Commercial cycle event costs

Is it just me or is the cost of cycle events these days over priced?

I know that it’s a (commercial) free world and I do not have to buy into any of these. Plus as we’ve seen with other events – like the dirty reiver – they sell out with hours of going on sale, so the market must be there.

Just that paying over £100 for a planned route with a few free food stops doesn’t seem to be good value for money.

So, what are your thoughts?

More than I’d likely pay – unless a significant portion of that was going to a charity. Still, there seems to be a copious number of folk who are happy with it.

FWIW I’ve paid £60 or so for a sportive in the past. I’ve paid a similar amount for a couple of triathlons and you don’t even get fed 😁

Maybe you should put one on and see if you could make it profitable (or even just cover costs) with what you think an entry should cost?

Thinking about it, would it be easy enough to create an off-road Audax type event, especially in Scotland.

HT550, Cairngorms Loop, etc. are free (no free food though). Might not be what you think of as an “event” (though expect an announcement regarding the CL).

i was interested in a long distance touring route in Europe.
£390 just for registration and a gpx file.
and you had to rent/own a tracker for the event.

I’ve done the CL300 in 2020 and have done the ride to the sun twice and think very highly of both events.

I do pay for events as well sometimes. I did the Coniston Glorious Gravel ride in September and thought that £45 price was decent value. The food stops were good but I generally can easily carry all the calories I need for a 100km ride so not an essential thing for me.

Just that paying over £100 for a planned route with a few free food stops doesn’t seem to be good value for money.

Do you really know of an event that is actually just a planned route and a few free food stops that costs £100? (I am guessing you’re over egging it here?)

UK sportive are bonkers price wise. I do quite a few Dutch ones because we have family over there. The two that I do in March and September regularly are fantastically organised with timing chips, great signage and gpx files, and free food, coffee etc. When I say food I mean food, none of the one gel, half a banana and a bottle of water rationed out to try to make sure everyone gets something. The March one is generally supported by a baker whose team stands at the exit of the stops forcing you to take half a dozen of his Chelsea buns. The coffee is plentiful, the energy drinks are by the gallon and hot food is available.

Oh yes the entry fee – €12

Doing a set route with hundreds of other people on bikes is my kind of nightmare.

However I realise other people like it and just like everything else in the world costs are rising and it’s much more than planning a route and then putting some bananas and water out on a table half way around.
The liability insurance costs alone for the DR must be astronomical. Events on land you can’t usually ride on must cost to organise and probably need to be paying for access from landowners etc so the price is kind of justified.

The cost events such as those at Sherwood pines that just send out a gpx in an area you can ride 365 days a year for free and without 100s of other riders charge you £45 for the privilege I’m not so sure about

Is it just me or is the cost of cycle events these days over priced?

If they aren’t selling enough entries to cover costs, they’re over priced. As they are selling out in hours, I would say they are priced above your budget.

There does seem to be superfluous “gifts” in with some events like:
– T shirts
– Goodie bags (full of tat and money off vouchers)
– Timing chips (who doesn’t have a gps?)
– Event village, which is just overpriced burger vans and coffee stalls.

Here’s an event (granted it is a long one) that’s £125. It does include camping, so would be about £100 without.

Event Information

This one provides an evening meal (as along as you provide your own eating utensils and plate) and a place to pitch your tent. It doesn’t provide a marked route nor food stops.

https://www.entrycentral.com/dunoondirtdash

I could go on….

Instead of making this about me, let’s list what you’d expect from an event as a minimum and how much you’d be prepared to pay for it.

For me, the minimum would be:
– Event information pack (kind of what you get with CX events) issued before the event with recommendations for travel arrangements, kit lists, accomodation recommendations and basic event start map.
– Defined start and finish place, ideally with toilet facilities and options to buy food and drink etc.
– Route gpx and notes (pdf will do, no need for paper copies)
– Scheduled places to stop where there will be toilet facilities, drinking water and food options (doesn’t need to be free but a decent cafe or food van would be good).
– Route marking. Just needs to be at key junctions where it’d be easy to take the wrong turn.

And a cost of about £40

The biggest cost by a long way is insurance. Some providers charge a base fee and then a per-rider tariff, some are a more expensive per-rider and some are just a blanket “£x per 100 riders” (for example) – it’ll vary a bit depending on the provider and the event.

