Too many Big Events

[Arnold]

I wanted to pick up on a thread running through a number of other topics - that there are too many BIG (level A or similar) events every year, which makes the quality and attendance of each of them worse than it could be.

I recently went to a Ranking Event in Austria where they have 6 weekends of them per year (12 races in total) - one each in Apr,May,Jun,Sep,Sep,Oct. I was struck by how much care and attention went into the event, from selection of a very nice arena, to childcare, to handmade prizes. I think this is because clubs have to "bid" to get one of the weekends and there are always more bidders than spaces. So a club that gets an event actually wants to hold it, and it shows. Plus all the main competitors turn up, because there's only 6 big weekends a year.

In the UK a lot of it seems to be the other way around - it's association X's turn to hold a big event and they need to oblige. Which means it's often tough to find volunteers, who might be a bit reluctant to step up because they/their club haven't really asked for anything to be put on, but been "forced" to. And it's unlikely that all the key competitors will be there, because there's so many events to go to.

The whole thing seems to be driven by the sheer number of "important" events to be organised every year which means things come round very quickly. This includes:
- BOC long / relay
- BOC middle/sprint
- BOC night (ok maybe more for specialists)
- JK
- Southern Champs
- Northern Champs
- Midlands Champs
- Welsh Champs
- Scottish Champs
- VHI
- SHI
- JHI (why these three are separate events I'm not sure)
- SINS
- Lakes 5 / Scottish 6 / Welsh 6
- Anything that is part of the UK Orienteering League
- Arguably the Compass Sport Cup Qualifiers (and Finals)

Surely there is scope for reducing this to a much smaller, but higher quality and attendance, list? Either get rid of some of them or combine. The spirit of the UKOL seems to be exactly that, except in practice they've made it worse by picking "random" events thereby increasing the confusion not reducing it.

I'm convinced that everyone would benefit from going to 6-8 weekends per year that clubs bid to host and competitors know they need to attend. Plus hundreds of smaller events closer to home.

[graeme]

Just the other day, I was looking to see when was the next big competitive event I could gear my training towards. Given that the 6-day is a holiday event, I couldn't see anything suitable in the rest of 2013. (London is the closest.)

If you want to argue there are too many big events in the spring, then I'd certainly agree! But the hard decision is which events to kill/downgrade?

But generally you are right - amateur volunteers offer to do things for the love of it. Treating them as a cheap workforce is dangerous.

[SJC]

The whole thing seems to be driven by the sheer number of "important" events to be organised every year which means things come round very quickly. This includes:
- BOC long / relay
- BOC middle/sprint
- BOC night (ok maybe more for specialists)
- JK
- Southern Champs
- Northern Champs
- Midlands Champs
- Welsh Champs
- Scottish Champs
- VHI
- SHI
- JHI (why these three are separate events I'm not sure)
- SINS
- Lakes 5 / Scottish 6 / Welsh 6
- Anything that is part of the UK Orienteering League
- Arguably the Compass Sport Cup Qualifiers (and Finals)

Surely there is scope for reducing this to a much smaller, but higher quality and attendance, list? Either get rid of some of them or combine.

As Graeme says, the hard decision is which events to kill/downgrade.
(Although I think that events that aren't popular eventually downgrade themselves.)

Would you care to put your suggestions here ?

[RJ]

Plus hundreds of smaller events closer to home.

Arnold, you are so right. The sport puts far too much emphasis on the large events.... just an historical fact.... and needs to redirect its efforts.

I very much like your idea, or at least the way they do it in Austria.

On the relevance of your final sentence.... this is key to our future. If we don't pull our fingers out and create those hundreds and hundreds of local (very local) events to attract the 'local' audience then the sport will contract further and disappear. Clubs are in the main losing membership at a significant rate and our first job is to increase participation, and from those new people we need to find new membership. Simples.

[Red Adder]

Whilst I don't disagree with the viewpoint, especially the need for only doing what volunteers are really happy to take on and the need more small, local events, this sounds very much like the idea behind the National events instigated in the 1990s. Only that died a death - possibly because they were pretty faceless and strict control over quality was never in place. Supra Regional Champs at least have an identity thats seems to mean something, though the charge is that in quality and popularity terms they often fail too.

Which comes to my main point. We as a sport are never happy with the current situation and always think a lot of what we do is wrong and so change it - and then repeat the pattern until 20 years later we to where we started. We never truly sit back and analyse what worked with the change and what failed and move forward accordingly.

[Clive Coles]

I am also in the small local event camp ~ these are the key to building club membership and cutting down on orienteering costs. Travel costs and the rising costs of event fees at the large events are what is causing orienteers to become more selective in their choice of event.

The trouble with the list of major events quoted is that each event has it's supporters. But each event at this level needs extra volunteers and resources so that they can be staged to an agreed BOF standard.

We may therefore either need to cull some altogether or agree they can be run at a lower standard with less organisational clutter .

Could for example all Area Championships be staged at level B ? The rules at this level are less demanding.

