Golden Trail Series Kicks Off With a Bunch of News

Salomon’s Golden Trail World Series kicks off this weekend with their first race of the season in Kobe, Japan. With it Salomon announced several major changes to the structure of the organizations worth diving into a bit. Yesterday Matt Walsh already shared the news of the broadcasting deal with WBD. Today we have the full press announcement with more details.

• GTWS has a mission statement, plastered right over the main hero image on their homepage: “The Golden Trail Series exists to celebrate and grow the sport of trail running”.

The key word in this statement here is ‘grow’.

• GTWS unveil a new visual identity.

After leaning heavily into the words “Golden Trail” the series now adds a ‘W’ for World. Late last fall they discontinued a few national series and are now going all in on the ‘World Series’ branding. That paired with the 4 letter acronym feels a bit too similar to the UTMB branding to my liking, but I guess all board room acronyms must become brand names eventually.

• And a CSR Program focused on sustainability in the events business.

… a new CSR program which includes a new open-source “My Event Impact” tool, developed in partnership with Protect Our Winters, AirCoop and key races to assess the impact of events before their selection and track their progress once part of the circuit. This CSR program, which will be fully unveiled at this year’s Grand Finale, also relies on advocating for more responsible sport and championing diversity and inclusion.

I haven’t had the chance to check the tool and it’s usefulness, but I want to commend the European race organizations, event the ones as big as UTMB or GTWS who are leading the way by always including and prioritizing these efforts. We often herald, and rightly so, the various US race organizations in efforts where they are leading the way and ask the Euros to level up. In this case of sustainability and environmental stewardship all the big US races/organizations have absolutely no voice or initiative.

• The location for the Grand Finale for 2025 is announced.

The final piece of the 2025 puzzle has been revealed: the 2025 GTWS Grand Finale will take place in October in the breathtaking Ledro Valley, nestled in Italy’s Trentino region near Lake Garda.

Fantastically beautiful location, but I am curious what it would take for Salomon to bring a Grande Finale to North America?

• And more on their broadcasting partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery.

Through this collaboration, WBD Sports Europe will lead the production, international distribution, and localized broadcasting of GTWS races across multiple markets. In addition, the partnership will drive the promotion of the series across digital media platforms, helping to grow a global audience of sports fans. WBD Sports will also support the international marketing of the series to attract new partners and sponsors and help trail running break ground in new and emerging markets.
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Live and on-demand coverage of the series will be delivered to the widest possible audience, reaching more than 100 countries across five continents via WBD’s premium linear channels, including Eurosport (Europe) and TNT Sports (UK & Ireland) as well as streaming platforms Max/HBO Max and discovery+. This will be further amplified by an extensive network of broadcast partners, including free-to-air channels and OTT platforms.  

Not sure how to properly compare this to UTMB’s partnership with DAZN deal, but one thing that seems different to me (and I fully admit I am sort of speaking with very little knowledge of this world) is that if I read this correctly DAZN was broadcasting what UTMB was feeding them, while this GTWS deal will have WBD lead the production of the broadcast. This could be a good thing in terms of money, but it will be seen how much the event will get altered to fit the programming requirements. Clearly Salomon had been very open about their desires to create a race format that fits local and remote viewership.

Alright, that’s all from the business side. Let’s actually race!