A race organizer posted on here that most races barely break even.

If I understand your post, you got a full refund. Why do you feel they owe you more?

Sorry if abit misleading. No refund. Only offer was a £12 discount off next years race.

That is definitely complete bullshit. Races should have some kind of insurance for these kind of eventualities albeit uncommon. The participants should not be forced to pay for a service they don't receive. In the very least you should get half back so there is sharing of the circumstances.

The way I feel about this issue is if we want to do races in the future we need to think of any race fees we lose this year as sort of a down payment for races to continue in the future. RD's have lots of costs they incur over the year - most is spent well in advance of a race, so, no the race company is not pulling a fast one on you.

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What I taught. They have said they took legal advise and quoted a techical term saying their insurace doesnt cover them for this outcome. Its a 70.3 race with about 800 athletes no road closures. They have said all the money has been spent. Just finding it all abit hard to swallow.

I can understand where your coming from.Its just I had also entered a marathon next month which they just automatically deferred everyone to 2021. Just hard to see why this race couldnt do the same.

Insurance doesn't cover an "act of god".

^^This^^

I think everyone is in a jam right now. There is no time to wait and see what others will do. In other words every event director is looking to all the other event directors to find out how to manage this with no time to really figure it out. In your world the really big event director who puts on the London Marathon, London Big Half, London 10K and Westminster Mile are the ones to watch. They got the Big Half off. They pushed the Marathon to October 4th and that may not be a good date in the end. They have postponed the Mile and 10K looking for a date but also stating your entry would be valid for next year if they can’t put on the race.

This is a profitable organization with 4 extremely large events. Although they don’t want to push entries into a race next year they can afford to do that. Smaller events and even some large events simply won’t be able to afford that and will have to risk losing athletes.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

I can understand from a business perspective its a terrible situation. But this company has a dozen or so events with this being only the 2nd of the year and have called them all off. I cant see where all the money has gone. Not to have the option of maybe a better discount off next years race. I do think they will lose alot of athletes.

The money was spent on employees and signing contracts for each venue.

For me it would depend on how much a d who's running the event.

I've a £20 half marathon organised by a club and proceeds to charity that got deferred. They've actually deferred the entry to later in the year. But if it doesn't operate or I can't make the date, so be it. £20 goes to the charity. I'm good with that.

If it's $500 and 2 months out and commercial I'd hold a different view.

It seems different companies are doing different things.
The best doing full refunds or optional deferral and if you can't make it, then refund (OSB in the UK going to do that, also Lakesman) . Great on them.

Some doing deferrals. Ironman I think.

Some part refunds (eg Roth keeping 90 Euro).

Long course weekend giving 50% back.

Some taking the p1ss and refunding zero. Velo Birmingham (15000 people getting zero for a big closed road sportive where cost is between about £40 or 50 and £125 depending on package). There's NO fecking way they've spent all the budget already, 3 months out.

What would get my goat is that If i don't believe the organisers have spent 100% of the cost at this point, they are taking the piss keeping 100%. If they'd not got insurance (why not FFS) then open the books for what IS spent and then I'll go with the proportion. That would be fair if not a big corporation. .But keeping a full fee when it's several hundred dollars or pounds but nothing to back up why and what's spent to date is just piss taking. And most elephants have long enough memories- fuck over people now and they'll not trust you again in the future. And that's bad for everyone.

Just let it go.

Event directors have costs. They are sunk. You're not just paying for the day of the race. You are paying them for all their work that goes into putting on the race. If there is an act of God that takes "race day away", no one is supposed to get anything.

Consider this an act of God and just move on with life. I have paid up for many races and expect none of them to happen, but the race directors need our money or there will be no races next year. That is a lot worse than just losing races this year.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of races outside of Ironman's, get 30%,40%, sometimes50+% of their entires in the last 2 to 4 weeks. So all those entires are the icing on the cake, and where most RD's make any money, if they do at all. Those early entires just get them to the break even point on hard costs if they are lucky. And since virtually all races are cancelling early right now, they are working with just a fraction of their projected revenue, even though most the hard costs are sunk already.

No one is getting rich off your 100 bucks, it is really just helping them loose less money..

I agree they need the money to cover costs incurred. I'm fine with it if it's covering cost incurred to date.
I dont agree if they are making profit from it. Open the books, be transparent. And if that shows all my £££ has been sunk, then I'm ok.
But show me.

Force Majeure policies aren't exactly cheap, in fact likely cost prohibitive for a small race organizers. Ironman and Challenge probably have this as part of their insurance coverage, but not your local oly.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

They aren't going to show you, sorry.

Was the race sold out?

If not, they could be in big trouble financially. As Monty says, more than half of entries come in the last two months. At two months out I would (past RD for 10+ years)have 55% of my expenses incurred but only about 40% of my income generated. This did not include salaries as we volunteered for our event. The worst possible time to have to cancel an event.

Bob, at some point we all have to trust the good in the other person. If you think about the fundamental motivation to become a race director it is totally different from the motivation of an investment banker who shorts a stock. The race director is mainly in it for the joy of putting on races. If they make a thin profit, most are happy. The investment banker is in it for no other reason that purely making money.

So I think we have to trust the race directors are only doing what they are doing for the best health of continuing their business. If they could put on a race, they would. I think we need to trust them on that. They are not trying to rip us off.

Isn't that somewhat punishing your most loyal customers? Not many people signup with the intention of subsidizing a race organizer if they fail to deliver a product.

From a PR standpoint, a lot of these RD's are alienating an already niche audience. Customer acquisition costs money, these refunds should be considered an investment of keeping those customers in the future. I know that the Kinetic multisports race that cancelled on me and essentially blamed the participants, I'll never give them another cent. It's not fair to judge a company because of coronavirus, it's definetly fair to judge them on their response and messaging in regards to the pandemic.

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Team Zoot 2023

Is this LCW?

How much $$$ are we talking?

Hi. No its the grafman 70.3.

My town's 13.1 / 26.2 was cancelled and they offered 3 alternative options:

1. Virtual Race
2. Deferral to 2021 w/ a 50% credit towards 2021 race fee
3. 25% refund

I do not have issues with any because I do understand these are small local businesses as race directors and that they hardly get by as is. I, as others mentioned already, thought race insurances would kick-in so I emailed as about option #2 as I found it odd they would eat up my 2020 race fee for no race and then still change for 2021, albeit at 50% less. This is where I have an issue. A friend of mine emailed with the same inquiry and the race director gave him a deferral to 2021 without applying the 50% fee to 2021, whereas my response back was holding the line.

I am not going to argue the point with the race director but it is pretty poor for them to handle the same question with 2 different answers, especially since they bent the options they provided for all.