H&H interview The new Festival of British Eventing director Peter Phillips
The new event director at the Festival of British Eventing talks to Pippa Roome about changes at Gatcombe and how eventing can attract a bigger audience
PETER PHILLIPS — The Queen’s oldest grandson, 14th in line to the throne and new event director of the Magic Millions Festival of British Eventing — describes himself as a “sports nut”.
“I try to go to as many sports events as possible,” he says, citing rugby as his favourite.
He also likes golf, football and racing, as well as “newer sports” such as the Red Bull Air Race, a high-speed, low-altitude competition in lightweight planes. “It’s a ground-breaking concept and I like to see how they’re doing things differently and breaking the mould,” he says.
Peter, 40, has built his career in sport, moving from more than a decade in Formula One to head up the Royal Bank of Scotland’s global sponsorship programme. In 2012 he set up Sports & Entertainment UK Ltd (SEL UK), the UK wing of an Australian company.
“Working in sport seemed logical, having always been a sport fan and for want of really knowing what else to do,” he says.
We meet three weeks before the Festival (3-5 August) at the SEL UK offices, in a lovely old townhouse-style building near Victoria.
The heatwave is in full blast — Peter is casual in a blue shirt and, having arrived via the swelter of the tube, puts on the air conditioning.
He spends as much time as possible in Gloucestershire, where his family — wife Autumn and daughters Savannah, seven, and Isla, six — live, but says being in London is essential for any sport business as that’s where most “partners” (he rarely uses the word sponsors) are based.
Peter has all the charm of his class and upbringing, and spills an easy patter about Gatcombe. The Festival, which was started by his parents Mark Phillips and the Princess Royal to “put something back into the sport”, has been part of his life since he was in the “menial task division” — “probably politically incorrect now,” he says, with his crooked smile — as a child.
Over the past five or six years he has become involved in the managerial side and has recently held the role of co-chairman with Mark, before taking over as event director last October when Tim Henson stepped down.
It was key for Peter that Mark remained as chairman — as well as cross-country coursedesigner — and that the “sporting element” of the Festival stayed constant, albeit with tweaks such as the addition of the retrained racehorse championship this year.
“It would have been hugely more difficult if we’d tried to change the operational delivery and the sporting side at the same time,” he says, emphasising change at Gatcombe will be “evolution, not revolution”.
“Tim laid a fantastic foundation and in many ways it’s slightly daunting to take it on from the success he and my father created over the past 20 years,” he says. “But we’re excited that we can bring something slightly different to the Festival.”
He acknowledges that Mark “sometimes divides opinion” but says he finds it “very easy” to work with him.
“There are not many people who are as knowledgeable as he is across all aspects of the sport,” he says. “He’s not averse to change, but he needs to understand why it’s happening and therefore it’s a good litmus test — if I run it past him first and if he doesn’t get it, we have to work harder on how we communicate that with the wider team.”
While he is a fluent talker, Peter has his father’s knack for thinking before he speaks — and not being afraid of the silence that falls while he does so. He’s reasonably difficult to pin down on visible specific changes at Gatcombe, talking about operational differences and systems.
“A lot of the major changes this year will be behind the scenes,” he says. “There are a lot of people who give up time for horse trials and there is a certain tradition in the way things have been done.
“When you change that, there can be some friction. We’ve worked really hard to minimise that friction. The time of our 400 volunteers is so valuable to us that we need them to come with us on this journey.”
One change Peter reveals is a new rider and owner lounge in the dressage and horsebox park area. He has also brought on board Magic Millions, the Australian thoroughbred sales auctioneer company, as title sponsor.
Peter wants to see 30 to 40 horses run in the British open, which often suffers from multiple withdrawals before cross-country. As well as pushing that the event works hard on the going — “the ‘Gatcombe ground’ misnomer is one for the olden days” — he is discussing a simpler qualification process for 2019 with British Eventing.
GATCOMBE competes for spectators with the likes of BBC Countryfile Live and festivals on the same weekend, rather than other horse trials, Peter believes.
He says: “Our challenge is to bring new people into the sport. They don’t necessarily have to see a horse, but we have to provide them with a great experience.
“Probably 70% of Badminton’s audience only go to one horse trials a year, whereas at Gatcombe we’re the other way round — 70% of our audience are horse trials supporters. I’d like to try to redress that balance.”
Peter talks about making the event more “user-friendly”, saying: “It’s about providing the public with a little bit more than previously — relocating things to make them easier to access, putting in more facilities so people don’t have to walk up and down those banks to get a drink or something to eat.”
More broadly, how does Peter think eventing can attract new audiences and sponsors?
Pausing for thought, he says: “The sport has to look at itself in a different, more collaborative way. At the moment everyone’s looking out for themselves — some people do a lot on social media, some don’t do any, some people do livestreaming; it’s a bit all over the place.
“Event Rider Masters has tried to address this — and I’m a supporter of anybody who tries to broaden interest in the sport — but it needs people to get together to deliver a more consistent look and feel in the presentation of the sport every weekend, across a new media platform. Then you can give true figures to commercial partners and media, who look for multiple touch points across a period of time.”
As the interview wraps up, I emerge into the baking bustle of Buckingham Palace
Road. It’s a far cry from the rolling hills of Gloucestershire, but inside the team are preparing to deliver one of the great fixtures of the horse trials calendar — and if Peter has his way, one of the great countryside events of the English summer.
‘Eventing has to look at itself in a different, more collaborative way’