Extortionate Pricing Discourages New Orienteers

[roadrunner]

Wouldn't it actually have cost £13 rather than £12, unless she has her own Emit card (which seems unlikely)?!

I totally agree with what Martyn said (and was about to post the same views myself), except that (depending how you interpret the rules) the BOF levy could be less for the colour coded courses, so there might be a justification for a difference in price of £1 or so.

As far as the November Classic is concerned, they never used to offer colour coded courses anyway, just one (or two) wayfarers courses. I think this was because of a limit on numbers that was imposed on them. Maybe that's a reason for not making the colour coded courses too attractive to enter?

[awk]

It's interesting that every time prices at events are discussed, somebody quotes road/adventure races and says how cheap orienteering is.

Orienteering at £12 for a White/Yellow course is not cheap. Just because other sports are more expensive, it doesn't make orienteering a cheap sport, just less expensive than these more expensive sports.

In fact at anything beyond the most simple events, orienteering is not cheap. That doesn't mean it's a ripoff - there will often be totally legitimate reasons why events cost as much as they do, and it may indeed be good value, but we mustn't delude ourselves, orienteering is an expensive sport to sustain at anything other than the most basic levels, and we need to cut our cloth to recognise that.

This is especially so now that BOF is arbitrarily (and in my view totally illegitimately) requiring clubs to advertise their events at £2 (20%+) more, simply to give BOF members an apparent discount.

[roadrunner]

Orienteering at £12 for a White/Yellow course is not cheap.

That would be true - but how many adults run white or yellow? The junior rates were still high, but not as high as that.

As to the extra money we're supposed to charge non-BOF members now, I've never understood why clubs should keep that rather than passing it on to BOF (which is the way with athletics). If the money's supposed to cover the costs of the things BOF does that benefit all orienteers (and please let's not get into a discussion of what they are and whether they're worth £2), then shouldn't BOF be the ones that get it?

[awk]

That would be true - but how many adults run white or yellow? The junior rates were still high, but not as high as that.

A few do, when starting. Same comment still applies if an Orange or other colour course. £12 is expensive.

If the money's supposed to cover the costs of the things BOF does that benefit all orienteers (and please let's not get into a discussion of what they are and whether they're worth £2), then shouldn't BOF be the ones that get it?

No, because it isn't supposed to cover the costs of the things BOF does. That's called the levy. This was a purely arbitrary figure put up to create a difference between a BOF member's fee and a non-BOF member's fee, and has no basis on any costings. The £2 figure was being bandied around when I was at BOF, which is now over 3 years ago, and it had no financial basis then (and had the professional staff strongly recommending to BOF officers that the system wouldn't work longer term). Anyway, we certainly don't want to go down the route of copying athletics!!

What we have now is BOF requiring clubs to advertise events at 50-100% higher fees than it actually costs the club to put on, with levy and now non-BOF member's fee added on to the club's costs. I actually don't begrudge the levy, but this extra requirement is farcical, artificial and counter productive.

[Mark T]

Well said Awk.

Perhaps someone from SOC could tell us how they justify a fee of £12. Maybe its due to the event being a selection race! A good way to make some extra money for the club but not a good advert for the sport.

Vote with your feet and do NOT go to this event. If we keep paying high fees then clubs will keep increasing the fees. We need more people in the sport and this is not the way to get them. I thought it was meant to be the family sport, it's fast becoming the sport of the rich.

I thought the £2 extra, as it is not a discount, did not start until January.

Clubs should boycott this mad idea.

[MikeWinter]

Is there any justification for a graduation of fees across colour courses? I recon that if we turned out as a family and were all spending £8-10 each to run (obviously a bit less for the kids and with the built in BOF reduction) it will start to impact on how often we go. Clearly you get better value for money running a brown vs a white or yellow course. The simpler courses need to be low cost to encourage families to introduce their kids to the sport and for those trying it out for the first time. Not sure how you'd scale it mind.....

I understood there was additional admin involved in running a regional event, which explained the higher fees..

Any thoghts on either of these.

[Nails]

no no no, seeing some kind of "value for money" for running a brown course at a colour coded is to use awks word - farcical. When will people realise that getting extra distance seldom relates to value.

With the introduction of sprint and middle people need to appreciate that a 3km course won in 13mins is just as much "value for money" as a 15km course! -at the end of the day its the area/planning/event that matters.

Colour coded events should have a lower price as at badge/national/champs events you are paying for quality area/planning/event.

I agree that the entry for CC at NClassic seems to be excessive, but you have to remember that the area/planning/event as a whole is what you are paying for!

[SeanC]

Assuming your car costs 20p a mile (your only driving a clio - http://www.whatprice.co.uk/car/running-costs.html) the cost of travelling to a regional event 100 miles away (£40) is going to easily exceed the entry fees (unless you pack 4 into your Clio). Orienteering's cheaper in Crawley though. The local club, SO, provide events within about 25 mile radius most weekends in the year saving £30 a time on travel costs. Their local events are definately not at a basic level. The ones I've been to have been well planned and organised, have electronic punching, pre-marked maps, a competitive league and yellow to blue courses. For 80% of orienteers 80% of the time this is all they need. If you outgrow this standard or you seek more challenging orienteering, then you need the highest quality events and its reasonable to expect to pay more in travel and entry fees, this is normal in most sports.

If we want to save costs to orienteers, rather than quibbling over a few quid on the entry fees the orienteering community should be looking at how to get local events of this standard and frequency throughout the country. And its reasonable to expect that the development work required is likely to cost some money. When parting with the money, remember it will be cheaper in the long run. The alternative is to move to Crawley.

BTW, I see there are RDO jobs advertised on the BOF website.

[roadrunner]

Thanks Awk for clarifying things about the surcharge - this membership thing's been running so long that I got confused between some of the ideas that fell by the wayside (£2 "day membership" of BOF being one) and what we finally ended up with.

And that being the case, I totally agree that asking clubs to impose a fixed surcharge for non-BOF members is crazy - and advertising events at the higher rate, while probably less likely to cause arguments on the day, may well put people off, given that the vast majority are going to get the members' discount.

£12 would be a lot for an orange course too - I think the obvious conclusion is that the event isn't really aimed at adults who don't want to run age-class courses, and in fact I wonder why they offered colour-coded courses at all; with the ageless system, juniors at least can run whatever course they like.

[MikeWinter]

Nails, I understand your point about value for money being related to the area and planning, but there is an element to do with basically how much entertainment/enjoyment one receives for the cost. There has to be a balancing point between how much time you spend actually doing the orienteering compared with how much it costs to enter and how much it costs in terms of time and money in order to get to the event in the first place.