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Tom Kerry is one of the most respected figures in our industry and a true Mass Participation Sports Industry veteran with a career spanning over two decades. During his long tenure at Limelight Sports, he has held almost every role imaginable within Mass Participation and is currently their Head of Sport. Simultaneously, he is the Head of Partnerships at Race Nation, a leading technology platform in the UK catering to the needs of mass participation organisers. Furthermore, he is the Director and Chair of the Ealing Half Marathon Legacy Community Interest Company, Mass Sports Organisers Forum Chair, Global Council Member in Mass Participation World and a podcast host for the Running Industry Alliance. He is also a regular volunteer at Parkrun, having completed over 500 Parkruns!

Tom’s experience in the industry offers him a unique macro perspective of the market. From deep insights developed over two decades, he has identified incredible opportunities for how to take the industry to the next level. A truly inspirational, uplifting and thought-provoking discussion, which I truly enjoyed.

Alexander Tanti: Why don’t we start by maybe giving me a little bit of background in terms of your career in the events space?

Tom Kerry: Thank you very much for having me, and looking forward to our discussion. I’m coming up for 25 years in the mass participation and event space. It wasn’t a desire of mine that this was the Holy Grail coming out of university that I wanted to be working in mass participation. So I sort of fell into it on the back of playing a lot of sports myself throughout my life. So once I finished university, it was, “My God, what do I do?”. Now, I had to go and find a job, always knowing that I wanted to work in the sports world. I consider myself lucky to have found a great opportunity to get me started.

I suppose my early stages had to do with a lot of local authority sports development, which led me to manage a number of teams that entered into an event called the London Youth Games, which is effectively a multisport competition for young people representing different London Boroughs. I managed several teams that represented my local borough, which introduced me to that event, and I soon noticed a job opening for that event itself. It gave me a place to do what I wanted to do and to be employed by what is now Limelight Sports because Limelight had the contract to deliver the London Youth Games at that point.

That was back in 1999, which, whenever I say it out loud, always sounds like so long ago, but that was when I first started working as an event organiser within participation sports. After that, the company started being involved with some of the bigger mass participation running events at the time, and in the early stages, we started working with Nike. I was very lucky in my early career to work on all the Run London Nike events, a lot of 10ks and 5ks. That gave me a real taste of where I wanted to work, which was particularly in running but also in other sports disciplines. We have cycling, triathlons and so forth, but particularly running, and that’s really where I forged my career.

I’ve been at Limelight for a very long time; I’ve changed many roles throughout the years, and now I also have a role with Race Nation, representing and building partnerships with them, which really came out of a voluntary role that I have as a director of the Community Interest Company that started and continues to operate the Ealing Half Marathon, which is going to take place on the 24th of September and will be our 11th year of involvement.

All those different roles and experiences have allowed me to get involved with external industry groups and organisations. So, I currently chair the Mass Sports Organisers Group, which is a group of 10 to 12 of the major UK-based companies that put on mass participation running events. So alongside Limelight, you have the London Marathon, Great Run, parkrun, London Landmarks, Human Race, Threshold, etc

Apart from chairing that organisation, I’ve been involved with the Running Industry Alliance since it was set up and a number of other networks as well, including Mass Participation World, which is a global network of event organisers. All in all, I have a pretty broad experience across the industry now, but I think being involved with such a variety of organisations is great and allows me to learn and expand my knowledge and get stuck into some meaty stuff outside of my day role.

I think that one of the big themes I am really excited about for the industry now is how partnerships, collaborations and organisations are coming together, and I think in the last two or three years, this has really developed. While organisations can still be quite tight-knit in their own thinking and quite protective over their IP, people are actually far more open to finding ways to work together and integrate their technologies. That is a big part of what Racecheck has done well, isn’t it? So, that is what I find exciting, and that’s where I think the future and the success of the industry will come from. Actually, I think particularly with participation running, we’re only just scratching the surface at the moment of what we can do. And we’ve obviously got some relatively big numbers, but we’re still only touching a small percentage of the population. And I think by finding ways to collaborate, we’ll grow the audience and bring new people into our world and our industry, and I find that quite exciting.

Alexander Tanti: Absolutely, and I think the longevity of your career, specifically within a specific organisation, just speaks volumes to the kind of passion that you have for the industry. It also underscores how important it is to be consistent to be successful, and jumping from place to place can sometimes have a short-term benefit but longer term, I think you just do not allow yourself to build the kind of foundations required to be able to understand the industry from a much broader perspective as you do now.

