Advertising events under new membership scheme

[ifititches]

I'm glad an ex-BOF employee has now raised the issue of clubs with large bank balances, as I've often heard this voiced by BOF employees on the committees I sit on.

It always worries me that there may be an assumption that there is ready money to be squeezed out of clubs and regions; I realise my club/region may be atypical, but I attend the AGMs of both whenever I can, and never hear about huge balances in bank accounts, only about enough to just keep things ticking over and make grants to support juniors, training and updates of equipment.

I don't doubt that there are clubs with large balances, and would hope that they are ploughing it back into development, but I also hope (and trust) that BOF will take care that the clubs that run a tight ship are not wrecked financially by developments designed to mobilise funds from clubs overall. It's a difficult tightrope for BOF offficers to walk, so good luck to them!

[lincolnsteve]

Sunlitrun I think you need to be clearer with your facts when you post on here. LEI did indeed make £2,500 profit from events but overall the club lost a substantual amount last year (all this is avaliable from the LEI website) Far from proving that events are too expensive maybe the LEI example you quote shows that some clubs need to charge more to just break even. Please dont disallusion readers on here that clubs are making loads of money when in fact that is not the case.

As for C3's, I have ran at some pretty poor ones recently yet some of the C4's I have ran at have been stunning. It makes me wonder why people go to so many regional events if the quality is getting poorer, is it just to get ranking points? it certainly cant be for the competition (on most of the courses)

[Mrs H.]

and that was the exact point I was making in my column (not letter), Regional events should be much fewer and more special, and there should be much more local events ( and by that I don't mean park races)

It would be easier for me to put my money where my mouth is if certain members of the family didn't have selection agendas. the selectors don't make it easy - no matter what they say - perhaps the dedication to traipse all over the country is part of the selection process - last summer the tour selection races for all ages didn't even co-incide the 14s had to go to the 0007 and the 16/18 somewhere aleas Lake district/Scotland can't remember.

As for reserves and bank balances - people seem to have very short memories round here. A working balance has to be maintained - and if a club is after new SI or new mapping (remember many grant schemes demand that a club match the grant) then they ned to accrue some capital.

As for how much that is - it is simple none of BOF's business and never has been.

[IanD]

A club with a large bank balance can risk making a loss on an event, so event entry fees can be pitched at a level which is expected to make only a small profit. "Profit" is not a dirty word in this context, equipment such as tents, kites, punches needs to be replaced from time to time; it is event profits that fund this.

A club with nothing in the bank must set entry fees to ensure that each event at the very least covers its costs. This means breaking even if rain on the day leads to lower than expected entries. Otherwise it risks bankruptcy. Consequently entry fees have to be pitched at a level which would, given fair weather, produce a substantial profit.

Therefore lower club bank balances will lead to more expensive events.

If there are clubs/events which are too expensive due officials charging unreasonable expenses (as some have implied above) then that is another issue, but it's nothing to do with club bank balances. Personally I doubt this happens anywhere. I can certainly assure you that it doesn't happen at my club.

We do sometimes have to pay land access fees which are far higher than we would like. But look at it from the landowners perspective. Adventure racing, professionally organised, with its entry fees in the region of £50, pays far higher land access fees for, to the landowner, pretty much the same sort of thing. The landowner of one of our best areas is highly reluctant to let us back onto his land because he once nearly lost an adventure race having already committed to us. To him, adventure races are worthwhile; what he gets out of us is mere pocket money.

Incidentally, I see nothing wrong in principle with a club charging a flat fee for all their events of a given standard. Since costs fluctuate wildly between different areas, some events would make a big profit, others a big loss. Only a club with a big bank balance could do this, and no doubt some would complain about the big bank balance and the big profits, while keeping quiet about the big losses.

[SeanC]

Am I the only one find sunlitrun's comments about John Morris unpleasant and unnecessarily personal?

