LEADERSHIP CORNER
Team Unlimited promotes Hawai'i sports tourism
Interviewed by Deborah Sokei
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Title: President
Age: 48
Organization: Team Unlimited, founded in 1988, owns and produces Xterra, an off-road, multisport event combining swimming, mountain biking and trail running.
College: Canberra University College in Australia, majored in multicultural education.
Little-known fact: Used to like to ride up and down the canals in Kailua in her party boat, which is 8 feet by 14 feet, with family and friends. "I take the boat out on the weekends, but can't now because it's under water."
Breakthrough job: Well, I had two. The first one was when I came to Hawai'i and worked at Starr Seigle McCombs Advertising, currently Starr Seigle Communications Inc., as a media planner. Then the second one was when I came to work (at Team Unlimited) for Tom Kiely, as the vice president of marketing. It got me into sports marketing, which turns out to be what I love and just a perfect fit.
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Q. How many Xterra events are held in a year?
A. We have a total of 77 events held in 10 countries. Forty-five of them are held in the U.S., which includes the World Championship on Maui. There are about 10,000 athletes worldwide that are competing for the right to be a world champion. We did our first Xterra on Maui in 1996. It's turned into a year-round business.
Q. Do you think Team Unlimited has a role in promoting sports tourism in Hawai'i?
A. Yes, I do. We are one of the prolific producers of Hawai'i-based sports television. We have clients who believe these imageries, whether it's lifeguards competing on the beach or mountain bikers ripping up Kualoa Ranch. It sends a very strong image and very much increases the appeal of Hawai'i as an outdoor destination. The economic impact of sports business is estimated at about $60 billion in the U.S.
Q. What's the economic impact of sports businesses in Hawai'i?
A. I really don't know how big it would be in Hawai'i. I don't think anybody has tried to quantify it here.
Q. How much does it cost to put on an Xterra event?
A. The Maui event, 2003 Nissan Xterra World Championship (held in October), cost a little over $1 million, including the television portion.
Q. What are some of the challenges of putting on an event?
A. The hardest thing is finding a venue because it requires a unique combination of things. It requires swimmable water, which may sound funny, but not all water is water you can swim in. Some bodies of water may have strong currents or are shallow or it may be water for human consumption. You also need immediate access to trails. That particular combination is not easy to find.
Q. How big is your staff?
A. We have 12 full-time employees in Hawai'i. We also have a tour staff because the company operates five events in the U.S., including three regional championships. We have a traveling staff of about 20 people who are employed from April through October. Then in September through October we increase the number of people we employ for our television production crew. These are local independent contractors such as cameramen and audio guys. Our Maui shoot has 28 cameras alone.
Q. How do you advertise/market the Xterra events?
A. I think without the Internet our life would be a great deal tougher. We spread the word through electronic marketing in a big way. We spread the word through our television shows. They are the living and breathing evidence of what we do. What we realized a couple of years ago is that syndication was the most effective way for us to get our message out to the most people we could. But it's probably the most difficult way to distribute your product into the marketplace. But the net result is greater viewership of that programming across the board. What we found with our first experience with syndication is we exceeded the viewership we had with ESPN.
Q. When did the 2003 Nissan Xterra World Championship air and how many people saw it?
A. We had over 3 million viewers and it aired on the Saturday before the Super Bowl.
Q. How does Team Unlimited make its money?
A. We're a sponsored-driven business. People in the event business typically make a great deal of their funding from registrations. Our registration is not what drives our engines because our fields are small. We couldn't do what we do on registration fees. We are partnered with a bunch of sponsors who are basically seeking to be a part of the sports-lifestyle market. The majority of our sponsorship is now coming from outside of Hawai'i, which is good since things aren't going so well here.
Q. Why is that?
A. It's because we're a global brand. Our events don't happen here. Of the 77 events, two of them are held here.
Q. Who owns the name Xterra?
A. We own the trademark in a number of different categories including automotive, apparel and merchandising. We did a licensing agreement with Nissan North America and they are now the title sponsor of the event.
Q. What does Xterra mean?
A. Xterra means the best in outdoor fun and games.
Q. A while ago Team Unlimited was criticized for its marketing the state as a destination. What happened? And did that negatively impact the company?
A. When Tom Kiely, former president of the company, hired me the company had a marketing contract from the Waikiki/O'ahu Visitors Association to market O'ahu outside the state of Hawai'i. Tom had also been hired by the Hawai'i Visitors & Convention Bureau to be their marketing person. He worked for them and I ran the marketing for the association. There was some public debate over conflict of interest at that time. Kiely worked for HVCB for nine months and then decided to come back to work for the company. In my mind, he had separated himself from the company and he didn't have anything to do with what the association was up to at that time. I think a lot of what's going on since then is kinda rooted in some of the negative publicity that went down at that time.
