WTF?
And then you pay for the uniform on top of paying for the race and getting there. Was thinking about this now that kids are almost out…but damn! That hurts for so little that the user actually sees.
if you would like to fund raise for the USAT is an ambassador you now have to pay them $250
Do other countries athletes pay these fees?
We’re going to have a front page story about USAT’s Platinum membership and the meeting they had with some of their members tonight tomorrow morning.
I was on that Zoom. A case study in how to not communicate membership changes. Looking forward to the ST perspective…
Upgrading to the platinum + the race fee is still less the kona for worlds. And you have to pay kona at roll down.
Other then no one likes paying more… Why is this different?
Upgrading to the platinum + the race fee is still less the kona for worlds. And you have to pay kona at roll down.
Other then no one likes paying more… Why is this different?[/quote
Because it is not Kona!
We’re going to have a front page story about USAT’s Platinum membership and the meeting they had with some of their members tonight tomorrow morning.Should have bought the Lifetime membership!
Ha I think I did the lifetime the first year it became available. I figured at 35 I had to do this for ~25 years an then it was $50 a year, so I was “saving” money. I hope/assume I’m good to go but with how few people I think took the Lifetime membership, they may say “sorry out of luck”.
You can download their 2022 financials. They “lost” $3 million last year. I didn’t dig too deeply, but it wasn’t from inflation simply making things cost more. There was some of that, buy a couple of the line items were massive increases in expenses.
Did their meeting address this? Was there some new program or expenses they felt it necessary to undertake? If it’s simply they decided to buy gold plated insurance plans for their employees and need to raise membership rates, that’s pretty unacceptable.
If there’s enough of a backlash could it lead to a change in leadership? Is there a recall option in the governing rules?
All that being said, I’m not distressed on the increase if it’s for legitimately good reasons. Sometimes we all want to hold the feet of those closest to us to the fire simply because we can easily identify the target and complain.
If there’s anything I don’t really mind spending money on its an organization that represents triathlon and tries to grow it.
What I don’t want to have done is spent a bunch of money on it that gets fritters away by useless visionless resource consuming bureaucrats so when the time comes for real investment or a rainy day there’s nothing left. I hope the leadership is not this type, but I do have my worries based on some of the things I’ve seen.
Upgrading to the platinum + the race fee is still less the kona for worlds. And you have to pay kona at roll down.
Other then no one likes paying more… Why is this different?
Well, I don’t want to undercut Ryan’s upcoming story, but there are a number of differences. To me, the biggest issue is that they are changing the rules in the middle of the game. If you are qualified for Worlds in Townsville or Malaga, you have already bought (probably nonrefundable) airfare, made lodging plans, and paid USAT a $100 ‘spot fee’ plus ordered parade kit (2024 race kit isn’t available yet). When we qualified in summer of 2023 for these events, the rules (and costs) were pretty clear. Now, as it stands today, USAT requires a $400/year membership to go to Worlds, including the 2024 Worlds that we qualified for under different financial ‘rules’. To be clear, the plan was to reduce the $400 by $100, if you have already paid the spot fee. And they are willing to credit unused membership toward the ‘Platinum’ membership. So, for me, it’s really on the order of a $250 extra cost. That’s unpleasant, but not a deal breaker. Here is the dealbreaker - the approach used here totally takes advantage of the athletes that are most committed to USAT as members of Team USA. I simply can’t trust USAT leadership now. What happens if I get to AUS and, at the team hotel, a USAT official says ‘Hey, we are still in the red, so if you want to race in Worlds later this week, it will be another $300 (or whatever)’. Unlikely? Sure. But the threat of ‘pay more or no Worlds’ after the financial ground rules are in place erodes trust - and make no mistake the ‘pay more or no Worlds’ is the intended, designed, social engineered threat to maximize compliance and revenue. There is a LOT of ‘we are all Team USA’ rah rah. I don’t think that USAT and Team USA athletes are on the same team now.
Btw, I’m one of the people who is going to Townsville… Maybe I’m the exception it just does not bother me. Sometimes you need to do unpleasant things… I’m a leader at a turn around and know we do things that sets of customers dislike, to try to ensure we can continue to serve the bulk of customers long run.
My guess is, no one took it lightly, but they needed to act(and I’m still as excited as I was the first time to go to race at worlds
No, that insurance increase is the insurance FOR USAT to provide liability coverage to members, race directors, coaches, etc.
But it was a little shocking to see the paltry amount from USOPC against the high performance budget.
Article here. https://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/USA_Triathlon_s_Massive_Membership_Mistake_8874.html
Just check to make sure they do not auto-renew you at platinum for the next year though.
You made a good point about cost reduction.
It’s fine to need to pay a little more, but to punish the super fans like you said to pay for extra unnecessary spending isn’t right
I’ll be curious to see if there is any negative impact on participation at that level at all. Sure they could have communicated the changes better and the reasoning behind it, but at the the end of the day the hard core athletes who want to compete as part of Team USA are likely not going to let adding a couple hundred dollars to their very expensive annual triathlon budget stand in their way. Lots of anger and outrage, but I would bet the vast majority will ultimately still sign up. USAT knows their demographics - just surprised they didn’t start these hikes earlier at a more modest interval year over year to get here.
