What fueled Endurance Radio?

Endurance Radio (Also known as Enduranceplanet.com) announced recently that it has been sold to other holders, namely Kevin Patrick and USA Triathlon. As a listener to the program, a podcaster, and as a former guest, I find the sale to be quite interesting.

If you listen closely, you'll notice that old episodes of Endurance Radio were sponsored by Gatorade. I believe Gatorade wasn't too sweet on the early numbers and didn't re-up the sponsorship. Tim, the former owner, hit up the big boys too soon. A while later, big hosters like Libsyn, GoDaddy, and Podshow join the party and people like Tim and I can produce unlimited downloadable shows for nearly nothing. With bandwidth costs next to zero, who really needs big sponsors now? Gatorade was also very short sighted and bailed too soon. They've missed out on being a head badge on a pretty swell product. But Gatorade is just a company, full of executives without the ability or will to adapt quickly, while people like us are true believers and foresaw that podcasting would be huge.

I'm uninformed of Tim's initial intentions, but he built a community and communities are what's selling hot right now. Flickr, Myspace, Youtube, even Triscoop are all communities on fire with activity. I noticed on his website that it was extremely corporate looking, even though it was really just one guy. That look makes it more appealing for takeover from corporations and I would guess that he was doing that on purpose. The fact that Tim has a bunch of other podcasts and that they are financial makes it safe to assume that he had a lot of bait out there waiting for one to be successful enough to be bought out and he has a strong interest in making money.

Of course, I have no idea what his original interest in why he started Endurance Radio. I did hear him say several times that he had never done a triathlon and you almost never hear him say that he actually was doing anything himself. He did a really good job of making that not obvious. He could be riding his bike 500 miles a week and I wouldn't know.

Was it originally created for him to sell it? I don't know. What do you think?