Gosling bringing extreme sports to an adventure-hungry ME audience
Extreme Sports Channel founder lauds grassroots projects by Kingdom’s ‘visionary senior ministers’
Alistair Gosling does not just talk the talk. He walks it.
He also runs it, skis it, sails it, and surfs it.
If it involves mountains or beaches, chances are the man who launched one of the world’s most successful adventure sports television channels 21 years ago has mastered it.
“We had built up a TV production distribution business (25 year ago),” Gosling told Arab News. “Because we were in that for a number of years, we saw a gap in the market.
“I had read Ted Turner’s book on CNN, John Hendrick’s book on founding the Discovery Channel, read the history of MTV. I was like, we’ve got all this content, this is the next phase.”
That lightbulb moment, the instant he came up with the idea of setting up a channel for extreme sports, could not have been more appropriate.
He said: “I know literally where I was, I was driving the car around a specific sharp corner, probably too fast. And I was like, you know what, the next stage we’re going to launch a TV channel.
“I was 26 at the time, we put a plan together. Everybody said no, the money was hard to find, we spent a year-and-a-half looking for it and eventually met with the right guys who made it happen.
That was the moment.”
The result was Extreme Sports Channel, launched in 1999 in partnership with Liberty Media and going out to 68 countries and 100 million homes. After establishing the media side, he turned to the two fields of destinations and events. Extreme’s three-pronged model was complete.
“Once we got that underway, I was like OK, the big vision is this overall package we can take to different countries, which is looking at and driving the agendas of governments around health, fitness, well-being, all of these things. Kids off the streets, inspiring people.
“And so, we started to look at destinations and the events side of things. When I look back on our vision and mission, we wanted to go to places for extreme sports, but then our really key thing is to entertain, and inspire people to then explore and experience the sport,” Gosling said.
Inspire. Explore. Experience. That is Extreme’s motto.
One could spend several lifetimes trying out adventure sports and not make a dent into the list of activities on offer.
Mountain biking, rock climbing, karting, caving, ziplining, and horse riding. Sailing, surfing, white water rafting and scuba diving. Skydiving, bungee jumping, hang gliding. Skiing, snowboarding, heli skiing, ice diving, luge, cross country skiing, and winter mountaineering.
And that the iceberg.
Wrapped into this community of adventure sports lovers, which is approaching 20 million people now, are what Gosling calls the “other two pillars” of his vision — sustainability and technology. “We’re not perfect in all of those but we thrive to use those as pillars we can work toward.”
Gosling was born in London in 1971, brought up near Cambridge and studied at Gordonstoun in Scotland, a school where many a royal, including Prince Charles,
is
just the
tip of attended before and after him. He admits he is “not a city boy.”
Today Extreme has its headquarters in London, with bases in central Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including Dubai. Increasingly, eyes have turned to Saudi Arabia.
“You’ve got a perfect alignment going on. You’ve got the Kingdom which has made a strategic decision at the highest level to develop tourism. You’ve got an untapped market with the most amazing natural topography, and facilities, and environment — from the beaches to the mountains. And it’s untouched, undiscovered,” he said. “And then you’ve got the growth in extreme and adventure sports happening. Even with (the coronavirus disease) COVID-19, this will be the best year for the sports, ever. And for our sector. Not so much for the travel side, but in terms of people going out and doing things.
“Going back to our core belief of entertain, inspire, explore, experience, this year’s going to be amazing. Because everyone came out of lockdown and said, I want to go do stuff,” he added.
Gosling praised the grassroots projects being set up by what he called the Saudi Arabia’s “visionary senior royal court and senior ministers,” initiatives that appealed to the country’s predominantly young population. Then there were the bigger projects, such as the Dakar Rally.
“( The idea) that we’re going to take those vehicles and we’re going to race them across the Kingdom, that’s amazing because it shows off the country on an overall basis in terms of the activities that are happening. Then if you look at some of the smaller initiates being developed across the Kingdom, we’re heavily involved in many of these.
“It comes back to what the Kingdom’s got to offer, whether it’s the beaches, oceans, the mountains, the city and the young demographic, all of those moving parts,” Gosling, who is also on the advisory board of Qiddiya, said. He pointed out that while theme parks could be amazing, most people were unlikely to visit them more than once a year. But by getting into a sport with readily available facilities, “you can go back every day, or every other day, and it creates health, wellness, education, and self-confidence,” he added.