Online Entry - on the day payment

[GML]

More directly on topis, I think there are only 3 motivating factors to pre-entry.

1 because it is cheaper (if it is)

2 so that you can be given a guaranteed start slot, thus not having to wait in a queue for a start time.

3 just to be nice to the organisers.

You might say this is included in your 2 Eddie, but I would add:

4 so that you can be certain of getting a run on the course of your choice, at a time that suits you (and the rest of the family), when you have just driven for over an hour to get to the event (because if I can't be certain of this then I may well not come to your event).

Obviously not a particularly relevant consideration for events aimed at only a local market, but very relevant for events aimed at attracting competitors from further afield. I for one fully support the (proposed) requirement that all Level B events offer pre-entry.

Don't mind if I have to pay in advance or not, although if I was the organiser I would be a bit peeved (sp?) if I'd printed lots of maps for pre-entered competitors who didn't turn up because the weather was a bit off.

[Clive Coles]

Quite agree with those who favour pre-entry facilities for events which set out to attract competitors from other regions. If you are travelling a distance you must be guarenteed a starting slot ( and map) on the course of your choice.

My concern is in regard to the use or pre-entries for smaller "regional" events where the start lists are unlikely to attract more than 250 entries.

In the case I cited, I pre-entered less than 12 hours before the closing date ~ I was number 64 ! I guess I was one of those who felt sorry for the organiser.

The closing date was extended to 3 days before the date of the event ~ the pre-entries limped up to about 140. On the day I think the event attracted 200+ participants. A substantial proportion of folk therefore entered on the day and I assume paid the surcharge.

Pre-entries in this circumstance did not give a very good indication as to the numbers of maps to print for each course. Previous experience of attendance numbers for events held on the area would probably be a better indicator.

The club did not allocate start times ~ only starting blocks, so there would still have been queues at the start line just like a regular Sunday morning colour-coded event.

So... what was the benefit of pre-entry for the participants ? Had the event been run as a normal Sunday morning colour-coded event the adult entry fee would probably have been more like £8 a run. Same map, same planner, same "quality" of competition.

The sole beneficiary seems to have been the clubs treasurer as the club were able to charge £10 an adult entry and an additional £2 for each adult "on the day" entry .

Prices seem bound to increase in the New Year ~ the Forestry Commission agreement, once re-negotiated, is unlikely to result in a reduction of access fees.

We do therefore need to question the collection of additional fees which don't actually yield any real benefit for the participant. Money for many , especially for families , is tight. Participants are our customers ~ their continuing participation cannot be assumed just because they are orienteers.

[madmike]

The sole beneficiary seems to have been the clubs (sic) treasurer

Clive,
agree with what you say in your post but hopefully the club will benfit not the Treasurer and plough the money back into the sport not just increase the bank balance!

[SeanC]

Although pre-entry might not give absolute numbers, I'm sure experienced organisers know roughly what percentage pre-enter. Also pre-entry gives the organiser some indication of which courses are popular (important with changing demographics and the new style regional events).

Anyway Clive's point allows me to plug our Westerham regional event on 9th Jan. If you pre-enter by 13th December (Monday) you'll pay only £3* more than the last district event in exactly the same area organised by the same club, but with many hours of map updates which you didn't get at the district event, plus we'll be parking next to historic Chartwell (rather than a pub car park) and next to the rather excellent Chartwell cafe. Judge for yourself whether you think £8 is good value for money to orienteer in one of the best areas in the south east.

That deadline is next monday. The perfect present for Christmas? For orienteers so long as they're not expecting something more expensive.

*£8 adults, £3 students and children. EOD surcharge of £2. In the event of very good weather, EOD people should turn up early to get ahead of the fair weather orienteers.

[Clive Coles]

Westerham ~ happy memories.

Many years ago that's where I broke my ankle before I even made the start line ! If there is snow on the ground watch out for those steps between levels in the NT car park.

Club organisation on the day was first class. I sat where I landed on the steps, the Chartwell cafe provided a chair to rest my leg on, and a tray with a pot of tea and a cake whilst I waited for St John Ambulance to take me off to Tonbridge Wells Hospital. And members of Mole Valley recovered my car which was stuck on an icy snow covered down slope in the car park and drove it home.