Marketing.
Online entry – usually the online entry provider takes a portion of the entry fee or set price plus (eg) 5% so not all of what you’re paying goes to the organiser.
Volunteers – those folk standing at checkpoints need their expenses paying even if they’re standing there for free so it’s their fuel, food, accommodation etc to cover.
First Aid – again, this’ll vary depending on the terrain, the access etc but something like Dirty Reiver (requiring multiple 4×4 ambulances) will be significantly more than expensive than a road Sportive or a road race.
Venue hire – again highly variable and will depend on the HQ, the resources you want (electricity hookup, toilets, showers etc) and the number of venues (eg HQ, feed stations etc)
Course marking, pre-event recce, post-event clean up etc all adds up as well, especially on long single-loop events. I’ve done pre-event recce stuff before and it’s normally (at the very least) a drive around the vehicle-accessible bits, at least one ride around (often more), plus another ride/drive around for pre-event signage and then the same again to take it all down.
All the food, drink, supplies etc throughout.
Medals / trophies / prizes at the end

Some of that will be covered by sponsors (so the “Alpkit feedstation” for example), most will need to be funded, at least in part, by the entry fees.

– Timing chips (who doesn’t have a gps?)

That’s more to do with rider safety and knowing that everyone has gone through checkpoint X rather than the timing – but yes it’s a significant extra expense.

It’s really not a quick route to making millions…

Audax type event,

So no signage, no feed stops? A bit oranges and apples.

I’d sooner ride audax than a sportive, but I’ll pay the extra if it’s the right people and the right location. I’m paying £200 (if we include meals) for a weekend away to do a sportive with mates in Yorkshire in May.

As someone said on here on another thread, if you think it’s too expensive, you may not be the target audience.

To add to Crazys list…

“On route resident and business politics”

I could go on….

A quick glance at those events suggests theres a lot more going on than a route and a few feed stops.

Can’t work out what the insurance would actually cover (other than cancellation cover and employee cover). These are not races. The people participating are adults who are responsible for their own actions (and consequences).

Public liability insurance. Any commercially run event will involve a duty of care regardless of how sensible and able the participants. That will need insurance.

Take up fell running😁

Isnt a bad shout, I think theyre mostly/all not for profit those races arent they?

Compare and contrast to some trail running events

Can’t work out what the insurance would actually cover

There speaks a man who doesn’t do risk assessments too often….

So, if a planned event went past my property and I claimed that my fence or gate or car was damaged by a participant of the event, I could claim this against the events organisers insurance?

Sounds open to abuse if so.

So, if a planned event went past my property and I claimed that my fence or gate or car was damaged by a participant of the event, I could claim this against the events organisers insurance?

Sounds open to abuse if so.

Welcome to the world of the tort of negligence.

You have car insurance if you drive, public liability cover on your home insurance, liability cover with Cycling UK or British Cycling membership. Every business you use or work for….

All open to abuse. And to protect you from such abuse.

I went through the joy of costing the Big Bike Bash until handing over the organisation to the current team. It is extremely challenging I can assure you if you try to comply with the expectations of the guests, the law and what most people would consider good practice so I focussed on the guests and ignored the rest. We made money every year for the UK Youth charity.

When I handed over the organisation and was just the host my life was a lot easier and although the prices went up, the guests said they didn’t mind and loved the idea of having insurance, first aid, and PA system and a stage that wasn’t just a flatbed truck. We made money every year for the UK Youth charity.

We have now raised over £1/4 Million and I am so proud and grateful to everyone who has helped.*

*not sure if this actually adds to the debate but I thought I would share

Can’t work out what the insurance would actually cover (other than cancellation cover and employee cover). These are not races. The people participating are adults who are responsible for their own actions (and consequences).

You’d like to think that wouldn’t you?!
Suppose you’re organising a gravel event and a rider “racing” it takes out a dog walker in the forest. The dog walker would have a claim against you, as the organiser, for facilitating this reckless behaviour.

Suppose that a participant gets lost in the woods and files a complaint against you, as the organiser, for failing to sign the route properly.

Naturally of course, this would have been covered in your Risk Assessment (you did do a RA, yes?!) and it would say that you have signed the route properly at the following points and also provided a GPX for all participants and marshals are at the key points… and the insurance might find that you had done all this but the signage got obscured by a fallen tree branch and the participant had failed to download and follow the GPX so you were exonerated.

Basically it’s liability insurance. That guy who wrote off his brand new £8000 gravel bike launching it down that descent – well you’d signed that with a “be **** careful down here cos it’s technical!” sign and put it all in the briefing notes and told everyone about it at the start so he hasn’t got a leg to stand on….

Insurance is good like that.

not sure if this actually adds to the debate but I thought I would share

Well, you have direct insight into the workload involved in running an event. So id say quite a bit.

FIrst time I tried to get insurance I was quoted something like £3 per rider. I asked if that covered the weekend and they explained it was simply insuring against injury to the rider during each event or race they took part in and that I would need extra public liability, fire insurance etc.

I explained that the BBB was about 40-50 different and random events over the weekend and she confirmed I would need separate cover for each but she offered to email me details for the combined event insurance. I started to give her my email address “World Class Accident @ …..” and the line went dead.

_ T shirts
– Goodie bags (full of tat and money off vouchers)
– Timing chips (who doesn’t have a gps?)
– Event village, which is just overpriced burger vans and coffee stalls.

Punters love a T shirt, love em. you’d be amazed how many people try them on as soon as picking up and then want to blag a different size.

Timing Chips – everyone wants to know their time, GPS doesn’t cope with neutralised starts, pee stops etc. Not everyone has them either.

event village – honestly, only works if they are discounting stuff otherwise it’s a marketing write off.

Don’t forgot participation medal and finish line photo. #muddyface #thumbsup #seeyounextyear

Putting on events are hard! even something approaching half the size of the dirty reiver. Council meetings, websites, insurance, health & safety, 365 days of marketing, emails from lunatics, emails from lunatics who have entered, entitled types, banana orders, random last minute route changes/foresty felling. registration (aye, just turn up 10 mins before start time, what could go wrong) it does not stop. I help out in one event a year and we have a crew on site for four/five days working 18 hour days to make it work.

Thanks for the insight, every days a school day.

So out of interest, how does the free type events that British cycling lists deal with this world of litigiousness. Do they cover these somehow with their insurance?

Id be interested in the answer to that too (im not an event organiser but have some involvement with paid events)

Punters love a T shirt, love em. you’d be amazed how many people try them on as soon as picking up and then want to blag a different size.

Heaven ***ing help you if the wrong person doesnt get T Shirt at all

if they are affiliated with British Cycling or Cycling Ireland then I’m assuming they are free to members only ? if so then covered under their existing umbrella insurance, or non members with purchase of a one day licence.

So, would an event be better off making it a race and make everyone get a race license, a day one is only something like a tenner.

<blockquoteHeaven ***ing help you if the wrong person doesn’t get T Shirt at all

don’t know if joking or serious, but there is always at least one ass who forces their way through the line at the busiest time of registration to demand a different size T shirt. No manners, completely entitled, end s up stressing already stressed people are are doing their best

always have XS and S left over, never XL and XXL. go figure.

So out of interest, how does the free type events that British cycling lists deal with this world of litigiousness. Do they cover these somehow with their insurance?

If you mean the Breeze/Ride Social rides, the ride leaders are trained and then it’s covered by BCs liability cover.

I did my ride leader training with Sustrans. There’s a lot of risk assessment, route planning, pre-riding etc involved. Herding the cats on bikes was the fun part.

I’ve also organised and led rides for a cycling company, who relied on a disclaimer that all riders rode at their own risk blah blah. Absolutely no legal defence with that, they could never show me the legal advice it was based on. One of the reasons I never went back to it, was great fun for a couple of years though.

So, would an event be better off making it a race

not if any part of the “race” was on a bridleway as racing ain’t allowed because laws

not if any part of the “race” was on a bridleway or a road as racing ain’t allowed because laws

So the cost is reflective of the cycling event industry maturing and taking the proper procedures seriously that others in the past were not carrying out?

So we should be paying >£50 for a well ran cycle event, as this is a sign that the organiser has allowed enough money to cover insurance and planning?

So, would an event be better off making it a race and make everyone get a race license, a day one is only something like a tenner.

Join a local affiliated club that hosts RR and see how they do it. Lots of planning and experience built up over many years, courses with established risk assessments, plus free Marshalls who have had requisite training.

This is one of those ‘how hard can it be?’ debates where the informed answer is ‘very’

don’t know if joking or serious

Im not sure i know either … but yeh, theres always “one”

Actually, particularly pertinent to the 1st couple of years.

Event cancellation insurance, saved a fair few jobs in 2020.

So we should be paying >£50 for a well ran cycle event, as this is a sign that the organiser has allowed enough money to cover insurance and planning?

If you want signage, feed stations, t-shirts and medals, broom wagon, mechanical support…

If you just want a GPX/route card and day ride insurance, Audax UK will happily charge you a tenner or less.

Council meetings, websites, insurance, health & safety, 365 days of marketing, emails from lunatics, emails from lunatics who have entered, entitled types, banana orders, random last minute route changes/foresty felling. registration (aye, just turn up 10 mins before start time, what could go wrong) it does not stop

Lolz at jonnyboi

It really can be a thankless task.
When they go well though,everything’s ticking along and you have time to watch people enjoying a sport you love,it’s a thing of beauty…..then you go and agree to help again 🤪 😆 🤣