Commercial cycle event costs

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?

BC has two categories of event listing.
Free – which is basically when the event has sorted out its own insurance and just gets a basic listing.
All inclusive – the event has got BC insurance (which also means a BC risk assessment), and potentially uses BC online entry as well. It doesn’t have to, it can still direct you off to entrycentral or equivalent but if the organiser wants to use BC online entry, they need to get BC insurance.

The all-inclusive listing gets promoted a bit more by the BC website algorithms too.

So couldn’t an event just go down the British cycling route and save costs on getting their own insurances?

I’ve done a few Audax’s over the years and really enjoyed them, the people that ride them are much friendlier than your average sportive riders as well.

I’ve had a Google for any off road Audax’s, I’ve found a few listed from the past but nothing for 2023.

Couldn’t you follow their example of ride planning and still make money? Especially in Scotland where the access laws are much more progressive.

So couldn’t an event just go down the British cycling route and save costs on getting their own insurances?

Dont know about BC/Cycling, but in another format of event a national body pitched their insurance to us and overall it was more expensive by the time it got to us.

I just look at sportive.com and couldn’t find a sportive that cost more than £40. I just looked at a sample no every event.
I don’t think that’s to bad when it can cost £8 to park in the Lakes.

As someone representing a landowner, there can be days of organisation in just agreeing, approving and permitting an event that will just cross a section of your land. Now repeat 24 more times to varying requirements…

There are also organisers we are quite happy to see again and others that we are amazed didn’t kill anyone (safety brief was call 999 and ask for mountain rescue!).

I can’t remember when I last paid to do an event. Probably a Polaris, but then the cost went up to something like £50 a head. Can’t remember for sure.
Not for me nowadays.

(safety brief was call 999 and ask for mountain rescue!).

bonkers! on that note I forgot about the St Johns Ambulance, 4-6 vehicles minimum inc 4×4 plus ambulance, plus staff. with full briefing, vehicle tracking etc.

The British Racing Collective Gbduro events are free

https://www.theracingcollective.com/gbduro.html

I’ve done 2

Just sign up on Strava and downloads a gpx file. Meet in a cafe at the end

Is that dodgy or genius?

@amppthill. Having done some myself I would say genius, looking forward to more in 2023

I used to run a shoestring CX league. (NECCL)

From memory it was £7 insurance for riders if they weren’t members. Members were covered as part of that. The event was £10-15 to ride.

Some venues wanted a few hundred pounds for a mornings use.

We’d spend about a hundred on first aid provision (it was me, free, but I stopped after we had to do CPR/defib on a guy and no one else volunteered).

Tape and stuff like numbers, signs, would be a few hundred over the year.

I worked for free. Put in a lot of hours. We had a team of about 8 who would run an event. Probably a full days work from setup to takedown.

People always wanted results instantly. We didn’t have a timing system so did it manually. Probably a couple of hours work there after the race. For a simple turn up and ride event we had a lot of questions. I’d hate to think about all the questions the DR guys get.

The BC CX league charges £17 for 50min race. A road race is about £35 around here. Basic weekend TT £15. The events aren’t cheap but are priced fairly.

There is the option to ride public row and roads outside the event. I ride up at Kielder a fair bit. It’s not the same and I’d pay to be part of something. I even pay for sportives occasionally too because I enjoy them more than just going for a ride.

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

Off you trot then and organise it.

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.

requisite training? Helped out at many RRs and pretty sure no one had any training at all. IIRC the considered opinion was officially you can just wave a flag from the kerb and hope cars stop, which is next to useless. Or you can stand in the road and stop cars, but you’re on your own if anything goes wrong. I was lead car for a few and never really knew if I was really properly insured by BC when doing it…

I was lead car for a few and never really knew if I was really properly insured by BC when doing it…

I remember being lead car at the Ashby Road Road.
I was doing about 40mph, downhill towards a T junction where I should turn left thinking I really must brake for this pretty soon but I can’t slow down because the pack are gaining on me! Turns out to be harder than I thought….

Requisite training? Helped out at many RRs and pretty sure no one had any training at all. IIRC the considered opinion was officially you can just wave a flag from the kerb and hope cars stop, which is next to useless. Or you can stand in the road and stop cars, but you’re on your own if anything goes wrong. I was lead car for a few and never really knew if I was really properly insured by BC when doing it…

here you go. http://www.cyclingulster.com/road-racing-accredited-marshal-scheme/

requisite training? Helped out at many RRs and pretty sure no one had any training at all. IIRC the considered opinion was officially you can just wave a flag from the kerb and hope cars stop, which is next to useless. Or you can stand in the road and stop cars, but you’re on your own if anything goes wrong. I was lead car for a few and never really knew if I was really properly insured by BC when doing it…

The RA for road races now states how many Accredited Marshals you need for it.
If you don’t have that number, you can’t run the race. The days when a rider’s Dad could stand in the road and wave a red flag and kind of hope that people stopped are long gone, the risks are too high. Accredited Marshals have legal authority to stop traffic (same legislation as lollipop people at school crossings).