Did some digging on the internet for government statistics and found : http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/e ... 26_CPI.pdf. This summarises inflation for the past decades. The category orienteering fits into seems to be "leisure services" (which admittedly could cover a variety of non-sporting activities!).The "leisure services index" for 2004 compared to 1987 is 253. Statisticians please correct me, but doesn't that mean that the price of leisure services in the UK has increased by about 2 and a half times since 1987? How much were event fees in in 1987? I'm guessing about £3 for colour coded £7 for regional (but please correct me if you have any real data). If event fees had kept pace with the rest of the leisure sector prices would now be:

colour coded: £7.50
regional: £17.50

My point is that newcomers entering the sport now will find the cost much less compared with other leisure activities compared to when the sport was booming, so the modest increased event fees can't explain membership or participation declines.

[ifititches]

Uh, oh, re-reading my post from last night I can see that if you only look at first paragraph it looks like I've got a downer on clubs with large balances, whilst the rest of it made it clear (I hope) that that's not my position.

My point was that I (personally) usually hear the large balance arguments coming out only in committees, and usually from BOF employees, and that I object and raise the issue that this is not true of all clubs, including some very active ones in the W. Mids. The fact that Andrew, as an ex-BOF employee, is now saying it on this forum opened the door (for me anyway) on discussing it more fully.

Now, whether it's BOF's business or not, I can't say.But if it is the clubs with large static bank balances making the most "robust" comments to BOF officers when any suggestion is made that those finances could be mobilised for development and/or if it is those clubs that go on charging the high fees that seem to bring grief to so many BOF members, it will probably be the sport in general (seen by the public as BOF) that gets the flak. And representing the sport to the public and the politicians is definitely BOF's business

I like to think that the above isn't true of any club in the UK, but lots of postings on here seem to suggest it is

[RJ]

Most people involved in orienteering moan about the cost of events to their friends and club mates but no one ever does anything about it.

There was a time..... seriously though.... when we had twice as many people in the sport competing at all the events, and the economics worked fine. 750 at a C3 gave you a healthy surplus and allowed for the update or purchase of a new map. Nowadays, with 350/400 it just doesn't make the margin you need, therefore the increase in fees.

There is a 'healthy feeling' at the moment out there amongst the public.... loads of people are trying sports and quite a few are coming to orienteering, as we have noticed. If we focus on this enthusiasm for activity that is evident then clubs can expect increased membership, increased participation and then a gradual lowering of fees (in relative terms).

Sure clubs have large bank balances.... but it is 'activity' that matters.... the turnover during a year in an active club will be far more than their bank balance; certainly in our case! The difficulty is in finding 'acceptable' (to club members and their committee) ways of spending that money. Development, and there are lots of models and ideas, need to be carefully chosen for the particular club. Just saying that you spend your money on promotion and advertising may not be the answer!

Sunlitrun.... folk in committees and in the general membership of clubs are exactly like you.... they want a cheaper sport.... and committees spend a lot of time trying to achieve that, but with the responsibility of keeping their own club afloat/alive and sustainable!

[johnloguk]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like I'm in a school playground sometimes. You know, when teacher asks "who did this?" and 50 kids all reply "I didn't do it"! But we all know that someone did.

All the points people have made are true in their experiences. But no one is going to come on Nopesport and admit that their club overcharges, or that they personally are lazy buggers who rarely volunteer for anything, or that their club pays out too much in expenses, or that their club is sitting on a tidy bank balance for a "rainy day" not for development etc. But if we are really honest we know that this goes on and that these people/clubs do exist.

It doesn't mean that the vast majority of orienteers aren't genuine hard working, hard volunteering, altruistic people, and it doesn't mean that most clubs aren't well run creative organisations working to further our brilliant sport.

We have a big consensus developing too. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that most of us here believe that there are too many overpriced (for what they are) C3/C2 events, and these should be replaced with better value for money, lower key, more enjoyable local events. Keep the high quality C3/C2 events, these are the real class acts we all love, but as many have said, the most enjoyable events are often the cheap local ones.

By the way, Mike Hamilton clearly believes in the last paragraph too and he said so when he came to our regional meeting the other day. So if Mike Hamilton, Mrs H and most of those posting on Nopesport agree on something the world can't be too bad a place, scary though

[SJC]

>>>> and that was the exact point I was making in my column (not letter), Regional events should be much fewer and more special, and there should be much more local events ( and by that I don't mean park races)

and this is happening. Top class Regional events such as the Caddihoe Chase and November Classic are still attracting good numbers of entries, whilst the less attractive ones aren't. Clubs realise that there isn't much point putting on a low quality Regional event with few entries and stop putting them on. A process of natural selection will see this trend continue.

