The Isle of Man TT returns this June after two years of absence thanks to the coronavirus pandemic – but when one of motorsport’s most historic events returns again, it’s going to be a very different event thanks to a raft of forward-looking changes, according to TT Business Development Manager Paul Phillips.
Those changes were first laid out last year, as Phillips and his team used the two-year hiatus to look at the future of the race from multiple angles and plot out comprehensive changes ranging from live television coverage for the first time ever to a host of new measures designed to enhance the safety of competitors.
Speaking exclusively to The Race, the Manx native says that traditional fans of the event might find that it looks very different in 2022 – but that change is required to secure the future of a race that has come under threat time and again over it’s 114-year history.
“It’s a weird feeling,” he admitted of the extended break the race has taken, the longest since World War II, “because when it was cancelled, and then cancelled again, it felt like it was so far away from ever being on again.
“We used that period so well, to do just critical work that we’d maybe never had the opportunity to do otherwise, really went for it and were really proactive and focused, and did a really good job. And then now, all of a sudden, it’s like it’s on in five months!
“For me personally, a mixture of not having done it in two years and the fear of failure and stress of delivery means I’m having a wobble at the moment! Not having done it for a three-year gap, and doing it after a three-year gap with almost everything different, and much much more ambition means it’s a bit unnerving at the moment.
“But I think that’s a good thing, because if you were sitting here complacent or if you had just downed tools and were just turning it back on exactly as it was after two years, that would be poor. The fear is a good fear; if you’re a participant in the TT – not just a rider, but team, journalist, sponsor, someone who is part of making the thing happen, then you really need to get your head around the changes because they’re so fundamental in every aspect.
“If you come at it expecting it to be the same and for things to happen in the same time at the same place, it’s going to be difficult for you because so much is different.”
So what do those changes entail? Well, while the most important might be a wholly new proactive look at the safety of the event, the one that will obviously appeal to fans is the event’s planned live TV coverage – a complete direction change for a race that traditionally has been hard to follow, especially outside its traditional market in the UK and Ireland.
Yet while it might be the headline item of the new digital content plan designed by Phillips and his team, he’s quick to stress that it is very much only one component of a larger strategy that will fundamentally reinvent the TT and bring it in line with other sports.
“The whole approach to content,” he explained, “of which live TV is one part, is going to be the biggest change, along with the safety and risk management approach. They’re the two biggest game changers. But everything right around to the smallest details has probably changed.
“Being a digital entertainment brand first and foremost is a fundamental change in what we are and what we do. That’s really ambitious in terms of the scale of doing it across TT, and how tricky it is in terms of landscape, and culture, and technical infrastructure, but also in terms of just breaking the mould. We’re not breaking a mould in terms of sport, but we are in terms of the TT and road racing.
“What we’re doing is actually textbook in terms of sport; there’s almost nothing about it that’s innovative. It’s just innovative for the TT. In terms of resources, both human and financial, it’s big for us, but it’s all really exciting. All of the procurement is out there at the minute for lots of things, and there’s going to be a good two or three hundred people working on the creation of content at the next TT, be that TV, radio, or digital.”
That is somewhat at odds with the TT’s somewhat traditional and conservative focus even lately, but it’s also clear that the team in charge of the event believes that it’s the only way to ensure the long-term viability of the race as the world emerges into a post-pandemic landscape.
“You cannot be successful in the digital age without being a digital brand,” Phillips insisted. “It’s not open for discussion. It’s just a fact.
“The TT went through a decade and a half of growth from a low starting point using methods that were appropriate at the time and which were successful for us. But if you track back, that was pre-widespread use of social media.
“It seems like yesterday, but when I started I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Facebook. If the TT didn’t change, it would get found out, and it [the change] is exciting.
“The big opportunity for us to make up ground in the league table of motorsport properties is that our event has so much history, so many interesting characters, and it’s so spectacular. Those three things together are the magic ingredients. The bit about creating and delivering the content is almost the easy bit. If you didn’t have those ingredients, the other job is so much harder.
“For me Dakar is probably the best comparison, because it’s got so many similarities in terms of history, jeopardy, rugged terrain, pros and amateurs, once a year. It’s owned by ASO [French company Amaury Sport Organisation] and they know what they’re doing; they’ve been really successful. Maybe there are things from what they’ve done with the reinvention of that brand that we can look towards.”
That’s not the easiest thing in the world to deliver, mind you, in part because of the nature of the event and partly because of the rather unique position that Phillips finds himself in. Not a race organiser in the traditional sense but rather a civil servant of the Isle of Man government, he conceded that the combination of that and the somewhat-conservative attitudes in road racing have made the task harder.
“There is always some noise around change to the TT,” the Manxman admitted. “It’s the perfect storm of traditional sport with a traditional fanbase on a traditional island with, and as someone who is Manx I can say this, a race who don’t always like change and are a bit hardwired against it. However, if you think back to some of the stuff we’ve had resistance to in the past; here, we’re giving the fans more.
“They like racing and we’re giving them more racing. More access to their heroes. More access to behind the scenes of it all. More than they’ve ever had before, and we’re doing the large majority of it free of charge. There maybe isn’t too much to get angry about, because it’s very much designed around creating more and new fans – but if you’re a fully signed up hardcore TT nut, we’re giving you more of what you want.
“Not just this year in terms of content, but in 2023 there’ll actually be more racing too. In many regards, we’re going back to basics. We know some of the mistakes we’ve made around the TT in the past, and we know we need to serve our traditional fanbase better. What’s nirvana is being able to provide what new fans need while also satisfying old fans, and I think we’re there with a lot of it.”
Yet while there might need to be a mindset change not just at the level of the organisers but across the people responsible for making the TT happen, it’s one that so far Phillips sounds confident he can deliver upon come the start of June.
“A successful TT has a couple of things to it,” he replied when asked what would entail a success in year one of the radically-revised event.
“First of all, we need to put it on. It’s still a tricky world to operate in at the minute; I’m speaking to you from COVID isolation. We need to put it on, to make it happen and bring it back successfully. We need to deliver the event we knew from before, but then also deliver all of these new initiatives successfully.
“We’ve got an opportunity off the back of the past two years to really strive for excellence in what we do, and I really want us to up our game in every area to deliver a better experience for our fans and for the people who take part in it. We want to make sure that people returning to the TT or coming for the first time leave equally impressed and as strong advocates for the direction it’s going in.
“We need to make sure that we return the benefits to the really badly hit tourism and hospitality sectors after the past two and a bit years. The TT is very important to them and they need a successful TT that delivers visitors, and I want us to deliver our safety management system in line with how we’ve set out to, both the elements within it and the start of that cultural change, which is a never-ending thing, but we have to start to the journey and 2022 marks the start of it.
“It’s quite daunting, because it’s a mixture of just getting back to basics and getting an event on again, which will feel like a success, but realising the potential and the ambition of what we’re setting out to do is really important to me and my colleagues.”
