The Future of Sports: Phil Dumontet Of Brooksee On The New Emerging Technologies That Are Disrupting The World Of Sports

Consistency is the surest highway to legendary. If you do ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time, you’ll accomplish extraordinary things. There is nothing extraordinary about running hundreds of miles across the training cycle, in the rain, snow, and at 6 a.m., but over the cycle, you’ll have an extraordinary triumph on race day, knowing that you have put in your all.

New technologies have changed the way we engage in and watch sports. Sensors, Wearable Tech, Video Assistant Referees (VAR), and Instant Replay, are examples of new technologies that have changed the way we play and watch sports. In this interview series called “The Future of Sports; New Emerging Technologies That Are Disrupting The World Of Sports,” we are talking to sports leaders, athletes, sports tech experts, and sports equipment companies who can talk about the new technologies that are reshaping the sports world. As a part of this interview, we had the pleasure of interviewing Phil Dumontet.

In Feb. 2024, Phil was hired as the CEO of Brooksee, the endurance event production and technology company behind the Las Vegas Marathon, Portland Marathon, Mesa Marathon, and REVEL Race Series. Phil is also the founder of Boulderthon, and creator of the nonprofit organization behind it.

Some of Phil’s notable accomplishments include:

• Named to Forbes 30 Under 30
• Boulder Valley 40 Under 40
• 17-Time Marathoner, Top 110 American Finisher in the 2023 NYC Marathon PR 2:42
• Contributor to The Washington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I have been an avid runner since I was 11 years old! Running has been a lifelong passion of mine, and it has since stoked my entrepreneurial drive and now turned into a purpose-driven career.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I launched the first-ever downtown Boulder Marathon series, Boulderthon, after 3+ years of partnering with City Partners, County, and stakeholders. I have since doubled the race in size every year since its founding, and it is one of the fastest-growing marathons in the US. This also opened the door for me to understand that my passion for endurance events and strengths as a leader, marketing, and relationship-builder can apply to other areas. I have joined Brooksee as their CEO to drive portfolio growth and their new technology division.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“You win or you learn” and “you are your greatest asset” are my two favorites. I have been fortunate to build, lead, scale, companies to successful exits, but the most important lessons I have had were from failures along the way. The common theme is that it is an investment in my skill set, strengths, and ability to grow. Often, your work works on you more than you work on it — if you walk away from an experience without hitting your goal, pause to recognize the lessons you learned from that experience.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My family is the greatest inspiration for what I do. From a business mentorship perspective, I think Alex Hormozi produces the best content.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Alex Homorzi (podcast “The Game w/ Alex Hormozi”) produces the best content. He shares his insights and journey on building health and wellness companies from scratch to $100m, and his current path to a $1B portfolio. It resonates with me as someone who loves to build strong brands and scale companies. I love learning from someone ahead of me on the path.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Persistence. Much of my success is driven simply by outlasting, outenduring, and getting back up when I fall, and returning stronger.
2. Ability to inspire and bring out enthusiasm in others. My ability to evoke enthusiasm in my team and those around me has enabled me to have a larger impact in a shorter period of time.
3. Thinking long-term. Being able to delay gratification and play the long-game helps me move past blips and hiccups along the way, and think in terms of decades, not years.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

My ultimate goal and purpose behind my success is to grow and strengthen the running community. I started Boulderthon, the Boulder Marathon, because Boulder needed a world-class marathon and I thought I was in a unique position to do it, between my passion for running, community engagement skills, and entrepreneurial background.

Our marathon brings together tens of thousands of people each year around movement, health, and wellness. I think marathons are the most inspiring days of the year, and the greatest theaters of human inspiration we have.

After creating Boulderthon, I am excited to join Brooksee as their CEO and widen my reach. I now oversee a race portfolio of 9 iconic events and 50,000 participant experiences. Every time one of our participants cross the finish line, I know we are helping to create a lifelong memory for them. Event organizers are actually in the business of memory-making — making beautiful, lasting memories. We view our participant experiences as our North Star. At Brooksee, I am aligned with the company values and can draw on my leadership, marketing, and relationship-building skills to have a wider impact on a global stage.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about the sports technologies that most excite you at the moment? Can you explain why you are passionate about it?

I am most excited about Brooksee’s new timing technology, Laurel. We’re on a mission to make endurance events more exciting for fans, easier to manage for organizers, and more enjoyable for runners. We’re doing this with the world’s first AI-driven real-time tracking platform.

150 million people globally run at least once per week and the health benefits are plentiful. Running has brought in over 20 million new runners in the pandemic, with 7 million returning.

But running has a problem — it is one of the lowest spectator sports globally, hampered by a lack of data and outdated, fragmented technology from the ’90s, a decade before the iPhone was introduced.

Brooksee’s Laurel technology brings a new level of data to the sport, unlocking personal bests for runners with real-time ranking stats in-race, unprecedented on-course support and cheers, and a birds-eye view of all participant locations on course for race organizers.

How do you think this might change the world of sports?

Once gamified, we think running can and will become a larger spectator and viewer sport across the globe. Our industry is currently roughly a quarter of the size of golf ($20 billion vs $85 billion), but hasn’t yet been made as “interesting” as golf with customized, dynamic stats. Our technology unlocks the data and paves the necessary foundation to make running more fun and interesting to watch. Imagine a world where instead of tracking the top 10 leaders in the race, you are viewing a live stream of your friends on-course, with dynamic, AI-driven commentary, epic content feed of them running the course, and being able to cheer them on virtually along the way.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

Privacy. If you don’t want to appear in a custom livestream or be tracked, there needs to be options to control who can follow your race.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the sports industry today? Can you explain? What can be done to address or correct those concerns?

1. Cost. Like everything else, our sport is becoming more expensive, whether it is to produce or enter, and we need entry points for first-time runners to enter the industry.
2. Greater diversity. Running needs to be more inclusive and attract all ages, backgrounds, speeds, and disabilities.
3. Lack of access. How do we empower everyone to move more?

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

1. Make adversity your advantage. Most people give up. Leverage obstacles as an opportunity to grow.
2. If you aren’t passionate about a business, don’t start it.
3. It’s far harder to say no than yes, but infinitely more powerful. I wish I strengthened my “no” muscle so that I could focus more on the things that matter. I saw game-changing results when I narrowed my focus and started to say no, both personally and professionally.
4. Consistency is the surest highway to legendary. If you do ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time, you’ll accomplish extraordinary things. There is nothing extraordinary about running hundreds of miles across the training cycle, in the rain, snow, and at 6 a.m., but over the cycle, you’ll have an extraordinary triumph on race day, knowing that you have put in your all.
5. You will always move the goalposts for success once you hit your goal. So, you have to enjoy the work and process itself. The joy is in the journey.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Bring the most runners together for the biggest, most impactful, inspiring event ever.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I would choose to meet one-on-one with Alex Hormozi because I’d love to hear his insights about how to build strong brands and scale companies.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can keep up with me and my work at @PhilDumontet on Instagram.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!