Townsquare CEO Steven Price didn’t want to call the company’s obstacle course race a fad, but he came pretty close. The event the company launched to great success in 2014 is coming to the end of its life cycle, and that’s pretty typical of an obstacle course race. It’s a very competitive field and if you don’t change the obstacles, make them more challenging for previous racers, or give those previous attendees new reasons to come back, they’ll move on to another.
Three to four years is pretty successful for an event like this and Townsquare generated some serious NTR from this one. A race called BattleFrog spent money to sponsor a nationally televised college bowl game and didn’t last a year after the game aired. Price said the event is still successful but not generating as much revenue as it had been during 2014 and 2015 and he expects the revenue for the event to decline into 2018.
Price said the event is still profitable for the company but clearly not as profitable as it was. When the company gave updated 2017 guidance, it was $10 million less due to this race and the anticipated continuation of declines in national digital revenue. You have to wonder if Townsquare plans to shut this race down soon, the website where the company took registrations is not even working, and that’s unusual for a digital savvy company like Townsquare.
