Recreational orienteering to become commercial?

[aiming off]

Spookster hinted the result might not look like orienteering as we know it. The full horror of how the development budget could be diverted by Sport England is slowly beginning to sink in.

http://www.cityromp.com/romp-info

Do take a look.

[frog]

Hmm, I'm keener on orienteering than caving and hang gliding at the moment.
I'm not keen on having change thrust upon me, I get enough of that at work.
I think orienteers adapt well to change and the sport has changed hugely in the past 15 years.
I just prefer the changes to come from within the sport and to be planned by the sport and am less keen on the chase the money approach, although for over 2 million I can appreciate why they do it. I do feel it's "them" doing it not us though, which is a big part of the problem.

[EddieH]

Judas Iscaariot comes to mind

[Spookster]

Spookster hinted the result might not look like orienteering as we know it. The full horror of how the development budget could be diverted by Sport England is slowly beginning to sink in.

http://www.cityromp.com/romp-info

Do take a look.

This is not about a complete change of direction in how best to use potential SE money; it's about injecting some new ideas and concepts into the mix (and many of these new ideas are coming from within the sport, but it must also be sensible to also get input from people like Limelight who have specific expertise we don't).

[awk]

[but it must also be sensible to also get input from people like Limelight who have specific expertise we don't).

It all depends. If that input enables us to go in the direction we as a sport want to go, then fine. If, on the other hand, it involves further chasing after goals/targets of others, then no it doesn't. One of the things that always worries me about our relationship with Sport England and their ilk, is that we tend to get obsessed about the money they provide, and, at least at national level, bend over backwards to obtain it at what seems like all costs. I was taught, by Peter Palmer, that what you do is decide where you want to go, and then worry about getting the money to get you there. It seems to me that all too often, we do it the other way round, with, at best, very limited results.

[Paul Frost]

As Awk implied, orienteers should be deciding which direction they want the sport to go, not letting some third party come in and say we will give you X pounds if you do as we tell you.

There was discussion elsewhere about what name we should use to describe "normal" orienteering. You could argue that WE could/should use just "Orienteering" and this other commercial body should find another name for the activity it wants to develop, as Spookster said:

orienteering here might be a very different sort of "orienteering" to that which some of you recognise!

so perhaps it shouldn't be called orienteering?

Slightly off topic, but it has been mentioned in this thread, is the introduction of charity fund raising:

The concept that sport is only worth doing if it is raising money for someone or something seems to becoming all pervasive.

I agree with John, I don't like the fact that it seems the expected reason you enter a race is to support a charity. Road races seem to have been consumed by this culture already, Triathlon seems to have avoided this so far.

[RJ]

Two fairly recent initiatives from SE where clubs benefitted from financial reward..... Club Mark and Club Nights...... have made a huge difference to the sport IMO.

Both have refocussed our efforts on improving, expanding and enhancing our clubs. The money is there to act as a carrot and the rewards are far more than just financial.

If the government are looking for ways to make the population more aware of sport and to have a go at 'anything' to begin and then to continue to get involved with 'something'.... then that is a good idea.

Then our sport and ourselves can take the opportunity to advertise and promote ourselves.... and more importantly..... examine our product and see if there is anything we can do to improve it and make it more presentable.

[DJM]

SeanC wrote:

Is there any reason why a group of orienteers can't get together and form their own business to put on these events?

Leaving aside Limelight for one moment, it might be worth exploring other ways in which a commercial approach might benefit participation ...

I was in Latvia a week ago and attended an evening event on the outskirts of Riga staged by a family concern as their main business (Magnets). Some 400 competitors turned up, each paying about £4. Nothing particularly remarkable about this ... but then I picked up their glossy leaflet which revealed:-

* the 2012/3 summer season consisted of 81 events, each within an hour of Riga, on consecutive Tue/Wed/Thu evenings, for 27 weeks
* the winter series consisted of 45 events on Saturdays and Sundays, all within range of Riga
* the leaflet gave details of how to get to every one of these 126 races
* courses were graded by length and/or by difficulty; also by age class if preferred
* each competitor has their own bib which is worn for every race
* rather like our parkrun series, full statistics of every run are available on the Magnets website

Now, all these events require a lot of maps, and it seemed that there was a full-time mapper on the payroll too. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that, at an average of 400 competitors per race, the annual company turnover is of the order of £200000 - probably an overestimate, but impressive nevertheless and indicative of the fact that a living can be made after overheads have been accounted for.

All this takes place with the blessing of the Latvian Federation, who even take a levy from the events too. Oh, and it was "normal" orienteering too!

I was really impressed by what I saw and I saw no reason why it couldn't work near populated British areas.

More at http://www.magnets.lv/?lang=en

[Gross]

Same happens across the border in Lithuania.

[Spookster]

I was really impressed by what I saw and I saw no reason why it couldn't work near populated British areas.

More at http://www.magnets.lv/?lang=en

Very interesting. More info about it, from their Facebook page:

The most popular Orienteering series in Latvia!
Description
During the last decade orienteering has become one of the most popular sports in Latvia. Many people decide to try it every year and for a lot of them our afternoon orienteering series „Magnēts” is a great opportunity to do it. „Magnēts” is a phenomena that hasn’t got a similar anywhere else in the world. Started in 1969 during the last years „Magnēts” has grown to over 120 events a year with 300-600 participants each time and includes the regular foot-o, night-o, mtb-o and adventure racing.

General information
From April to September "Magnēts" is organized every week from Tuesday to Thursday. During the winter season from October to March "Magnēts" is organized on the weekends. No matter what the weather is like you can always meet a few hundred enthusiastic orienteers out in the woods!

Additional services available:
-Childminding- a nanny will look after your children in our kindergarten while you're... out running.
-Orienteering school for the youngest participants is organized every day during the summer season from 18.30. Free for children up to 12 years.
-Cafeteria

NEW in Magnēts: (in cooperation with xRace.lv) GPS tracking devices can be rented for 1,50 LVL and live tracking can be seen on the Magnēts website.

[greywolf]

Is there any reason why a group of orienteers can't get together and form their own business to put on these events?

like this?

I know i'm not the only one who's considered and discussed the idea of setting up a business to put on (multi-day) events - and it may yet happen in the next couple of years - but a lot depends on the attitude of the existing clubs and regional/national associations and whether they perceive such initiatives as a threat to the status quo or an opportunity to develop the sport.

[frog]

The latvian stuff sounds interesting, but then gets back to Mharky's point about whether clubs should be putting on lots of low level similar events, or putting on a few quality events and doing more coaching and training events interspersed with these.
I suspect it depends to an extent on what individual clubs and the volunteers with most time in them are interested in. More people in the woods does sound a good thing, but maybe they have more woods and easier access to them. Not sure how we'd manage to fit 400 people and their cars into our areas every week. It sounds fun though and makes going orienteering a "normal" activity not something exotic and weird.

[mharky]

I didn't say anything about the types/levels of events that clubs put on (I think). What I was saying was that people would improve more if they took some events as training, rather than just "racing" round their course every weekend.

[SeanC]

Perhaps clubs and a commercial organisation would work together? perhaps with the commercial side doing the event and publicity, and the club doing coaching at the event aimed at new/intermediate orienteers*. A commercial organisation would like this as it would be adding something to their event and the clubs would gain by having a mechanism to promote their club to all these newcomers.

* if the coaching is part of the event and isn't called coaching, coaching qualifications aren't required for the insurers (eg a training course run by BLAHOK at/after the event).

[mharky]

No coaches, just technique consultants.