What is the breaking point?
For me it was $145 for a sprint tri this season in NJ
I don’t find $650 for an Ironman that bad for all you get.
But
$145 for a sprint?
$700 for an Olympic?
For people who were smart enough to make the money, sure makes us look stupid the way we spend it.
What oly is charging $700?
Demand for the top tier events is driven by the bucket list folks. It’s a lot different if you are flying to SF for a week’s vacation w/family and to do Alcatraz (as a once-in-a-lifetime event) than if you race a dozen times a year.
Look at Santa Cruz 70.3 (formerly Big Kahuna). They put an IM label on it, jacked up the entry fee by 50% and got double the number of racers.
The irony is that smaller, local events seem to be struggling. My local Tri4Fun has probably ~2/3s the entrants they did 5yrs. ago. There’s a thread here about how the Surf City HIM (same course as IM Santa Cruz, just 2mos. later) has less than 140 entrants and might not happen.
What oly is charging $700?
Escape from Alcatraz.
I think a lot of it is that the companies know who their racers are demographically. As a group we tend to be college educated professionals with better paying jobs and/or more disposable income than the average folks.
The other part, as others have pointed out, is demand and production costs. The local sprint where I used to live was $65, and that included an event T-Shirt. But there were no road closures, the swim was done in waves in the local pool, the run done in nearby trails, and nary an aid station to be found. Low cost, low overhead, and low demand.
You’re going to let me jump off a ferry next to Alcatraz and spend a week or so in SF? Here’s my money.
For all of us we make decisions about where spend our money. I gave up my cell phone because I hated the monthly fee, but I happily pay a woman twice what the phone cost me to tell me to go exercise.
I agree that many of the people in The Tri community are college educated, richer folk, and though i am well on my way to being that, i am still in the college part, so I am pretty broke. That being said, the local sprint tri is 30$. I am gonna do pilgramman in MA this weekend, the Olympic is 90. I did 100 for a multi sport race across RI (race the state RI, look it up if you haven’t heard of it, it was a blast, harder than a half by a long shot for me). Yeah, Mdot races are expensive, so i only do one or two, the rest are not and are just as good training wise, and almost as fun, (if not more fun because i have an extra 400$ to play with). Yes, most stuff is way way over priced, but, if you look you can find stuff that is relatively cheap!
The more the race cost the less likely I am to win.
Kona (0.0000001 chance of winning) - 1500 (Kona + qualifier)
Alcatraz (0.0000002 chance of winning)- $750
70.3 Calgary (0.0000004 chance of winning) - $375
State level tri (0.1 chance of winning)- $175
City level tri. (0.3 chance of winning)- $85
Super local race (.5 chance if winning) - $40
Interval workout (1 chance of winning)- 0
It is as if I am paying to get beaten. The more thorough the beating the more I pay.
And they say pros are irrelevant.
My dad ran into a nice couple the other day at the pool who were training for IM Chattanooga. They told him they paid $1,000 apiece to enter. My dad replied “you’re paying $1,000 to kick your own ass? What a business.”
What is the breaking point?
For me it was $145 for a sprint tri this season in NJ
I don’t find $650 for an Ironman that bad for all you get.
But
$145 for a sprint?
$700 for an Olympic?
For people who were smart enough to make the money, sure makes us look stupid the way we spend it.
All the North American IM races for next summer are still open for general registration. Some of them have been traditionally slow to sell out like Canada and Coeur d’Alene but LP and MT are usually pretty quick to sell out and they are still open. WTC may have reached a saturation point with the number of races on the calendar.
What oly is charging $700?
Escape from Alcatraz.
YGTBSM!!
I think we are really getting there. Back in the early 00’s I did 10+ races a year. The last couple years there have been quite a few races that I have planned to do but as they get closer my desire to do them goes away and the week befoer the race I become glad I didn’t already register and can just sleep in then go out for a hard workout for free. As the price of a sprint approaches $100 I start looking at the things I could do with that $100. If the price is going to be $100+ for a sprint or olympic it better have something going for it other than just a generic race.
Alcatraz has something completely unique and it is easy to see why it could cost more. But $700, eesh. Part of how IM still doesn’t feel quite as bad is the amount you spend on everything else around the race and travel as well as the amount of time spent in specific preparation. A local sprint has none of these things, no travel investment, no specific training for just that event, no hoopla, no vacation around it, no family coming along, no special scenery …
The irony is that smaller, local events seem to be struggling. My local Tri4Fun has probably ~2/3s the entrants they did 5yrs. ago. There’s a thread here about how the Surf City HIM (same course as IM Santa Cruz, just 2mos. later) has less than 140 entrants and might not happen.
Here is the midwest we have the same thing. Smaller races are actually disappearing. Very sad as they are 1/4 of the cost and usually require little travel, hotels, etc. Often times you can be home by lunch.
support your local grass roots races… start your own as well. screw t-shirts and medals, wet suit strippers (you cant take it off yourself!?)
What oly is charging $700?
Escape from Alcatraz.
YGTBSM!!
It’s actually $750, so you can shit even more.
Sorry, but WTC races are just gonna go UP, from now. They got bought out and the buyers will want to recoup their expenses ASAP. No way prices are going down any time soon for WTC events, and if WTC can outmuscle all the small local races for permits and hotels, etc., the squeeze will just continue.
