How the UTMB “content factory” is putting trail running on the map

With people lining the streets of mountainous French towns, ringing bells, or lighting flares when dark, and crowding the road to see the incoming racers, the UTMB Mont Blanc event bears many similarities with what its marketing director Antoine Aubour says it takes inspiration from, the Tour de France. 

Aubour himself worked at ASO, the Tour de France’s organiser, for over six-and-a-half years, and it is easy to see the similarities between the events. The headline UTMB Mont Blanc race sees both men and women run the same trail for 100 miles, circling the eponymous Mont Blanc and crossing through France, Switzerland and Italy in the process - as well as many of the picturesque towns mentioned above as it winds through the Alps. Aubour said, “Like the Tour de France, we create short programmes about the small villages, churches, interviews with mayors, so even if you don’t know trail running you watch it and you learn.” 

As well as in an incredible setting, it is an impressive feat of endurance, the athletes begin the race at 6pm on a Friday evening from Chamonix, and the first runners aren’t expected back to finish at the same spot until around 2pm the next day. In that time, the top competitors will only stop running for roughly 15-20 minutes.

The sport has been growing in stature in recent years, with big brands such as title sponsor Hoka, and the likes of Nike, Adidas, and more having presences at the race site, and broadcasters such as DAZN and L’Equipe showing it live - and Eurosport creating the eight-episode Extraordinary Humans docuseries with production company Mouss Films. It is also shown in its entirety through the UTMB’s D2C platform, and content is given to the athletes to share on their channels.

Aubour is currently prioritising this growth above revenues, saying of the latter, “It’s not our objective. We want to reach the maximum amount of people.” He added: “We want it to be free-to-air, through broadcasters or on our own platform.” 

There is certainly enough content to keep audiences interested, created by what UTMB calls it’s Content Factory. The Mont Blanc event featured a 70-hour live broadcast, produced in association with trail running specialist Outdoor Sport Live, which was created by a 70-strong team. This included a control room located at the local Majestic hotel, which housed producers, a motion designer, data analysts, IT, editorial, coordinators, editors, and distribution, a fixed 13-camera production at the start/finish, three drones to follow the action, and a group of runners and mountain bikers who followed the main competitors as they traversed the trail - for which the fitness need meant many were former trail runners or world champion bikers themselves.

Mid-race interviews with these runners and bikers aren’t forced as UTMB doesn’t want to affect the race, but can happen, with suggested questions sent before live broadcasts to give them topics to talk about - many of the athletes are keen to build their own profiles, so will take part. Aubour is keen for content to bring athletes’ stories to life, saying, “We need to humanise the trail runners, so we need these tools and original content to tell their story and create the new stars.”

The content filmed out on the course is sent into the control room over public 4G - with a team sent out a month in advance to work out which parts of the trail have the signal required for this.

This was put out in six different languages, English, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, and Basque, with 11 main commentators and numerous guests to provide analysis. 

In addition, the UTMB worked with Serac Productions on non-live content, with 15 people on site to produce near-live and daily highlights, a 52-minute official documentary, behind-the-scenes content, and social media content - which was supplented by a six-person social media team working across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and being an endurance sport, Strava. Production company Peignée Verticale was also onsite to produce content for the race’s partners, Hoka, Näak, Suunto, and Dacia, and an in-house podcast, Crossed Paths, was produced on site - with those facilities also open to others to produce their own shows from the race. There are also around 20 influencers invited to attend the race and make their own content.

This amount of content, and letting fans see it for free, is growing the sport’s audience quickly. Over a billion minutes of UTMB’s content were watched on solely its own channels in 2023, and more are expected to see it in 2024.

UTMB is keen to bring these fans closer to the sport, with supporters able to call in and speak to commentators. Aubour explained, “We are trying to connect fans to the reality of what trail running is, so we ask our commentators to answer questions - like a streamer - and sometimes we have a live chat on the screen.” This is available on its platforms, as well as sent to broadcasters as part of the live feed.

A new addition for 2024 is more data than ever before, with a second-screen data feed available through the UTMB website, and a 3D graphical representation of the track, so fans can see where competitors are in relation to each other, with the top 25 competitors wearing GPS trackers that are visible on it. This is, again, to explain the race to these new fans who are flocking to the sport. “We know we have a lot of fans who know the stats and the stars,” said Aubour. “But it’s our job to attract new fans - so we give data to the speakers [commentators and presenters], graphics, and try to explain in a non-technical way. It’s very important to us.”

With audiences, and the amount of content they want, growing, Aubour said, “It’s tonnes of work, but it works.”