Tom Kerry: Yeah, it’s a really fair point. I think it’s a conundrum I’ve often thought about myself in that there’s got to be a place in the industry for experience. And being around the block a few times, I also think it’s really important that we don’t become robots, and we’re really open to fresh ideas and fresh thinking and people coming into our industry from other industries and challenging some of the accepted ways. Particularly in how we connect with new audiences and how the world develops, we must make sure that the old guys, like me, being around a long time, don’t sit there and say, no, that’s wrong. This is how we do it.

We must make sure that we’re encouraging new thinking and so forth, but then again, experience teaches you a lot. And, I often think you learn a lot from when things go wrong, and I’ve certainly been in that situation over time, and it’s difficult, but you find ways through it, and that teaches you stuff for the future.

Longevity also creates opportunity. I’ve been very lucky that people have approached me to propose I get involved in various things, and whether or not that’s paid work or voluntary work, I still get the buzz from doing that. I find that there’s so much that can overlap or a conversation that leads to a direction that you wouldn’t expect to and suddenly finding ways of connecting other organisations together, and ultimately everyone benefits. That is very stimulating, and that’s why I’m still around. I still get a massive buzz from being around a big group of people coming together and wanting to take on a challenge, and when you see people running our events, I still love that. And I love taking part myself, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I’m most fortunate that the industry’s given me a career, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Alexander Tanti: You mentioned at the start that early on in your career, you were involved with the London Nike 5 and 10ks and decided that this is what you wanted to do with your future. What was it about being involved in these events that made you feel that way?

Tom Kerry: I think a lot of my sporting involvement until that time had been in teams and community sports. One of the things that I really quickly noticed was that the mass participation world and events of that large calibre were attracting huge amounts of different people, offering them the opportunity to take part in something unique. They were achieving their own individual goals within a collective of people. And that really resonated with me, in that the sporting world is far bigger than just someone wanting to win something, which I suppose had been my life until then.

I also loved the fact that you could put on a participation event for a whole range of different reasons. From being a marketing tool for brands and people raising money for charity to bringing people together from different communities and connecting people from different walks of life. Witnessing when people achieve something, the sort of happiness factor and people feeling better about what they did, and the sense of purpose it gave people, I just found that really amazing.

Taking part in a challenging event can be incredibly rewarding on lots of levels. Different companies, brands, charities, and anyone who gets involved can all find an angle that works for them as well. What events have in common is that they’re so multifaceted, and there’s always new stuff that you’re doing and new angles and new reasons why someone’s involved. The ever-evolving nature of it makes it exciting as well. So that was quite a long-winded way of saying that I still get a massive buzz from it. We’re making a difference to someone, and that gets me out of bed, really.

Alexander Tanti: There’s a clear distinction between the nature of team sport and individual sport in that team sport, by default, has its own community. It’s already a collective by its nature, with four, five or 11 people working together. On the other hand, in individual sports, like running, for example, you run on your own. Obviously, there are people around you, but you have your own individual goals and your own personal finish time. The irony is that, and I don’t know whether you agree, the degree to which an organisation is successful, or a race is successful is in its capacity and ability to create a community feel given the constraint of the sport itself. Being a very individual sport, how have you found in the past that organisations have managed to cultivate a community feel within their participants?

Tom Kerry: Yeah, it’s a great point, and I would 100% agree that effectively when you’re signing up for a mass participation event, when it’s thousands of people there, you suddenly become a community of people that are doing something. I think that the challenge for the organiser is to make the person who has signed up feel like they’re part of a bigger community but also give them the individual experience. I suppose, going back to what I said earlier, I started in 1999. The thing that’s changed and revolutionised and allowed us to connect people more is technology. Technology is through everything that we do in our lives. How many people do you see walking around without a phone in their hand? When people start engaging with a mass participation event, they’ll probably do it through their smartphone in the first instance, or they’ll do it through word of mouth, but then they’ll still look it up online. So, while I appreciate there are so many platforms now, organisers must still engage with them to make people feel part of that community before, during and after the gun goes off.

Now, connections can happen throughout everything you do at any time, and within a 10,000-person race, there are so many opportunities for connections, whether it’s speaking to the person next to you or through a Strava connection by being part of the same event. It might be on Instagram or TikTok or even online reviews where people can make connections and then say, I saw you at this event. Are you going to this event? And it’s the best marketing tool that we’ve ever had when people share photos and share reviews. Organisers helping facilitate these connections can and must make participants feel like they’re part of a team who are all in it to accomplish something special, regardless of people’s ability.

Alexander Tanti: So, from a practical point of view, have you found any strategies organisers could use to effectively keep in touch or cultivate this feeling of community within their participants?