My preference however would be to scrap the Area Championships in England. The areas as such do not have a formalised set of officers or support services. instead each constituent regional association take turns to stage the event. A general groan used to go round club committees when buggins turn came around ~ we need to find another level A sized area with up to date cartography.

Midland Championships when staged in the West attract fewer orienteers from East Anglian clubs. I am sure there is a similar drop off of interest when the locations are reversed. I think I am correct in stating that most, if not all, of our English Regional Associations stage a Championship of their own ~ do we really need a level A Area Championship as well ?

I would not however cull the multiday events. These i think enjoy more general support from orienteering families ~ it becomes a "holiday".

[NeilC]

In the UK a lot of it seems to be the other way around - it's association X's turn to hold a big event and they need to oblige. Which means it's often tough to find volunteers, who might be a bit reluctant to step up because they/their club haven't really asked for anything to be put on, but been "forced" to. And it's unlikely that all the key competitors will be there, because there's so many events to go to.

The JK is our biggest and most popular annual event but I do wonder how many associations would want to bid for it. Events like BOC/BRC and Sprint/Middle are much more manageable and can even be put on by a single club. One current disincentive for clubs bidding for major events is that the partnership agreement is perceived to tax the event much too heavily. The semi-professional SSD model clearly works but it's not clear how this could be applied to other major events.

[mharky]

I also think we focus on too many "important" events. Perhaps a consequence of British orienteers, in general, always wanting to compete rather than train (as discussed elsewhere).

I think I would say that whilst the Home Internationals are important, they are not particularly big. I think they should remain separate for 2 reasons. Firstly, other than England, everyone else has juniors/veterans in their senior team on a regular basis. Secondly, the juniors deserve their own competition to feel like they are the centre of attention. Perhaps there is scope for Seniors/Vets to combine. I know there are always issues getting these events organised, but I feel that is something that needs to addressed by some sort of home-nations committee. The events can be combined with open events to make it easier to find organisers.

I'm not sure why you have put SINS as an important event, presumably just because it was UKOL this year. But as a southerner it was always the Caddihoe Chase, and to northerners it may be the Twin Peaks or White Rose. Anyway. Those are all great events that have large followings within their regions and areas.

The Scottish 6 days, Lakes, and Welsh look after themselves and are holiday events anyway. They never clash with any other UK events, so no issues.

The main issue is the lack of clarity of how the new UKOL fits in with the existing calendar.

Our main events should be:
JK
BOC L/R
BOC M/S
BOC N

2nd tier events:
Scottish
Welsh
Northerns
Midlands
Southerns

Specialist/Closed/Other:
BUCS
JIRCS
JHI
SHI
VHI
CSC Q
CSC F
Harvester

I think it would be great to have consistency between the area champs, and have the main event as a Long/Relay combination. We really don't do enough relays in this country. They are great fun, great for team/club spirit and great for new people to feel part of a club.

I think it would be great to have area middle/sprint champs, as some already do. These could be combined into a single weekend, and could clash with each other no problem.

I would have UKOL as JK, BOCs and area champs. I would leave the bigger badge events as they stand. To me the good events are the ones with names. As a southerner it was November Classic, Caddihoe Chase, Tamar Tripple. Reasonably quality, reasonably size. No need to artificially force status upon these events. In fact, I think for a lot of people UKOL means nothing compared to out well established events. The scoring would be best 7 from 13 UKOLs.

The UKRL could maybe be expanded to some veteran classes, with best 5 from 8 to score (e.g. JK, BOC, Harvester and the 2 nearest regionals, and maybe even the British Mixed sprint relay champs...)

After that it's just level C & D local orienteering.

However, I see the disadvantages of this, and could see the benefits of going the opposite way of not artificially making area champs "important" and instead granting level-A status to the big events that deserve it. But if that were the case, the area champs would have to go, as they serve no purpose.

This year we had SINS the same weekend as Scottish Champs. That was a bit daft. Even if it's only a small number of people who had to pick one or the other, we should be making out events major so that large amounts of people would go to a regional champs if it was UKOL and large amounts of people would go to SINS (or equivalent) if it was UKOL. At the moment UKOL doesn't really work. It's just a spreadsheet of results from random events.

[EddieH]

I agree with Mharky that the majorevents are the JK and the various British Champs.

BOF have destroyed any status the area champs had left by deliberately? clashing them with UKOL, and incidentally have devalued the UKOL at the same time. We have to wait to see if this is valued by the punters but I suspect it will not be.

The only area champs that should remain are the Scottish and the Welsh, but these will generally only be valued by the people of thse nations. (The Welsh has never been a major British event).

The home internationals tack onto existing events, and can't really combine because of the difficulty of finding accomodation, (unless we go back to the good old days when local members offered to put up competitors in their own houses).

So as I see it if you think its a problem its because you have inflated all these events including SINS!!!!! and the holiday events in your own mind.

One intersting thing about the Austrian example is that they sound like 2 event weekends which definitely increases value and desirability. We have that with BOC long/relay and BOC sprint/middle plus JK (4 days). The British night is far less attractive to me as it rarely combines with anything really attractive.