Duke Marketing was founded by Peter Duke, son of six-time world motorcycle champion Geoff Duke, OBE, and started publishing special-interest videos in 1981. Since then, the Duke brand has maintained Number 1 position in the ‘powersport’ sector of the UK video market, expanded into other interest sectors and developed a sophisticated and wide ranging international distribution network. 

Having started trading as a mail order company, Duke evolved during the 1990s into a video publisher with extensive distribution through the country’s largest audio-visual store groups, and retail presence in 420 Halfords stores throughout the British Isles. In 2007, Duke acquired the stock and intellectual assets of UK counterpart Green Umbrella Sport & Leisure. This move massively increased Duke’s range of titles, and saw the company move into new areas, including rugby, cricket, golf, fishing, steam railways, football and more. 

The company’s multi-channel approach to distribution and marketing includes a strong internet presence, administering not only its own websites dukevideo.com and dukevideousa.com, but several other branded sites. Download options are now offered on an increasing proportion of titles via Duke’s own sites and through resellers. Duke has also extended its involvement in extreme sport programming with the 2007 acquisition of leading action sports publisher Chilli Video and an exclusive distribution contract with snowsports specialist Black Diamond. 

The company has further diversified, joining leading book publisher Warrender Grant to create Show Me How Ltd to launch an innovation in instructional manuals. The Show Me How concept combines a specially filmed DVD with a highly illustrated book explaining projects in a wide range of craft, artistic and other interests.

All aspects of motorsport on two and four wheels remain central to Duke’s business. Leading titles include annual DVD reviews of the World MotoGP Championship, World Rally and Touring Car Championships, the World Superbike Championships, the British Touring Car, Rally and Superbike Championships, the Isle of Man TT Races, the World Motocross, Trials, Enduro and Supermoto Championships and, from the USA, the Superbike, Motocross, Drag Racing and Rally Championships. 

Duke’s reputation for excellence has seen it approved to produce programmes officially sanctioned by leading manufacturers. These include the Best of British series, featuring Rolls Royce, Jaguar, MG, Land Rover, Aston Martin and TVR, Italian Masters covering Ferrari and Lamborghini, plus profiles of motorcycling’s great marques such as Norton, Triumph, BSA and Vincent. Since 1982, Duke has also published the renowned Castrol film library, which spans motoring history from 1950 and, in 1997, was formally appointed to distribute Ford’s extensive archive. The acquisition of the assets of Green Umbrella Sports and Leisure Ltd. added over 400 DVD titles and broadened Duke’s product range into golf, fishing, cricket and rugby sports programming as well as historical, educational and lifestyle documentaries. 

A wide range of documentaries has been produced and published by Duke over many years. These include a documentary series about the great drivers and riders of powersport history entitled ‘Champions’ that now covers twenty-two subjects. Duke has released official video tributes to many of the sport’s legends including Ayrton Senna, Barry Sheene, Joey Dunlop, Carl Fogarty, Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart and John Surtees. They were joined by a profile of motorcycling superstar Valentino Rossi in Autumn 2003 whilst Colin McRae Rally Legend was filmed prior to the global star’s death and released as the official tribute to considerable acclaim in December 2007. 

Thrills and spills are an essential element in any powersport library, and Duke has certainly not neglected this category! Strong and established series like Havoc and Crash Kings appear on tape and disc in thousands of shops worldwide from Alaska to Osaka. Viewers can also enjoy the benefits of the latest video technology in Duke’s thrilling experience programmes, which capture the driver, pilot or rider’s-eye-view from all sorts of different vehicles and craft. The Ultimate Ride compilation programmes have achieved notable success in this sector. 

By the end of 2008, Duke has published 1400 titles on DVD and plans to publish over 200 more titles during 2009 comprising a mixture of back catalogue and new releases. Through its partnership with production company Greenlight TV in Motorsport Mundial Ltd., Duke now also has three weekly TV shows established in various markets internationally. Motorsport Mundial (weekly half-hour motorsports news programme), Max Power (one-hour version of the former) and Auto Mundial (weekly half-hour car news programme) are already broadcast to over 30 countries through 11 different networks. 

In addition to in-house production of titles, Duke is supplied by over 220 producers and licensors from every continent. They range from FOM (Formula One Management), Dorna (Moto GP’s, trials), World Superbike International, TOCA (British Touring Cars), Discovery (American Chopper, American Hot Rod, Biker Build-Off) and IMG (Le Mans) through major archive owners like Woods (bikes) and Hay (cars) to independents like Greenlight (IOM TT and F1 features) and BAFTA-Award-winning documentary maker David Wallace. 

A significant proportion of Duke’s documentary and feature programmes are now produced by combining freelance producers and directors with the company’s in-house filming and post-production facilities.

The Stirling Moss on-line shop carries as range of Duke DVD's - click http://www.stirlingmoss.com/shop/12-0