Tom Kerry: Yeah. It’s a balance again, isn’t it? Because we all get so many interactions from different businesses and organisations, asking and encouraging us to sign up for something. So you have to find a balance. What I really like is finding organisations you can work with throughout the year that can offer your participants who have entered into one of your events another experience that will lead towards it. So whether or not that’s a shoe trial or, coming along to a training event or doing something that’s different, it helps them continue to engage with you as a brand and helps them feel ready for what they’re ultimately taking on, but it doesn’t feel forced like “You must do this”, and it’s finding the right partners who can do that. It doesn’t always have to be something physical; it can be words of encouragement, daily mindfulness and goal visualisation, a check-in or anything related to the event that is coming up. Engaging with some of the smaller partnerships well ahead of the event can work really well because, on event day, they might get lost when there’s this whole collage of different brands and messages. If you can do a smaller, more intimate experience with people six months out, then that’s providing real value and allowing a partnership’s full value to emerge, as well as maintaining a sense of community for the event and organiser without appearing sales-y or forced. And those are the things that I’m looking at now. How do we enable those touch points through a participant’s journey that attract more partners because they feel part of the big, high-profile event, but they’re all so able to speak to their audiences the way they want to and be more intimate with them?

Alexander Tanti: Touching on collaborations and partnerships. If a small organiser was putting on a couple of local events looking to grow their business further, how do you think they could leverage that power of collaboration and partnership to either grow their existing events or grow their business in general?

Tom Kerry: yeah, I think this is something that The Running Industry Alliance has done pretty well recently. it seems silly that we’re saying this, but this is the first time that all the verticals within the running industry, from retail and brands through to events and charities and government bodies and different services that provide the industry, have all come together. We are now finally having those conversations, which opens up new opportunities to think about and understand what people want and how they want to connect with their customers. I love that there has been a real growth of online training and coaching apps at the moment that’s working really well. Lots of people use those, but they want an end goal. So, of course, it’s natural for a partnership between an event and a training app, as they can give you a training plan for a specific event. It’s a lot more intimate and individualised than, say, downloading a generic half-marathon training plan.

And there are retail brands now that say that we shouldn’t just be buying new kit all the time. We should be very cognizant of sustainability and engage with people when they really need it. That might not always be a finisher’s T-shirt, but it might be some training gear that you can use for the next six to twelve months to help you get ready for a specific event. This can create a level of partnership between events and brands that go beyond just a sponsor deal.

I think that the word partnership is definitely right, and I think big events have been a bit guilty in the past of saying that we bring this big audience and this big database, so you should be part of what we do, the way we do it. Partnerships should involve much more thinking about the participant’s day-to-day and how to tailor the experience, of which the event is just one part-really thinking about the person who is taking part, their build-up, their preparation challenges, both physical and mental. Doing that and engaging the right partnerships at the right time in the journey will make the person who’s ultimately taking part in the event feel much more special than they’ve ever been in the past.

Alexander Tanti: I suspect the challenge here is that this requires a lot more long-term strategic thinking rather than the short-term, commercial relationship or pursuing a simple sponsorship relationship. Have you found implementing that to be a little challenging when many smaller events need cash upfront and quickly and don’t have time to think of all this?

Tom Kerry: Yeah, that sounds sensible, of course. As in every other industry out there, event organisers have also been through a bloody hard time in the last few years. Cash is king, and the big closed-road events are not cheap to put on; they’re expensive. But if we don’t grow the industry as a whole, then everyone will suffer. So I strongly believe you have to look at it long term. We’re still only touching a small percentage of the population, so there’s a whole world of people out there who are not coming. Is it because, actually, all we have tried to do over the years is sell a ticket to an event when we should be thinking more about getting them on board in the industry and giving them experiences that are far bigger than just one day? And I firmly believe that. The only way we do that, we’ve got to take people on a journey.

We’ve helped people try a running event, and it’s brilliant; it makes you feel healthy. You get all the endorphins, and you get a lovely medal at the end, but of course, that’s not enough to get people involved long-term. So you’ve got to think of a way to say, how do I get you to be more active? Here are where the partnerships can make a huge difference. Once you’re on that journey, it might take you two years before signing up for a 10K, half marathon or a marathon. Through the partnerships, you can get someone active, whether that’s a weekly walk around the block or something more. The point is to keep them active to the point where they’re going, “I’m ready for a challenge. Who are the people who have helped me on this journey? Who are the partners that have helped my journey and made it easier for me?” If, as an event organiser, we’re connected to those partners from an early stage, then, of course, they will help push those people when they’re ready to come to our events. So, yes, you have to think long-term or strategically to attract new people in the first place.

