Visionary: Thrill Seeker Lawrence Duffy on Aurora Media Worldwide's Evolution, Risk Taking and Originality

Visionary: Thrill seeker Lawrence Duffy on Aurora Media Worldwide's evolution, risk taking and originality By Heather McLean

Friday, June 30, 2023 - 09:48

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Aurora client Super League Triathlon has experienced great success with its HB partner, with the innovative Arena Games 2023 format achieving a four million live audience on broadcast, which is up 48%, plus 25 million video views on digital channels, up 92%

Aurora Media Worldwide is a production and host broadcasting company with a taste for travel and adventure, sporting thrill-seeking, innovative and new sports clients such as Extreme E, SailGP, Formula E and brand new electric speedboat series, E1, as well as solid stalwarts including FIFA and the Olympic Channel. It has enjoyed a lot of success since it was launched by founder and managing director, Lawrence Duffy, just over 10 years ago.

Duffy says what he loves about working in sports broadcasting is, the sense of ordering chaos . He notes: I quite like the sense of innovation and progression, and not really knowing what's over the hill. I like the fact you're maybe not going to get it right all the time, but you'll learn.

He says that the early vision behind Aurora Media Worldwide, was based on his experiences at other businesses: Aurora was really a combination of formatting that I saw at Endemol, rights-holding and commerciality that I saw at IMG, and editorial and production rigour that I saw at the BBC.

I've had an interesting career. I wrote my graduate dissertation, if you can believe this, in 1990, and it was called The Changing Face of Sport on British Television. It's a brilliant industry, and it is endlessly changing and moving.

Aurora has won countless awards for its innovative work with Extreme E

Pioneering spirit of adventure

Aurora began life in 2012 after Duffy left Endemol, where he had been a producer for three years. He struck off on his own to create a production company that would be focused on adventure. I called the company Aurora because I love the outdoors, and I wanted this kind of pioneering spirit of adventure, he says. Because I've travelled so much I've worked in 60 or 70 countries action and adventure were really what I wanted to do. They're the sort of international shows I wanted to make. And 10 years on, they're exactly the shows we are making.

I think the types of clients we work with are of that kind of maverick, let's just go and do it and see how we get on, ones, he says.

I had a great time at Endemol. I left with a really nice handshake; they kindly allowed me to take a couple of clients with me. I was approached by a guy that I knew in the business, Jeff Chapman, an Australian entrepreneur who ran a private philanthropic fund out of Australia. He'd been in the sports business, and he said, Lawrence, can you come and help me with this business? . I said, mmm yes and no, but I'm going to do my own thing . So we eventually decided to combine and set up Aurora in 2012 with Jeff backing me, basically.

At the beginning, in years two and three sometimes I often said I just couldn't do it. Sometimes I thought it's just too hard. Where does the breakthrough happen? And actually looking back, there's not one flash of light. It's not like one day you are a normal production company, and the next day you are perceived to be successful. That doesn't happen. What happens is that incrementally you grow and you learn things, and you get better, and you work hard

In 2018 Aurora was sold to All3Media and Chapman exited the business, while Duffy thought, what else am I going to do? I liked it too much! . He continued his journey as the founder of Aurora.

He comments on what it was like to start his own company: I think for every business owner, at the beginning when you're a start-up, as anybody will tell you, you're doing everything. You are chief commercial officer, you are chief creative officer, you are producer, you are making your own tea. And that's great, but in our industry, you're selling what's in your head a lot of the time. You're not selling product. And you have to grow your relationships.

What I learned at the beginning quite quickly was, it didn't really matter what the spinning badge above your head said I was worried that I wasn't with IMG or Endemol actually people were kind and said, look, that's a really good idea, or, have you got an idea for this? or, you're a good producer . So we ended up continuing to work with Goodwood, and Tracey Greaves was one of the people that put a hand in the air and said, Lawrence, we'll keep working with you [after he left Endemol] . Then I made a number of big shows for Guinness with some football formats in Africa.

Aurora company stats

Aurora turnover in 2022 was £29.1 million, up 33% year on year

55 full time employees

Over 15 industry awards won

Aurora is now preparing for the new E1 series, the world's first sustainable all-electric boat world championships. Season 1 begins in January 2024

From there in the first couple of years of the business, Duffy went on to produce Saudi football with an international crew. At around the same time he received a phone call from Ali Russell now managing director at Extreme E who said a tender was about to launch for a new electric motorsport series, Formula E, of which he was a co-founder.

Duffy recalls the competition was stiff for the new racing series, but says, we bid and we won . He goes on: From there we were able to take on some more people, and the company grew. And subsequently I think we have five or sometimes more concurrent international host broadcast series going on.

He continues: Formula E has been and continues to be brilliant, and honestly, w

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