Wade Martin On AST’s Alli Update And Maloof Partnership

mike lewis

• December 18 2008
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AST, the company behind the Dew Tour and other action sports tours (hence the initials) recently announced it had changed its name to Alli, The Alliance of Action Sports and was partnering with the Maloof Money Cup and several other events in sports including moto. Transworld Business sat down with Alli president Wade Martin to see what this means for his organization and the contest circuit.

TWB: Can you walk me through the changes from AST to Alli?

Wade Martin: I think in many ways, it’s not as much AST becoming Alli as much as us creating a new umbrella brand and organization and the AST kind of going away as a redundant brand. The Alliance of Action Sports is really meant to be kind of the network of properties and brands and fans and athletes that are all part of it and that includes the Dew Tour Properties, The Maloof Cup, The AMA Motocross championships and the King of Wake. Ultimately we really felt the goal with that is to make sure that each individual franchise maintains its own identity and stands on its own. We felt like the Dew tour stood on its own better than the AST and didn’t have nearly as much equity as the Dew tour.

Alli is basically supporting them all on the back end, but from a fan’s perspective nothing will change?

WM: Yeah, hopefully that’s what’s going to make Alli unique. We’re not looking to run all of these events. We’re not looking to standardize or homogenize any of them as much as we’re looking to create a platform for them to grow from. That includes are television program on NBC and MTV, our online platform with allisports.com, and hopefully the expertise that we bring in growing these properties.

You’re basically a content distributor then?

WM: That’s one piece. We’re both a programmer and a distributor. We provide a distribution outlet, but at the same time we’ll distribute outside of those outlets. Just like we have over the last four or five years with the Dew Tour being on FUEL or Eurosport, we’ll be a distributor to other networks and platforms, but at the same time provide our own distribution network?

Will you handle some of the production for partners like Maloof?

WM: We will be part of the content production. NBC does the production for Dew tour, NBC will not produce the Maloof Money Cup. They’ll continue to work with Windowseat Pictures, because we think that’s the right fit for that event.

All the event organization and creative decisions will remain with the people that know their properties the best. Just like we know the Dew tour the best as the owners and operators, the Maloof’s know their property the best, so they’ll continue to be the sport and property experts and we’ll be helping them on the commercial rights side.

On the ownership front, has the structure changed at all?

WM: No NBC and MTV are still the coowners of the venture and we’ll continue to own and operate the Dew Tour, the Winter Dew Tour and the Free Flow Tour. We’re not owners of any of the new additions, it’s just partnerships.

This has always been the vision, if we created the platform that we could grow from then some of that growth would be organic and some of it would be via partnerships. In the case of the summer Dew Tour there was really a void, that void doesn’t exist in motocross so there’s no sense in creating one but we do think we can help that property and we do think it can help us by being partners.

What are your plans for further growth?

WM: I think we’re largely in all the sports we want to be in with the exception of surf. We’d love to be involved in surf, but we’ve bitten off a lot right now and that’s not something we’d rush into. We’re not exactly sure how or where or when but we’re certainly going to look into it.

The next charge would be to have a greater international presence.

Any groups you’re working with currently?

WM: No, but I think it’s important to find the right groups. It’s not something we’d look at doing from here. We want to work with people that know and understand their markets. I think that’s next stage, but I don’t know how quickly it will come, but that’s certainly something we’re looking at.

Any talks on the surf side?

WM: No.

Sounds like you’ve got a pretty full plate already?

WM: Yeah, fortunately there’s so much support from our partners and they do most of the heavy lifting that we do on the Dew Tour and that requires a lot of resources and so I think we can take on all that we are largely because we’re partnering with some great established teams. At the same time, especially in this economy, I think it’s very important that our growth is measured and I don’t see us making any significant moves in the immediate future.

What do these changes mean to your sposnors?

WM: All of the sponsors will be sponsors of their individual properties. Alli is not a sponsorable brand. I think for our sponsors it will lift up and every opportunity will grow via the kind of high tide lifts all ships theory. If we can grow the traffic on allisports.com simply because of the breadth of content and sports we cover it helps every property on there and in turn helps every sponsor. We think it will lift up every property and at the same time it creates a much bigger universe for us because we’re now selling across multiple properties.

So you can package sponsorships?

WM: Yeah, all of them are maintaining their own separate sales reps but we have the ability to package across multiple properties.

What’s the impact you see for this on snowboarding and skateboarding?

WM: The mission is to help grow these sports. I think it’s no different than the reason we launched the Dew Tour because we felt like the fragmentation hurt the industry. People, consumers, fans, media, they all need a distinguishable, meaningful way to consume action sports and at some level one event to another and what they mean to eachother. That was the founding mission and I think the Dew Tour has done a lot to grow the professional event segment of action sports. The same theory applies at a higher level by bringing all of these together. Last year the Maloof Money Cup had an hour on CBS, this year it’s going to have three and a half hours between MTV2 and NBC. So wer’re going to continue to grow the people that see these in some cohesive manner.

What would you say to people that feel this homogenizes action sports?

WM: I think it’s a really fair concern and something were really cognizant of. You’ll see this when the Alli brand comes to life at the events, it’s going to take a secondary role as a facilitator brand. We’re not looking to put these all under one brand. That’s not how it will be positioned at all. Each property has to maintain its own attributes. The reason we’re involved in the Maloof Cup is not to have it look anything like the Dew Tour. The reason we’re getting involved is because it looks nothing like the Dew Tour and we don’t want that to change. I think the way people immediately hear, AST, Dew Tour, now Alli, will this be a big change? Except where they’re aligned online, we’ll be secondary. Alli will only be as good as the properties are on their own. For the properties to be good they cannot be homogenized.

Are you guys looking to offer more amateur tours for snowboarding?

WM: Absolutely. Our desire to create an amateur platform in any sport we’re involved in is probably as strong as our desire to be involved at the pro level. I think the Free Flow tour has very quietly done as much to help grow these sports as the Dew Tour has. I think the same thing holds true if we can create that on the snow side. Hopefully when Alli’s mature you can see that stepping stone from the amateur to the pro level