How a much-needed 'revolution' is key to a motorsport gem's future

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has wrought much misery since it invaded our lives two years ago. While it is trivial against the backdrop of the human horrors the virus has caused, it led to the cancellation of many sporting events.

On this front, one of the hardest losses from the annual sporting calendar was the absence of the Isle of Man TT. Staged since 1907, a survivor of the Second World War in the 1940s and the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, the TT is in this writer's view the greatest spectacle in all of motorsport. It is the most visceral, the most thrilling, the most dangerous.

It is the chief reason I have such a burning passion for motorcycle racing, having been instantly awestruck by its absolute insanity when I first laid eyes on ITV4’s TT coverage in 2009. There is a magic that envelopes the Island during TT fortnight which arguably doesn’t exist in any other motorsport.

It's also vital to the Isle of Man. In 2019, the last time the TT ran, the local economy was boosted by £27.1 million with over 46,000 people attending from all over the world. The TT's return in 2022 will come as a relief to almost everyone on the island.

That a tiny island in the middle of the Irish Sea, with a population of around 85,000, can attract almost 50,000 more people for TT fortnight is testament to its draw and is remarkable for the fact it has – in general – little exposure in the mainstream outside of the successful 2011 film TT: Closer to the Edge. Its breakout star Guy Martin doesn’t race anymore and has publicly shunned the TT. What returns that film had must now surely have diminished, leaving most of the mainstream attention to come only when a fatality happens.

Tradition is what keeps the TT alive today. In the modern world, anyone proposing a motorcycle race around a 37.75-mile circuit lined with stone walls and hedges would be laughed out of the room. But there comes a point where tradition simply seems like long-lost ideals obscured by rose-tinted spectacles. At a recent press call with the TT’s business development manager Paul Phillips, it seems like this fact has been realised and efforts are now in motion to bring the TT into the modern world.

The Isle of Man TT is back for 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19

Photo by: Isle of Man TT

Announced last year, but fully fleshed out last Thursday, live television coverage is coming to the TT for the very first time as part of TT+ - the event’s new OTT platform that will air 40-plus hours of qualifying and race action this May and June across the world for the very reasonable fee of £14.99. I’ve paid more to sit in an Uber for 10 minutes.

“The whole broadcast strategy is built on the fact that we're concerned about the size of our audience,” Phillips admits. “We've got gaps, generational gaps in our audience, we've got territorial gaps in our audience, because we're simply not visible in those countries. Whereas now, if you have an internet connection in Timbuktu, you can watch the TT from the moment the first bike goes in qualifying to the end of the Senior race. That's a massive, massive deal.” Indeed it is.

Motorsport has always been an oddity in the zeitgeist, orbiting the fringes of the mainstream. There, but not fully in focus to those who weren’t looking.

"Formula 1, MotoGP, World Superbike, World Rally, they're all doing the same thing. Nothing that we're going to do here is revolutionary at all. It feels revolutionary for the TT, but it's just the only approach in 2022" Paul Phillips

The advent of Netflix’s hugely successful Drive to Survive has turned the tide. It put Formula 1 on the radar of a legion of people who previously dismissed it as nothing more than cars going around in circles. It’s one of the primary reasons that last year’s controversial Abu Dhabi finale was viewed by 108 million people – more than who tuned into this year’s Super Bowl. Now MotoGP has its own docuseries on the way in the form of MotoGP Unlimited, while WRC’s move to an OTT platform in recent years has helped boost its audience.

Previously, the TT was accessible to those who weren’t on the island via Radio TT and some live timing, plus ITV4’s evening hourly highlights packages. In that respect, it remained as old-school as the event itself – but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

What’s striking about Drive to Survive – and what MotoGP hopes to replicate with Unlimited – is the sheer volume of younger fans engaging with F1 now. And they are a diverse bunch too. It’s an inescapable fact that the motorcycle racing demographic in the UK is generally male, generally white, and generally middle-aged or older.

Given the TT is an event contested by people who want to be there, there’s not an abundance of young talent leading the charge or being reared in junior categories. How the TT markets its riders will be a key element in boosting its mainstream profile, but beaming the insanity of the event into the homes of everyone with a semi-competent wifi connection is a great start.

Live broadcasting the Isle of Man TT won't be like any other live sporting event

Photo by: Uncredited

Given how readily available sport is now, why has it taken the TT so long to get with the programme? Well, covering the TT live is an expensive – not to mention complicated – undertaking, with 25 live cameras and two helicopter cameras being deployed to cover TT 2022. As a result, it’s something that has to be done right – and this, for Phillips, was a key sticking point for him whenever the conversation of live TT coverage came up in the past.

“All of the most successful sports worldwide, all genres, are broadcast live,” he says. “And the attraction is, if that's done very well, is that experience is great for a device or for a box in the corner of the living room. But the next best thing, the ultimate thing is to be there, experience it yourself. The risk factor is that you do a bad job if you broadcast and you take something like TT, which is so exciting and so visceral, and do a bad job of that and turn fans away.