I hope such contingencies are included in your risk assessment.

It is never the less a great area for orienteering. No hard feelings. My own silly fault.

Although I will not be making the trip myself from EA land, Jon and his family plan to fly in from France for a post Christmas visit.

I hope you get a good turnout. With event fees at that level it's a bargain.

[seabird]

Although pre-entry might not give absolute numbers, I'm sure experienced organisers know roughly what percentage pre-enter.

I don't find this to be the case.

I have been monitoring the entry levels for what will be our level C events since 1997 - and the entry and pre-entry levels for what will be our level b evengts for a few years less.

The reason we started this monitoring was to inform organisers of the probable number of overprinted maps that needed to be printed. The (incorrect) assumption originally was that for the pre-entry events a small percentage extra need to be printed for each class, a slightly larger precentage for the 21s.

Despite around 60+ plus Level C events to compare - it is very hard to see clear patterns of entry. This means that an excessive number of maps have to be printed just to cater for the occasional unpredicted peak - maybe brought on by factors such as seasonally unexpected good weather or no counter attraction in a neighbouring region. For instance, recently we have seen entries on the Green course fluctuating greatly in comparison with the other technical courses.

Even on pre-entry events we have seen recent fluctations between 50-95% for pre-entries, as proportion of overall entries, on otherwise very similar events on comparable terrain. Overall there has been a substantial increase in the level of OED at these Level B type events.

So the ability to predict entry numbers, with or without pre-entry, remains very imprecise - unless, of course, you have no EOD. Given the relatively cheap cost of printing maps I would not recommend that.

One answer is printing excess maps at the event. We can only manage this for A4 sized maps currently. We also struggle as one of our major landowners insists only diesel generators are used (H&S strikes again). We have yet to identify a model light enough yet powerful enough to power a laser printer. Anyone have any ideas/recommendations?

[Clive Coles]

I would agree with your analysis Seabird ~ estimating attendance numbers and the split between courses is a growing problem and pre-entries do not provide much of a guide. Indeed, if you get a high influx of on the day participants, you risk upsetting a pre-entered competitor who is delayed whilst you acquire a re-cycled map for his/her chosen course.

It's easy to label some orienteers as fair weather participants ~ you cannot rely on them so "why shouldn't we charge them extra" ? But they also form a significant group within our orienteering fraternity.

I think folk are becoming more selective ~ they are travelling less and looking for value for money. It suits many of us to be able to decide on the day and turn up and run.

I hope, now we are moving to a 4-tier system, we will see less pre-entry for local level C events. For level B fixtures the numbers of people travelling justify the need, but for your regular Sunday morning events in an Association's timetable this is not IMO the case. So.. let's keep it simple and eliminate the unnecessary costs.

[SeanC]

Thanks for the kind comments about Westerham Clive.

I bow to Seabird's experience on the estimation issue.

Other advantages of pre-entry I can see:

- If people pre-enter they are more likely to turn up in bad weather - and this is probably a good thing for them as well as the organising club. How many times does a rough looking day turn out to be not so bad when your out there and running

- Pre-entry people are more committed to the event, and are therefore more likely to persuade their friends to go too... eg "Go on X, I need someone to share the petrol for the drive to Westerham". The earlier people pre-enter, the more likely this will happen.

- If you see other club members listed with their entry times it helps club members who want to organise car sharing.

- You get more of a feeling of the event being a race rather than a pastime as you can see a list of people you are competing against online. Well the non EOD's anyway.

Pre-entry is to be encouraged IMHO, so I don't see a problem for a discount/inducement to encourage this.

[EddieH]

My conclusion from all Clive Coles' arguments, (and enhanced by Sean's observations,) reinforces my belief that pre-entry at a discount is eminently sensible for all but the smallest events.

Pre-entry:EOD ratio depends upon the weather and various other unpredictable factors. Why would I feel aggrieved that because I am not prepared to commit to an event I will pay a bit more? After all I'd be going to events on the best most enjoyable days - and I'd go because it's worth it for me. If I didn't think it was I wouldn't go. If clubs charge levels for events that don;t attract the punters then they'll either revise their charges or stop putting on events.