I liken this to a company that took away PTO and added billable hour requirements to thousands of their employees. The messaging of the changes was a train wreck and the outrage was incredible. The threats, the internal message board outrage, the online threads, etc. End of that FY - voluntary turn over at an all time low for the company and significantly lower than the rest of the industry. So what happens in the next FY - health care contributions slashed. Cycle starts over with the outrage, but voluntary turn over ends up even lower.
Now there are a lot of factors that impact the outcome of the example above which is also obviously tied to people’s income, but the cycle is very similar and I assume the reality will be too from a net loss perspective. I don’t agree with the approach or the poor communication, but it’s almost a let’s see what we can get away with approach (even if not intentional). If this ultimately doesn’t impact participation in any appreciable way, then it will be interesting to see what’s next.
To me I think the USAT members who go to the world’s- there are the ones that will go every year, regardless of the “fees”. If that’s who you are banking on to basically keep the boat afloat, ok. But I think there are some athletes who 1 time in their career see “team usa” as a huge fun trip, BUT you can’t price hike them out of wanting to splurge on that trip. So if the idea is to basically double down on the membership who can afford the what 10x price hike…that’s not really sustainable is it, in an sport that is losing members yearly?
Btw, I’m one of the people who is going to Townsville… Maybe I’m the exception it just does not bother me. Sometimes you need to do unpleasant things… I’m a leader at a turn around and know we do things that sets of customers dislike, to try to ensure we can continue to serve the bulk of customers long run.
My guess is, no one took it lightly, but they needed to act(and I’m still as excited as I was the first time to go to race at worlds
What would your customers do if you changed the prices after they had already made an order with a down payment? My guess is you wouldn’t be in business long.
USAT should have honoured what they had in place for this coming year and brought this in next year.
No, that insurance increase is the insurance FOR USAT to provide liability coverage to members, race directors, coaches, etc.
But it was a little shocking to see the paltry amount from USOPC against the high performance budget.
Article here. https://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/USA_Triathlon_s_Massive_Membership_Mistake_8874.html
So did the meeting point to the last CEO has a scapegoat for creating this financial mess? Or did they address how they were going to get out of it other than charge a small group of their best customers a massive amount more? It would seem the easiest thing to do would have been to point out that the prior leadership spent USAT into a pretty big hole and they need to figure a way out of it.
The contention in the room from leadership suggests a few things, USAT sees this as an “us vs them” dichotomy. To some degree that’s inevitable, but really an organization that claims to be of and for the membership needs to orient itself in a way that doesn’t see other members not in leadership as part of the problem. They should have approached the community with these possible increases as a solution to the problem before rolling it out. Get everyone on board via a consensus style leadership that gets everyone in the room looking at the problems and how to solve them. Demonstrating that rate increases are necessary, but also that cutting expenses is also part of the process is important – even if the expense cuts are uncomfortable and other cases symbolic.
But let’s say that USAT said the large deficit at 2022 was the result of trying to grow the number of university clubs/coaches to expand college and high schools offering triathlon programs? Well that’s somewhat of a gamble, but it’s at least a vision to drive future triathlon growth. The only issue I have with that is it’s all short course draft legal racing, which has virtually no market. But still, if enough colleges and high schools get on board, it will obviously help grown triathlon overall. And that’s a reasonable place for an organization like USAT to invest its resources. Build that base of programs up and hope some of the funding from schools can take it over once it’s seen as a success. In general, I worry that money and effort is being spent on a dead end, even with great athletes in the program. Taylor Knibb should be the poster child for USAT and they should have a PR firm getting her in front of various news & talk shows with her successes, but even when the program has a massively successful athlete, they aren’t doing much with it (so it seems). Spending all the money they do dreaming of Olympic gold is great, but they’ve got a 2x world champion who has dominated so many races and they can be spinning and selling that story right there. The point being – why develop pro talent at all, if when you have potentially one of the greatest of all time in growing in your stable and you aren’t doing anything with it?
Why not let “the market” of hungry athletes willing to sacrifice to rise to the top on their own merits fight their way into the races and then use USAT funds to reward those that do well and leave out in the cold and bankrupt those who don’t? That’s a hard, cold, perhaps heartless approach, but is the USA really worse off if triathlete Olympians are self funded through loans, endorsements, youtube hustling, and so on? Why is it unacceptable for an Olympian but ok for an Ironman? I’m not saying USAT does nothing with pro funds, but it doesn’t seem like an impossible idea to reallocate it’s spend to simply pay for desired placement and let the market of willing professionals go for their dreams and find a way to fund them.
No, that insurance increase is the insurance FOR USAT to provide liability coverage to members, race directors, coaches, etc.
But it was a little shocking to see the paltry amount from USOPC against the high performance budget.
Article here. https://www.slowtwitch.com/...ip_Mistake_8874.html
I find it quite telling that the CEO didn’t even care to be in on the meeting. That’s the very first cut I’d make. Salaries there are nuts for the little they do.
The question is why try to close the revenue gap in this way? Surely they were aware of this operating loss last year. We’re they just hoping it would resolve itself? Hope is not a plan.
The more palatable option is to say the entry fee for the world team is going up by $300 in addition to regular license fees going up to $100. Of course this delays the income by ~1 year.
I can see two possibilities internally. 1-They did not realize the implications of their net losses and had to slap together a quick money making scheme to cover their loans. 2-They knew exactly what was going on and rolled out this plan in a calculated manner. The quick money influx provided by their move suggests that they are in need of money right now and did not realize the full implications of their financial state. Troubling.