“We have seen that in other sports. And that was one of the reasons for me personally [why] I often resisted opportunities for the TT to be broadcast live previously, because my concern was that it wouldn't be done to a standard that would have been good enough.”

This is where the COVID-19 pandemic actually helped the TT. Discussions about broadcasting the TT live have been going for years; it was a topic of conversation at a dinner Autosport attended during the TT 2019 launch event. That two years off has given organisers a decent lead time “to get our ducks in order”.

But, while the TT’s live coverage will be comprehensive and most probably excellent, it is something that happens once a year. It’s not like F1 or MotoGP which happens every couple of weeks. Thus, the success of TT+ probably won’t actually hinge on the live broadcasting – but the service TT+ offers year-round.

Due to launch in April this year, Phillips has assured “99.9%” of the content that will appear on TT+ will be free of charge. That will include a back catalogue of TT races, as well as a new docuseries set for 2023 following the Drive to Survive model and a new feature film set for release later in 2022.

As Phillips explains when Autosport asks how important the pandemic delays have been in helping craft the live TV element, this new digital strategy is largely about acquiring a year-round audience to then be able to give tangible meaning to the live broadcast.

Can the Isle of Man TT harness the fresh eyes and attention it will receive to secure its future?

Photo by: Honda

“We're all talking about live TV, but this is not about [live TV],” Phillips states. “Live TV would be a complete failure without a strategy to gather audience because we put it on live and we invest and we make a live product. But we know currently what our audience looks like and how big that is. So, there's no point.

“It's like if the TT was a human being, the live broadcast will be the head. But all the other content is the blood pumping around the body, taking the blood to the head. There'd be no point having the live without having a proper content approach.

“And this is where you can quite easily look to a lot of other sports who are really doing this well - all sports today, we're living in a digital age. And in our world in motorsport Formula 1, MotoGP, World Superbike, World Rally, they're all doing the same thing. Nothing that we're going to do here is revolutionary at all. It feels revolutionary for the TT, but it's just the only approach in 2022.”

"The thing that [Toto Wolff] said about TT - he loves TT, he's been to the TT - it's the authenticity that is just not there in other forms of motorsport" Paul Phillips

The idea behind the TT+ content approach is, as you’d expect, “all about eyeballs”. The live element is seen as a “seven or eight-year” financial model, which should hopefully have a snowball effect for the TT and the Isle of Man as a whole. More users should result in more paying subscribers for the actual races, which then increases the fanbase and the business opportunities this brings.

The changes to how the TT is broadcast have also extended to the radio side, with the usual team of commentators stationed at various points on the course scrapped in favour of one team providing more up-to-date information using the live stream.

Naturally, with great change has brought scepticism from some corners. But this is often from the demographic that the TT’s new strategy isn’t aimed at. Yes, things are changing, but for the better.

And the TT has all the ingredients to succeed in establishing itself as a major mainstream sporting event. The action is one thing, but ultimately it is secondary to the element that has allowed F1 to flourish through its own change in content strategy. And that is the human element.

This is what TT: Closer to the Edge succeeded in getting across to those who didn’t follow the TT. One person who does follow the TT is a certain Toto Wolff – Mercedes Formula 1 team boss and CEO. And he knows exactly what the TT has that other motorsports don’t, which will help in generating a new TT fanbase.

Isle of Man TT organisers are fully aware of the impact of a two-year absence and its current audience demographic

Photo by: Dave Kneen

“The opportunity we've got with TT, and I felt this from the outset… we don't have that budget,” Phillips notes when explaining how the TT can replicate DTS's success in telling F1’s story with its own content platform. “Okay, shock horror, we don't have a million pounds an episode to make a documentary series. But when I watched that, I think ‘this is great, these guys are great’, but our guys are far more interesting.

“That's the thing with the history, the spectacle, and the quite frankly, full cast of weird and wonderful characters that the TT attracts - and it always does - that's a great opportunity for us.

“While we might not have the same money to invest as Formula 1 does, probably... I had this conversation with Toto Wolff no less, who is obviously embedded in Formula 1. And the thing that he said about TT - he loves TT, he's been to the TT - it's the authenticity that is just not there in other forms of motorsport that the TT has. And I think if we can capture that and put that on screen and give that to everybody around the world, I think we've got a real fighting chance to do a good job.”

Phillips insists opening up the unrestrained characters of the TT to the world won’t result in and diluting of personalities – although conversations have been had about just being wary of not saying anything offensively stupid. But the leading TT lights are very much lovely, smart people and very much have the capacity to win new hearts if their stories are presented in the right way.

The TT is an event that is in many ways locked in time – a throwback to a much madder time in motorsport. The TT, of course, hasn’t stood still. It’s better run, much safer and much more popular than it’s ever been. But it now feels like the TT is properly coming into the modern age, and everything is in place for it to go to new heights. That is a very good thing indeed…

The Isle of Man TT's allure can attract the most colourful of characters which would make for prime Drive to Survive-style viewing

Photo by: Dave Kneen