That’s a big extra cost (the marshals work for free but they need their expenses – travel, fuel etc) and also a big extra risk if one doesn’t turn up on the day. The normal format is to overbook yourself but it can be 15 people who need fuel expenses etc.

On the plus side the RA for the road race circuit is much more thorough now and also standardised across the country.

There is the option to ride public row and roads outside the event. I ride up at Kielder a fair bit. It’s not the same and I’d pay to be part of something. I even pay for sportives occasionally too because I enjoy them more than just going for a ride.

This +1, whilst there are things that cost the organizers that perhaps don’t interest the average punter (e.g. race insurance for the average mid-tail-ender-pack fodder who just want’s to get around the course before the broom wagon). There’s also a lot of benefits that are free to provide, but probably for a lot of people justify the entry fee.

For example £70 for a race entry fee is steep when you’re completely uncompetitive and could just have spent 2 hours trying to ride a trail center flat out if you just wanted a waymarked route and similar workout. But great for making new friends and getting invites to ride other parts of the country as a result.

Is that dodgy or genius?

More dodgy than genius.
Despite their rules trying to put all liability on the rider, they are still organising an event, so will ultimately have to justify their position should something go wrong.

I’ve worked with quite a few event organisers, and witnessed more in action. Some just don’t have any concept of liability, and quite frankly run on the hope that nothing will go wrong.

As for cost, there is a huge difference between events run by volunteers, and those doing it professionally for a living.

If you’re doing it full time, you probably need to make 30-40k profit from events annually to cover your own expenses and actually make a living for yourself, and that’s before you employee any staff.

Volunteer events are usually priced to make some* profit for whatever club/charity/organisation that’s organising them.

*Some, can vary from just covering costs if the event is more of a marketing/participation type event, to a few thousand for the club/charity if it’s a fundraising type event.

here you go. http://www.cyclingulster.com/road-racing-accredited-marshal-scheme/

I assume that is a newish thing, not been a club member since 2008 and no one went on any courses for marshaling back the, we just all turned up, grabbed some kit and went off to do as best we could….

I assume that is a newish thing, not been a club member since 2008 and no one went on any courses for marshaling back the, we just all turned up, grabbed some kit and went off to do as best we could….

British Cycling introduced it in 2013.
Cycling Ulster – the link above – is much more recent but basically the same legislation.

Took absolutely bloody ages to get it through the dozens of police forces across the country, some refused to recognise it for years which meant no (or very limited) road racing in some counties for ages.

I seem to have struck a nerve by some of the (grumpy) responses but I’ve been genuinely enlightened by others.

My local cycling club put on a few races a year so will look into volunteering more in the future (I’ve helped set up the courses a few times and quite enjoyed doing it and then watching the racers riding it).

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be good if singletrack hosted some events. They already have a keen audience.

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be good if singletrack hosted some events. They already have a keen audience.

They have done:
https://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/singletrack-classic-weekender-the-photos/

That ^^ happened a few times in various formats and STW has sponsored / partnered most of the MTB races at some point – everything from Hit The North to the Mountain Mayhem 24hr events.

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be good if singletrack hosted some events. They already have a keen audience.

Trouble would be that we’re spread over the country. You can get members of a local club to volunteer for their local race, because it’s a fun-ish day helping out. And most clubs running races have a rule saying everyone should volunteer for at least one event a year.

Whereas no one is going to drive up from Dorset to marshal an event in Ramsbottom (and everyone in Ramsbottom thinks the south is flat).

Part of the issue is that roadies are just way more organized than MTB’ers. In principal an XC race shouldn’t be that different to a CX race. But there aren’t MTB clubs that can drag together the 50+ people required to run it for free (and a lot of CX events go back decades so a lot of the negotiation with landowners is “same time next year? Great.”

Participant numbers are down across a lot of event types…lack of entries tend to mean things get cancelled as costs become too high for the lower number of entries; entries are higher as costs are higher – a lot of places are all requiring £10m insurance cover now – it used to be £5m, but this all adds to costs as well.

In clubs, fewer people are looking to help, there are always those last-minute people who jump in right at the end but from a planning perspective it just makes things harder to plan out.

There are also more events on offer as there are more disciplines, so the people entering the events is a smaller pot – back in the 90s you’d have a weekend of racing – DH, XC and trials (all on the same bike), but there are now far more options available that are more specific so the number of participants is smaller across everything as they are spread across the various disciplines now rather than just ‘road’ of ‘MTB’…

It costs a lot more money these days to put events on…things are more expensive but likewise a lot of events are better/tighter organised which tends to mean more costs in general.