The irony is that smaller, local events seem to be struggling. My local Tri4Fun has probably ~2/3s the entrants they did 5yrs. ago. There’s a thread here about how the Surf City HIM (same course as IM Santa Cruz, just 2mos. later) has less than 140 entrants and might not happen.
Here is the midwest we have the same thing. Smaller races are actually disappearing. Very sad as they are 1/4 of the cost and usually require little travel, hotels, etc. Often times you can be home by lunch.
Ditto for here in the southwest. It’s too bad. Some of the local sprints are still only $50, and the olys are less than $100, but participant numbers are only 50-70% of what they were five years ago.
What oly is charging $700?
Escape from Alcatraz.
It was $325 in 2007.
The more the race cost the less likely I am to win.
Kona (0.0000001 chance of winning) - 1500 (Kona + qualifier)
Alcatraz (0.0000002 chance of winning)- $750
70.3 Calgary (0.0000004 chance of winning) - $375
State level tri (0.1 chance of winning)- $175
City level tri. (0.3 chance of winning)- $85
Super local race (.5 chance if winning) - $40
Interval workout (1 chance of winning)- 0
It is as if I am paying to get beaten. The more thorough the beating the more I pay.
And they say pros are irrelevant.
Ya, i caught onto this awhile back, which is why i never race outside of an 8-hr drive from my house. If i ever get to where i am winning all of these races overall, then i’d focus on races further away:)
Hello surfNJmatt and All,
When will home grown races get more popular?
http://fortune.com/...hlon-private-equity/
Excerpts:
“This year alone, Ironman has added 24 new events, bringing its roster of events to 38 full-distance Ironman races, and more than 70 half-distance competitions known as Ironman 70.3’s (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride, 13.1-mile run). Some 200,000 athletes are set to cross an Ironman finish line this year, compared to about 60,000 people five years ago.
Ironman has one big advantage any corporation would dream of having while it ramps up: its ownership of the “Ironman” name, the result of years of defending its intellectual property. While anyone can put on a triathlon of the same distance, no one else can bestow on finishers the status of “Ironman,” a near mythical status for triathletes.”
**“People can start their own races, people can start their own series. Whether athletes will sign up for them is a very different story. And so far the answer has been, they don’t,” said Messick. **
.
As long as there is a feeding frenzy to do the branded M-dot races this is going to continue, and the independent races are going to get squeezed to the point that they can’t sustain, especially at the long course distances.
I don’t think I’m really speaking out of turn here but at the TBI conference last year Slowman and I were seated at lunch and Andrew Messick joined us - fresh from the purchase of the Big Kahuna as the SC 70.3. When I told him that I had a race on a similar course in Santa Cruz he said that wherever they go they tend to drive up the attendance at other local races. He also told us that they were going to go slow on the SC race and stick to the Big Kahuna permit permits and keep it around 1100 max. The city shut them down at 2100 athletes! The real irony is that they had to adopt my bike course because when we tried it for the first time last year the city thought it worked better in terms of neighborhood impact and made them do the same thing! When I told him my race was two months after theirs he just said something to the effect of - oh that’s too bad.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not sour grapes because of the impact to Surf City. It’s just the reality of event production, it’s just a bigger scale than with the smaller races. I’m very, very concerned about what is going on with our sport when I read a thread like this. I posted in my blog last January that my biggest fear is that when there are only the big branded races that it will not be good for triathlon, duathlon, aquathlon or any other multisport event because there won’t be any choices for athletes.
Prices are bound to go up for races because permit and insurance fees, shirts, etc. have all gone up over the years. We have raised prices on our sprint race $15 - $20 over the past ten years and about the same for our olympic race. It was just a reality to cover costs. But still…when I see things like Ironman charging twice what I charge for the same disance I know I can’t do that because nobody has that marketing muscle. Then this year we started absorbing the active.com fees so the price you see is the price you pay (remember that discussion on the forum?). Then this month active raises their fees! It’s just a constant reality in race production.
My point of this is that fees are always going to go up. They will go up proportionally less for the smaller local and independent races. The big races will charge as much as the market will bear and evidently it’s quite a lot - up to a point as we see with some of the events not filling. But 1500 people at $700 or $800 is a lot of money to have to work with and the margins are way better than the small company has by charging $200 - $250 for an independent race and having to pay pretty much the same fees (I don’t think they can really charge much more without the big brand). So they are still not sold out and will try and cram that extra 500-600 people on course. I won’t even go to the point that I think that this creates overcrowding on some course and is a serious safety impact. That’s a whole other topic.
I’ve done lots of M-dot events so don’t get me wrong, I like the excitement and the vibe as much as the next person. I will say though that I liked it a lot better when NA Sports was doing the races because they weren’t all cookie cuttered with a different color embroidery on the shirt. Those of you who’ve been around awhile know what I’m talking about because we all have some pretty cool old finisher merchandise and medals that just don’t exist anymore.
But you know who has control of the future of local racing? We do, as athletes. We vote with our wallets. If you want the independent races of all distances to stick around you have to sign up and support them. If your first race is a 70.3 or a 140.6 you’re missing out on a lot of great racing and training opportunities. They’re fun, local, have a great vibe, they don’t cost as much and are awesome places to meet people you can probably train with close to home. Great opportunities to interact with the local communities and be ambassadors for the sport. So if you only embrace the M-dots and the high priced races pretty soon your choices will be narrowed. We’re seeing it happen all over the country now as evidenced by this thread.
Okay…off my soapbox for the night.