Alexander Tanti: So not just organisers pushing people to brands once someone has committed to an event, but also brands and organisations pushing people who have been progressively more active to their first event. I absolutely agree that what the Running Industry Alliance is doing is amazing because it’s creating that ecosystem and platform where these conversations can be made and for all those different stakeholders in our industry to interact and support each other in their own journeys. Do you think there’s an opportunity for partnership collaboration between event organisers themselves? Who may traditionally have seen each other as competitors, let’s say.

Tom Kerry: Absolutely 100%. I’ve had these conversations over time with Limelight and other organisations. To say for instance, we organise a 10K and a half marathon, but we don’t organise a marathon. So, finding an organisation to collaborate with and take somebody on a journey from, let’s say, a parkrun to a 10K that you will enter with Limelight. But after two years, you might think about doing a marathon. Why lose a participant at that point in their journey? We don’t have to create something new for them, but we can connect them to the right partner, whether that’s someone organising marathons or an Ultramarathon, etc. By organisers taking a long-term view of their customers, they can look for complementary events that could cover a gap in their offering and become more comfortable with cross-promotion.

The participant base in the marketplace is big enough. We’re just scratching the surface, so we can all benefit from encouraging more people to be more active. But I really firmly believe it starts from people finding something close to their home that feels like a group of people that are at the same stage in their journey as they are and that they can connect with very locally. Part of our challenge as organisers is to work out how we then connect with the igniters of that activity at a hyper-local level and help them bring those people to next-level activity types. That’s absolutely the way to go, and technology allows us to do that easily. And we can find commercial agreements between us that work and make it easy for the person who wants to engage with us as organisers to do that.

Alexander Tanti: What you’re talking about is in terms of cross-promotion and connection of events. It’s very different to the cynical view of consolidation, where bigger players just absorb the smaller events. Smaller operators may be hesitant to reach out to the larger ones as they feel there are other motives or objectives in mind. I don’t know how you could potentially convince them not to be afraid to reach out. That’s an interesting one.

Tom Kerry: Everyone, when they put on an event, is trying to give people a good experience, and that can manifest itself in a huge amount of different ways. The big closed-road gigantic, high-profile events are a different experience to the local organiser who does something which is based around a local community taking part, but it can still be a great experience, and that’s something that I learned. It was fantastic for me once I did get involved with the Ealing Half Marathon because, yes, it’s closed roads, but it’s a community event with a far smaller budget and far fewer resources. It doesn’t mean you can’t give the people participating a great experience. What I would say to event organisers who are often incredibly proud of what they’re achieving but underselling what they’re achieving and don’t always see the full value of what they’re doing is this. There are great partnerships and opportunities to be formed from which everyone can benefit. Limelight organised the Hackney Half Marathon. We had 24,000 people last year, but those 24,000 people have got to come from somewhere. Now, they’ve gone on a journey to get to a half-marathon. People don’t just wake up saying, I’m going to run a half marathon tomorrow.

We are very open to working with other events, and we’re looking for people who care about their customers and their participants, the consumers. Working together to enhance and complement our customer journeys benefits everyone. Why wouldn’t we want to do that? It would be a missed opportunity that does not help the industry grow; rather, it chokes it.

Alexander Tanti: Throughout your career, you probably worked with events of all sizes and sports types. What is, in your experience, the common denominator for an event that offers a great experience to its participants?

Tom Kerry: I think, as an organiser, It’s easy to make decisions based on your own assumptions. But one of the biggest things I’ve said to people is always look at it from the participant’s point of view. What is the journey that they will do, and how are we making that experience seamlessly enjoyable through the touch points we offer? And always think of it from their point of view, not us as organisers. Now, of course, we apply our knowledge and experience to that, but first put ourselves in their shoes. We must know what they want and the things that make a difference to them when someone has had a thought in the middle of the night that they’re going to run a 10K, or you watch a marathon on TV and think, “I want to do that”. How do we then help them on that journey, and what are the barriers stopping them? And then what do they do after they cross the finish line? They go. “I’ve had a great time.” And we then want them to say, “How do I keep doing more?”

And so, I think that’s the biggest single factor for me, it’s for an organiser not to stereotype, and to go into the shoes of their participants and work out how to make that journey as enjoyable as possible because we compete with all the other experiences that people can do with their disposable income. We’re competing against different experiences, such as going to festivals, but it can be “I’m going on holiday” or “I’m going to the cinema” or whatever. So we are competing for people to spend money with us. And so we’ve got to make them come away thinking, “Wow, I’ve had a great experience”. We’ve got to think about what we’re doing. That means thinking through the entire customer journey. So, the common denominator for me is when the organiser is constantly thinking in terms of the participant.

Alexander Tanti: And I guess shifting your perspective in that way creates mindblowing opportunities. We’ve got this term in technology product development called “Jobs To Be Done”, and you follow the participant’s journey from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to bed daily and find all these different things that they’re doing, such as what they’re eating to what kind of chair they are using to all the gear they’re using within the context of preparing for the event. Stuff like “Okay, I need a gym to support my training”, and then “What kind of mattress am I using to support my fitness?” and all these different things the participants go through daily that support them towards that goal. All these create opportunities for partnerships and collaborations, and it’s actually mind-blowing if you think about it that way; it’s really exciting.

Tom Kerry: Yeah, there’s opportunity everywhere, and we shouldn’t be afraid to try different things. And some of them won’t work, but we should not be afraid to try them in the first place. And yeah, we want to give people a good time. We want them to enjoy it. Our best marketers here are the people who have taken part before because of all the technology in the world that we have; word of mouth is still probably the best sales tool out there, so let’s make sure they have a good time, and they tell people about it.

Alexander Tanti: That’s a very strong and concise message. I think that organisers can start thinking outside the box beyond just sponsorships and for broader collaborations and partnerships. Again, the Running Industry Alliance is an incredible resource to get started and then get plugged in within that ecosystem. But I wanted to ask a more personal question about your career. So far, are there any highlights that are very close to your heart, things you have achieved that really made an impact and are still carved in your mind?

Tom Kerry: I’ve been asked it before. It’s so hard to pinpoint one particular thing, but it’s probably the big events that I have worked on. There are a few that stand out, but sometimes I find I’m saying something, and then I’ll think of something else, I suppose The Run London campaigns had such a big impact on me early on. Some people may remember the North versus South 10K. That was just so clever as a concept. It really engaged an audience.

Alexander Tanti: What was it about the concept that made it special?

Tom Kerry: People from London have always been proud of being from London, but then some say I’m north of the river or south of the river. The concept was so clever in creating that rivalry and then putting both tribes in different coloured T-shirts. Visually it was brilliant; it opened up so many ways of connecting with an audience. It was a talking point across the industry, and it hadn’t really been done yet. It was still just a 10K, but it was the marketing side of things that was just so clever. I thought that was brilliant.

Tom Kerry: The Royal Parks Half marathon was another one. That was the first closed-road half marathon in London. But I am equally proud of being involved with Ealing Half Marathon. That’s something that’s in my local community that I’ve seen has had a huge impact on people, and it’s been such a positive thing. So many of us feel ownership of it because it’s on our doorstep and just a highlight of the year, and I feel as equally proud as I do in anything else I’ve been involved with. I’ve worked with several races in different countries outside the UK, which have been incredibly memorable because you learn so much by doing stuff in different territories, and I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had such a variety of experiences. It’s so hard to pinpoint one highlight as there have been so many.

Alexander Tanti: Would you consider Covid as the biggest challenge in your career so far?

Tom Kerry: There have been challenges, but when the industry is shut down, and you can’t do anything, and Limelight is an employer of 50, 60 people, not knowing when you can start again… And then the whole industry supports a whole range of supply networks, and you just sit there and think this is people’s lives… Of course, you get why you can’t do it, but the impact of not doing something, the knock-on effects on so many people. That was a lot of sleepless nights…

Alexander Tanti: I think that all your experiences have given you a much broader perspective of the industry. I’d be very interested to hear what you think might be the biggest threat to the industry right now.

Tom Kerry: I think I mostly like to think of opportunities and what could bring us together. But yeah, there are threats, and perhaps right now, the biggest thing is that everything’s becoming more expensive. So we’re competing for people’s spend. I also think that getting people active and how we play a role in that is becoming harder. It’s getting harder for people to live an active life. If you look at the younger generations, it seems like it’s getting harder for each generation to be as active as the previous one, and if you’re not active, you’re not entering an event, are you? So that’s a big challenge for us. There are a few threats out there, some of which are out of our control, so we’ve got to recognise that, but then it should challenge us to find solutions and see that as an opportunity. But I would be naive to think that everything’s rosy.

Alexander Tanti: This has been incredibly insightful, and I think this topic of broader partnerships between different parties within the same industry is something that hasn’t really been touched before, nor do I think that it’s in the forefront of people’s minds. It’s imperative that people become more aware of the opportunities that are potentially lying within partnerships, so I’m very, very excited to share this conversation with the broader community.

Again, thank you so much for taking some of your valuable time to share your stories, insights and learnings from such a long and diverse career in the industry.