I’m not convinced that these events cost that much to put on. Our club run a sportive every year, costs about 40 quid to enter as I recall and includes timing, cake stop, and sandwich and coffee after. It’s also fully insured

All profits go to a local charity, and it makes close on 8k a year. So as a commercial enterprise it’s not going to be viable (given it’s organised by volunteers), but it demonstrates that there are options out there for folks that don’t want to spend 100 quid (that includes me)

I’m not convinced that these events cost that much to put on. Our club run a sportive every year, costs about 40 quid to enter as I recall and includes timing, cake stop, and sandwich and coffee after. It’s also fully insured

Sportives can be pretty cheap to run – back in the early 2010’s when they started becoming really popular, loads of clubs went from organising road races to organising Sportives, either as well as or instead of.

A road race would make a couple of hundred ££ for club funds; a Sportive could make a couple of thousand so it was an obvious step. The problem was that there was a proliferation of such events, many of which were crap – partly that was down to it being a relatively new format of event (even though it’s basically Audax with better marketing!) and partly, clubs thought it was a quick way to make a fast buck so they didn’t really bother with details much, just assumed that the regular club 100-miler would translate well into a paid-for event which doesn’t always work!

There are some big upfront costs like signage although once you have that you don’t need to spend that money again.

There are some big upfront costs like signage although once you have that you don’t need to spend that money again.

And can carry on charging for by not reducing prices once they are paid for. See also the increase in cost of entering CX races to pay for the clubs’ timing chips a few years ago.

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

Your own GPS also doesn’t tell the organiser and staff where you might be at any given point. Full GPS tracking is amazing for event staff to be able to easily tell where an injured/delayed/mechanicalled rider is, but even just regular timing mats (at feed stations etc) give you a decent indicator of what section of a route a delayed rider might be in) – which helps with rider safety and experience no end!

Add decent comms in to costs as well – especially for long remote courses where there might be little-to-no phone signal (Kielder…) – hiring radios and repeater stations ain’t the cheapest.

Seems a bit odd that people seem keen on doing events but aren’t keen on paying the prices – commercial companies organising events are looking to make money, so costs will be covered but so will a profit to pay wages and help save some money. Clubs don’t need to try to make as much money, so they can cut their ‘costs’ by reducing the profit they can make…but commercial companies are there to make money, so entry price will reflect that.

I suspect there are a lot of people on here that have been involved in organising events (hence the sensible answers about costs rising and having to pay for ore tings to keep everything proper).

As a potential entrant, I grudge paying the costs as they do feel high, but by the same token, as someone who has been involved with organising I’m aware costs are rising, number of participants are falling and volunteers are taking longer to get involved.

It isn’t easy – especially when explanations are posted up but not really accepted by people.

I used to do quite a few sportives but for the past decade I have done mainly audax and prefer that tbh.

I ride as a challenge to myself not against others and do not miss things like PA announcements, timing chips and route signage. I can see how the costs of everything mount up but if it seems too much there is probably an audax event in your neck of the woods that you can do for under a tenner.

This year I completed my third Randonneur Round the Year (complete a 200km or longer ride for 12 consecutive months) and my first Super Randonneur (complete rides of 200, 300, 400 and 600km in an Audax season).

There is a real community to audax. Try it – it’s addictive and there is always something to aim for.

Event entry numbers have generally been down this year compared to last year, but I’d probably say they were back to pre-covid levels.

Last year, foreign travel was still pretty limited, and people hadn’t really done events for over a year, so there were a lot of people who just wanted to do ‘something’, and that something came along in the form of lots of different events in the UK.

I do however think next year is going to be quite tough for a lot of event organisers, due to cost of living issues and people not having as much disposable income.

I do however think next year is going to be quite tough for a lot of event organisers, due to cost of living issues and people not having as much disposable income.

I think there’ll be an element of that – I also think that a lot of cyclists are incredibly tight.
£5000 bike, £2000 of clothing/helmet/shoes, a couple of trips to Spain/Alps etc a year…

Ask them to pay £30 for a race entry and it immediately becomes a rant about how organisers are raking it in, it’s extortionate blah blah.

I’ve seen a lot of people “pirate” Sportives, some quite openly. That adds to the cost as organisers need to issue wristbands etc to stop riders coming into the feedstations and helping themselves when they’ve not paid.

If anyone fancies trying out new areas, or areas they’ve not ridden for a while with a friendly atmosphere for a sensible price, why not try MBO Score. 3 -5 Hour events, all over the UK and (other than the travel) it won’t break the bank. (We’re not BC affiliated either)

https://www.bmbo.org.uk/calendar/

I also think that there’s a good number of participants (of any organised event) have no idea as to how much work goes into them. Particulalry when it comes to risk assessments, in large open outdoor areas, such as we use for orienteering events.