Cycling’s New Player: Ironman – Wall Street Journal

Ironman, the biggest player in endurance athletics, is invading the market for bike races.

Ironman on Thursday will announce the acquisition of a European-based operator of about 20 endurance-athletics events, including six cycling races. The triathlon operator has never before run strictly cycling races.

The purchase of Hamburg-based Lagardère Sports from Paris-based Lagardère Sports and Entertainment will represent the largest acquisition ever for Ironman, based in Tampa, Fla. Ironman didn’t disclose terms.

Few industries anywhere are growing as fast as endurance athletics, as health- and competition-minded people sign up for an ever-growing array of races. The industry is highly fragmented, consisting largely of small-scale operators who launched foot races, cycling events, obstacle-course competitions and triathlons in their hometowns, charging entry fees that can range from $25 to several hundred dollars.

Seeking to capitalize on that demand are several large operators, none bigger than Ironman. After starting in 1978 as a single race—the Ironman World Championship—it now holds more than 250 events a year around the globe. Last August, longtime Ironman owner Providence Equity Partners sold it to China’s Dalian Wanda Group, which has charged the unit with pursuing even-faster-paced growth. “They would like us to be ambitious,” said Andrew Messick, Ironman chief executive since 2011, said of Dalian Wanda’s top executives.

Besides cycling events, Lagardère Sports owns and runs marathons, triathlons and other multi-discipline events in eight countries on three continents. Ironman said the Lagardère Sports events are expected to serve about 140,000 participants this year. Lagardère Sports’ roots date back to 1995 when Christian Toetzke started a cycling event in Hamburg, using its success to launch other races and eventually selling his company to Lagardère while staying on to run it. Now, he will join Ironman as its Hamburg-based chief development officer and global head of cycling. At Ironman, said Toetzke, “Cycling is part of our core strategy, creating new events, maybe acquiring events.”

Toetzke said that Lagardère Sports and Entertainment had been seeking a buyer for its endurance-athletics unit. “We received quite a lot of interest almost from every player,” he said, adding that Virgin Sport—a newly formed unit of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group—“looked at us as well.” Virgin didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Toetzke said the decision to sell to Ironman reflected “a mix of different elements: numbers, strategy, ideas.”

The acquisition will solidify Ironman’s dominance of top triathlons at both the long-course and short-course distances. Long associated with long-course distances—particularly the 140.6-mile Ironman—the company now will own and operate six of the nine events in the International Triathlon Union’s World Triathlon Series. Those events take place at the so-called Olympic distance—a mile swim, 25-mile bike and 6.2-mile run—meaning that the world’s top Olympic triathletes will now be competing at Ironman-owned events. Ironman’s purchase of Lagardere’s triathlons “will serve to further strengthen our sport on a global level,” Marisol Casado, an International Olympic Committee member who is president of ITU, triathlon’s governing body, said in a news release about the deal.

Lagardère Sports has developed more lucrative media rights than has Ironman, in part because Europeans are more inclined than Americans to watch endurance sports on television, but also because Toetzke designed multiple-loop courses that make the events easier for spectators to watch on site and at home. “Most of our events are broadcast live on German television, and we have decent-size audiences,” said Toetzke, adding that he believes triathlon in America could be expanded from a participatory to a spectator sport.

Ironman’s Messick agreed, saying that the acquisition could help his company and the sport of triathlon “get more exposure and visibility.”

Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com