[ifititches]

agree with you Sean that the post by sunlitrun (may the sun ever shine on you) about John, was unecessary and offensive and didn't take the discussion on at all

I personally don't like the singling out of clubs either, and admire Stodgetta's defence of WCH, a club which clearly gives a huge amount back to its members.

I do agree with Mrs H about the problems of junior selection races, but currently it seems to be fuelled by the shortage of juniors wishing to take the sport to that level. If there were more you could maybe legitimately run more of the early process at regional (or even district) level, only asking the best from that group to go through to more head-to-head competition at national level,( maybe even with some financial help from club or region at that point) But the numbers at present really don't allow that to happen.

It's also my impression that the juniors at that level across the country want to compete with each other on good terrain as often as possible, and this is really only do-able at the bigger, more expensive events. Coupled with land availability and school exams this currently leads to a hugely difficult and expensive timetable. I have lots of sympathy for parents in that position, although i think it's even worse for those of children good in other sports. Thinking of the 4am (sometimes daily) starts for swimming and ice-skating training for instance

[Mrs H.]

Hoorah - bring it on - and the most special of them all will be next year's Springtime in Shropshire It will be mega-fun.
BTW - Yes Sean - personel comments re JM were well out of order - even if he does have dubious taste in curtaining (see Focus profile a few months back).

I'm pleased to see MH has taken up my idea re-local events it's just his emphasis on Park races which disappoints me. BUT - i must say as I have been putting renewal reminders in with the magazine this month I wonder how many of my MADO recruits will stump up the extra £10 to become local BOF members or whether they'll say "ta ta - it's been fun"

[johnloguk]

I wouldn't over emphasise MH's love of Park Races, and he can speak for himself, but I certainly don't think he would like to see them in preference over a MADO style initiative, none of us would (I hope). But for clubs who haven't got the terrain MADO has, like ours, a well planned series of Street-Os and Park races could be a fantastic recruitment tool alongside other more "traditional" events.

Reading this thread I've been thinking that if only orienteering was a fashionable sport we could charge £20 for a C4 and people would still flock to it! Otherwise why do people happily pay hundreds of pounds to join a gym, or the higher fees of adventure races and triathlons?

That is a bit tongue in cheek so don't shoot me down for it, but there is a serious marketing point here. Some companies deliberately target a certain market by inflating their prices, designer lables being an obvious example. A lot less people would buy an Armani suit if they sold for £50, people would take the p*** like the fashion police do with George at Asda. Try and sell a t-shirt for £2 and everyone thinks its rubbish, charge £20 and the same people think it must be quality and but it! People pay daft money to drink in certain bars/clubs, where the beer is rubbish and expensive, but they think they are being fashionable and are better people for being there. If only we could make orienteering fashionable we'd make a mint! But on the other hand I don't really want to be surrounded by shallow, posing, posturing idiots so ignore all of the above

Maybe this is the real value of Park Races though? It is the branch of orienteering that arguably has the most chance of appearing exciting/appealing to the general public and more importantly the media.

SinS 2007 will be great, so will the Lincolnshire Bomber 2007

[Becks]

That City Chase rubbish was £50 to enter, and you got very little infrastructure or razmatazz for your money. Not sure whether it was per team or per person, but either way, it makes even our JK prices seem pretty impressive.

[Adventure Racer]

But then the City Chase was in London, and you can easily get away with those sort of prices there. In fact this is an issue with AR as a whole - because the target audience is largely affluent city based type people, they can afford the sort of prices that are charged - it is promoted as an outdoor lifestyle type thing. What's more, people don't tend to do AR every week - even I've only done 7 events this year. Meanwhile, pushing the other end of the pricings for AR are the much larger costs involved, starting with the organisors being professional, and having to pay for kit and people to be transported half way round the country. Orienteering is a lot more local - even for big national events, the organisors are still local volunteers.

Meanwhile I'd not consider £20 for a C4 good value for money when I could get less than an hour for that, as something like the Rat Race is £80 (I had to look that up ) for normally at least 9 or 10 hours.