly fast, but we also have major impacts on communities from the event side, and that is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. Our bike course is 112 miles and our run course is 26.2 miles. To walk into a community and tell them that we want to shut down 138 miles of the roads is a tough thing for them to swallow, and that is an enormous challenge everywhere we go.
John M. Duke, publisher of Triathlete Magazine, said that the triathlon is a “high socioeconomic sport” and, as he told The New York Times last year, his magazine’s average reader earns $153,000 annually. So, the sport’s participants seem to be physically as well as financially fit.
Fertic: They are. The sport takes a large time commitment and a lot of resources. You’re traveling to an event, and the entrance fee for the event itself is normally over $400. But the real expense comes with all of the equipment. The low-end bike is probably $3,000. There are bikes in the compound that are over $15,000.
At the Ironman level, the athletes tend to be high-end, type-A personalities. The event lends itself to those who really want to set goals. And those type of people tend to accomplish goals in every area of their lives, whether it’s personal fitness, business or whatever. So, it really does attract a unique type person who tends to be very driven and successful. It’s an amazing group.
What are the requirements to compete for the Ironman championship?
Fertic: You must win or place in the top two in your age groups at one of the qualifiers to go to the world championship. But we started a program three or four years ago where we auctioned off slots to the Ironman World Championship. If you wanted to go race, you could buy a slot on eBay and 100 percent of the proceeds went to charity. We are funding building the first YMCA on the big island of Hawaii, and we’ve raised $1 million toward the project. We auctioned off six slots, and the average price for a slot was $35,000. That gives you a level of how badly people want to do the race.
The New York Times reported that the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board said that the World Triathlon Corp. brings in about $15 million each year in tourism.
Fertic: We know that number is true. We have activities all week long for each race. Our activities start on Tuesday, and in Hawaii’s case, [the athletes] normally come in between nine and 12 days out before the event so they can acclimatize to the environment and also to the time change. They want to be prepared for the event and get rid of the jet lag before they do the race. We have some athletes who show up a month early, but that’s not typical. We’re getting ready to redo our numbers. Conservatively, we think our numbers are going to top $20 million and probably come in around $25 million for this year’s race for the Hawaiian islands.
What’s a competitive time for a triathlon?
Fertic: It depends on the race. Hawaii is incredibly fast. It’s 1,800 of the fittest athletes in the world from every age group. We had a guy who was 80 years old do the race in 16 hours and 25 minutes. The winning time was eight hours and 15 minutes. The average time in Hawaii is about 11 1/2 hours. At most other Ironman races around the world it’s probably about 12 1/2 to 13 hours.
