Moray Mix

[graeme]

I wanted to see what he looks like

No you didn't - you only thought you did...

[NeilC]

This is compared to paying 17 pounds EACH DAY an event for many other events down south

Eg?

The Burnham Beeches event on 22nd February.

So just one example then (and even then most of us paid £15 not £17) to back up a somewhat prejudiced opinion. And what a fair comparison that was. However excellent the Culbin event was I'm sure the finances were helped by the lack of direct land use fee and the fact that £4.5k was spent on the map last year.

[Big Jon]

"However excellent the Culbin event was I'm sure the finances were helped by the lack of direct land use fee and the fact that £4.5k was spent on the map last year."

Ouch, you bitch!!! talk about a bitter comment....

Move to Scotland - home to cheap top quality orienteering

[IanD]

talk about a bitter comment

I think you're being a bit over-sensitive.

Scots have right of access for orienteering, whereas the English normally have to pay for it, and Burnham/Egypt Woods has multiple landowners who no doubt all wanted a cut.

And then Culbin had a top quality map done for a major event last year, so I guess the Moray Mix had little or no mapping cost to bear. Whereas Burnham needed an updated survey which was financed by the 'expensive' event which you're complaining about.

I don't think it's bitter to point out that the two events cost very different amounts to put on.

[EddieH]

I really don't want to get into a cost debate. I write this as a Moravian member that doesn't want people thinking that we have no costs.

Our weekend was I think cheap by any standards. As an Emit brikke owner I paid £8 for 2 quality races, one on a brand new professionally surveyed map, the other on a map for which we have to pay royalties on every copy printed.

It is highly unlikely that the "profits" from the weekend paid for the Forres map and due to our geography we will struggle to get a reasonable number of people to run on it again within the forseeable future. Maybe we undercharged

[greywolf]

Maybe we undercharged

Almost certainly, even before the unforseen portaloo hire costs. Running that scale of events, at those prices, is only conceiveable without land use fees and with huge voluntary effort, but as Eddie says, it's not correct to suggest that the maps were entirely free..

One curious effect of the large (by MOR standards) entry was the marginal cost of the BOF levy - most of the entries on the day were for juniors, effectively taken at a loss. (I know you're not supposed to think about the levy that way, but...)

Of course had the basic entries fee been increased beyond £6, the club would have been hit with additional levy costs:
http://www.scottish-orienteering.org/in ... nt-levies/
FC land use may be cheaper up here...but we have 2 governing bodies to fund...

In retrospect, the weekend should probably have been £5 a head more. Would everyone still have come?

[Sunlit Forres]

A Forres Harrier who ran in the Urban race came up to me in the week and told me that he'd enjoyed it, but as a non-BOF member paying £9 on the day he thought it was just too expensive to entice his clubmates to the next one. Road runners are used to getting tee shirts and free post-race refreshments afterwards, and he wasn't that intersted in the mapping costs.

Greywolf is spot on in his comments. Everyone realises that BOF have to get the income somehow, but as a small club we took all the risks. We wanted to attract as big an entry as possible to what was, after all, a level 3 event. We wanted to use the event to showpiece the sport to help capitalise on the growing interest in the sport from local non-orienteers. Hence the fees were, perhaps, set unrealistically low. So what's the priority - increasing participation or maximising income? "More people, more places, more podiums" goes the mantra. I guess it should be the former then. (should it be podia by the way?)

The fact that we had to suddenly find £240 for the portaloos after the Culbin toilets were vandalised meant that a huge slice of the event income was gone, yet there is no provision for any reduction in the levy. Anyway, who cares? We had a fantastic 2 days. The controls were all in the right place, nobody ended up in debt, the competitors had a great weekend and our new members went away telling their friends about this amazing sport they've discovered.

[madmike]

Absoulutely right Sunlit,

I've been boring everyone down South with how fantastic the weekend was
I even took the Culbin map to a Club committee mtg to show peole what they'd missed

[Meat Market]

So just one example then (and even then most of us paid £15 not £17) to back up a somewhat prejudiced opinion. And what a fair comparison that was. However excellent the Culbin event was I'm sure the finances were helped by the lack of direct land use fee and the fact that £4.5k was spent on the map last year.

Although the Burnham Beeches events was not reflective of what most events cost it was still good value. There's a lot of good value events down London way - particularly stuff like the SLOW street o series which has given me some ideas for my return to the NE...

Sorry I didn't see the portaloos Eddie! I suppose I just managed to hold it in.