Lurker4 wrote:
Wow!! I know I'm a weirdo who believes price is great signal in the market that helps moderate supply and demand and all that..... but Roth should umm... raise prices. If they want to stay true to their roots have a lottery to have a chance for the first 1000 slots and then, you know let the market decide.
Money and profit isn't evil and an organization can use those profits to further its mission. Especially if it's a good organization. There's all kinds of things they can do if they have 30k people wanting to sign up in 30 seconds besides just "charge more".
I mean... ummm... couldn't they they make Roth a qualified event that would even rival Kona? Would Kona have 30k signups in 30 minutes if they opened registration?
FFS, you want them to solve a non-existent problem and ruin it for most of us in the process.
Right now if you really want to race Roth, you can. Just be on time and be prepared. 30 seconds is not too little time to fill in a small online form. Apparently most of the 30k who try do so too late. Nothing is stopping them from logging in at 10:00:00. Perhaps it's the fact that you have to win the race for registration that makes the event so special. Everybody who's at Roth has had to put a little effort and attention to detail into geting on the start list.
Felix and crew know their business and if they could make
a lot more money from entry fees, maybe they would. Or maybe they know their shit. The expo is a good example. The reason it's so big is that Roth doesn't grant its sponsors exclusivity in the expo. This means that sponsors are less happy but Felix makes more money from expo fees and, most importantly, makes an impression on the athletes and fans. Pat Lemieux goes back to the States and tells ProTriNews podcast listeners that Roth's expo is bigger than the entire Kona race village (complete with transition areas, etc.). That, among other things, is how you sell out an event.
My take: if they upped the fees to, say, EUR 1000 from the current EUR 679, it would be a wholly different event. They would risk not selling out (big impact on their reputation) and the PR backlash would be a massive drag on their reputation.
As for making it a championship event subject to qualification: no, no and once again no.
"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden