Adam Peaty’s AP Race Club has unveiled plans for the new “AP Race London International” meet, coming May 27-29, 2023.
The competition is slated to take place at the London Aquatics Center, located at the Olympic Park in London. For spectators, the event will feature a VIP section and will have the license to sell alcohol throughout the venue. Similar to other international and national level meets, tickets are offered in a range of different packages, including options for whole-meet passes or session by session.
The meet aims to draw both UK-based and international athletes, as well as a mix of young and professional swimmers. There are qualifying times for each age, going down to eleven years old and up to seventeen plus. The meet will follow a somewhat traditional prelim-final format, but has various levels of finals swimmers can qualify for. “Junior” finals and B-finals are set to run earlier in the evening, followed by “Super Finals” and the fastest heats of the 1500/800. Prelims will similarly be run in two flights, with the slower heats being ran behind the faster heats in the morning.
The event list includes the traditional Olympic lineup with the addition of 50s of all four strokes. Pending FINA approval and depending on the athlete’s nationality, the competition can be used as a qualification opportunity for World Championships and the Olympics.
Ed Baxter, the managing director of AP Race, says that Peaty himself will be competing as well as contributing to some of the planning and brand engagement for the meet, though Baxter will take on most of the meet operations work. On the meet, Baxter told SwimSwam:
“We are launching this meet in the effort to try and give the UK a meet that we can be proud of and to attract an international crowd. Europe and the US have an amazing series of competitions throughout the year and we want to be able to offer a fresh and exciting meet in the UK that can be a staple in people’s racing calendars as the other offerings are.”
AP Race Inc. is a brand owned and operated by Peaty and Baxter. The brand began in May of 2019 with the “Adam Peaty Race Clinics”, which aimed to offer comprehensive clinics that taught young athletes about technique, strength training, and the sports psychology of racing. In addition to the clinics, they also now offer “AP Plus”, which is a subscription program that expands on the in-person clinics to provide subscribers with coaching and support surrounding areas like nutrition, strength & conditioning, sports psychology, and training plans.
Spectators can purchase tickets to the event here.
Qualifying times and more details for swimmers and coaches can be found here.
Great idea, I’d love more elite meets in this country. I’ll be interested to see whether they can make it work financially. From what I’ve heard the LAC was £35,000 to hire a week of Trials last year so if we estimate it is about a third of that for three days, plus the prize money pool…they’ll need good ticket sales and advertising to start to break even.
The end of May could be a good final race before big summer meets for some but also bad timing for others, so that’ll be another factor to consider.
Ticket sales, advertising….or meet fees from age groupers.
Swimsuits and meet fees from age groupers are the financial lifeblood of swimming.
And that’s the problem – that’s what restricts it to the middle classes. The fan base will never grow if the participation base doesn’t diversify.
Will there be prize money involved? “Street meets” are relatively popular in the European Athletics theater. Set up a good venue for 1-2 nights and offer enough prize money to recruit talented athletes and you’ve got suddenly got a profitable weekend on your hands.
These events can be unique as well. For example the AP Plus invitational could be one night and breaststroke only. 50, 100, 200, 400 breaststroke. Finals only. $2,000 to each winner. $15 a ticket and you need to sell 534 tickets to turn a profit. Doable for a one night event.