It seems to me that people who complain are in some way showing the blame culture that is the subject of a rather large ongoing thread.

One thing that I find very odd about event pricing is that geographically remote areas have often tended to be the cheapest areas to enter, and without doing a survey I suspect that our events up in the north are following this trend today. No judgement intended by this (possibly erroneous) observation.

[alanbrett]

The feedback to my original question has been interesting. We've decided to trial an online "Reserve Your Map" system for our next SWELL (local league) event which includes all the information we need to input for each competitor (ie everything that would be on our normal entry form). Entry fees will be collected on the day.

We don't see this as an option for larger events (when we would still use Fabian4).

The entrty data can be exported in csv format and imported into OE 2003.

Our club uses OE2003 at present - I'm aware there is additional functionality on Autodownload but we've not yet migrated to that system.

[pyrat]

As the creator or oentries.com I thought i'd let you know about a wee bit of functionality in there for single day events.

If you set the entry fee to be free you can bypass the payment gateway and pay on the day. This would allow you to trial using this type of event entry structure.

Whatever works best for the orienteers in my view. Oentries is not about making millions out of orienteering and I am open to new directions for it.

[Paul Frost]

In many ways pre-entry is more important for smaller events.
Trying to decide how many maps to print when the numbers are small often leads to massive over printing.

EckO usually get about 50 people to a local event across 5 courses.
We send out a reminder email 4-5 days before every event and ask people to reply if they plan to come and what course and explain that it's to help with map printing numbers.
The response now is up to about 60/70% and there are a few who don't email but generally turn up, so it's getting easier to judge numbers. Due to our location we don't get many CATI entries but have a very active/reliable club membership, so don't print that many extras, but still waste too many maps.

I think you need to emphasise to members how important it is to pre-enter. It's their club and it's finances are affected by wasteful printing. The more profit from an event the more money there is to spend on new maps and equipment.

This thread has got me thinking that perhaps we should start charging more for entry on the day. We probably print 2/3 maps for every un-booked one we sell on the day. So if some people want the convenience of waiting to see how the weather looks etc. why should those who commit in advance subsidise the casual ones?
It maybe that it's worded so that the pre-entries get a discount rather than a surcharge for EOD.

[RJ]

If you set the entry fee to be free you can bypass the payment gateway and pay on the day. This would allow you to trial using this type of event entry structure.

What a good idea pyrat! As the software allows the entries secretary to enter start times as you go along, the people entering can get all the benefits and then pay on the day. Paying the money at registration on the day and getting a description list for their course would make perfect event management on the day.

There is no reason this service should be free. Just think of a reasonable charge. It is certainly worth giving the idea a go.

[Clive Coles]

Thanks Pyrat for that post. Seems a great way of encouraging folk to reserve a map ~ may well be more effective than following the pre-payment option.

Like RJ, I don't think many would object to paying a little more in event fee to make use of this service. The concern for me with pre-payment entries at the smaller event is the double hit to cover both Fabian costs and entry on the day.

We have to remember orienteers are a broad Church. Some get involved to build and sustain their competitive aspirations. For them orienteering is a running sport. For many others orienteeing is a leisure activity ~ healthy exercise in open countryside which has to be fitted around other family committments. It is not always convenient for the second group to pre-plan their future weekends around orienteering.

We need both groups to sustain our sport. Sorry Paul, don't often disagree with you ~ we must not inflate the costs of entry on the day in the hope that this will encourage more commitment.

[andypat]

I think part of the problem here isnt the EOD surcharge but the actual entry fee themselves. Its quite common to charge say £3 for an event in a park which is run entirely by one person and uses small maps printed on normal A4 paper. A full colour coded event requiring maybe a dozen or so volunteers to run with preentry, preprinted maps, toilets etc might only be charged at £6. Although thats double the cost, I dont think the additional £3 reflects the additional effort/cost required from the club to stage the event, and therefore the increased risk of noone turns up.

So maybe its not the EOD surcharge we need to look at, but the actual cost of the etry in the first place.