Discussion: Details?

Hey QOC guys and gals,
Are any details available for the event? Do you know when the sprint will be run on Sat.? I would like to use freq. flier miles and need to make reservations soon. Thanks.
NTOA guy

Hopefully we will have more info out and registration open real soon. Here are the critical schedule details:

Friday Sprint Starts: 1300-1630
Saturday Middle First Start: 1000
Saturday Sprint Relay Start 1430
Sunday Long First Start: 0900

Note that only the Middle and Long are A-events.

The Sprints are part of the 2009 sprint series, I believe.

Thanks! Very helpful.

How about sanctioning the sprints as "A" meets? Although I always enjoy running in QOC meets, it would make it much more attractive to attend if the sprints were sanctioned as well.

Does that mean that only the Middle and Long are the Intercollegiate placing events?

Does that mean that only the Middle and Long are the Intercollegiate placing events?

That is correct, Jordan.

$5 of each sprint fee will be donated to the US Team

This is nice, and should set an example for other clubs.

In the past we've been able to get two adult orienteers in the family registered for the entire weekend for less than, or somewhere around $100. Here, to register for all events will cost $86 EACH, with the USOF discount. [Granted, $10 of this would go to the US Team (assuming running 2 sprint events).]

The overall pricing structure looks record-setting for US events, in my experience. How did you come up with those prices?

There seems to be two sprints on Friday. So there is another $15 for a total of $101/person. Perhaps this is the first sign of the "Recovery Program", get those funds circulating.

I guess no one else is stepping up to answer this, and I know the Meet Directors aren't monitoring AP, so I'll take a chance to pour some liquid (you decide: water, or, lighter fluid?) on this by adding that:

1. The entire QOC Board surveyed >5 major A'meet entry fees from over the last 2 years, including our 2007 US Champs, and looked at our costs, before then heading into a long discussion including folks who favored lower - and higher - prices, before eventually voting to approve the fee structure you now see;

2. As Janet correctly points out, the cost over the 3 days if you enter every race as an adult is $76 to QOC and $10 to the US Team. What needs to be added to that perspective, however, is that this cost covers 4 races, and not the more typical 3 or even 2. [Should I add that the average 5K or 10K road race registration fee is more than what this averages out to per race?] Furthermore, since this is the Intercollegiates, the expectation is that many entrants will be paying the Junior registration price, which is 1/2 of the adult price.

Combining points 1 and 2: the guiding principle for the QOC Board was to set a fee structure that is pretty likely to almost exactly balance income with expenses, while helping to support the Intercollegiates, Juniors, and the US Team.

By the way, the vetters have been saying how beautiful the woods are, so this should be a great event!

The vetters have also been saying the meet fees are too high.

Its true you are expecting more juniors to attend, but those juniors aren't displacing the non-junior orienteers. They will be in addition to. This is a regular A-meet after all. By the way, with road races you are typically getting a shirt of some kind with each race. You won't be getting 4 T-shirts with your entry fees for this meet. Or even one.

These early deadline fees are 30% higher than the average per-day price for other A-meets this spring. I've seen the budget for this meet. If you can't break even using more reasonable meet fees then you probably aren't spending the income wisely. There is also no justification for the steep late deadline fees either. The map and base were produced entirely in-house, with only a nominal cost for the raw data. The courses are finished and all the locations have been thoroughly vetted. The maps will be laser-printed. There may be some higher than normal busing/parking costs to cover, but I just don't see where the rest of the money is going.

How about this as a compromise: make the proposed USOF discounted fees ($28/$15) be the regular fees, making the discounted fees $25/$12. That's still higher than the going average ($4, 20% higher than the next-highest advertised early-deadline fee this spring), but should be more than enough to cover costs - maybe even make a little profit - and not discourage people from attending.

$23/$12 (USOF) for adults would be on the mark.

Much of the work has already been done...still lots to do. Would hate to make all this effort and have fewer people take advantage of it because the price is too high.

The fees are too high for juniors as well as adults. I just compared them to 2 other meets we are hoping to attend this year. The adult/junior fees per day for the other events are 24/12 and 22/10. I don't understand why the Intercollegiates are 31/15.50.

Wait, how old are "juniors"? To be registered as a "junior" member of USOF you're supposed to be 18-and-under, so who are all these extra juniors you plan to attract with the intercollegiates? Most intercollegiate competitors would be somewhere between 18 and 28, I'd've thought.

The generally accepted definition of "Junior" (as in Junior team, JWOC, etc) is under 21, i.e. up to M/F 20.

Please clarify the web site. The Home page states "2 sprints" plus the relay plus Middle and Long. That's five events! The Registration says Sprints cost $18 each! It is only just over two months away. Do we attend or schedule something more reasonably priced. Hate to see all the work and good woods go to waste.

Having taken a family of 4 to a ton of A events in years pasted and knowing what we generally spent for event fees, I decided to add up the cost of taking a family of 4 to this event to see how they compared. Wow, I was shocked at the cost for a family of 4 doing all 5 event and using the Mar 2 price; $303. WE NEVER came close to spending this much for an A event for our family. I think the most was in the $225- $250 range and that was for the US Champs. Now I will say that there are 5 event of which 2 are on friday and not everyone will be able to make these races but still, that only reduces the cost by $90 or a total of $213 for 3 races per person in a family of 4. With the way our present finances are we could not do it today. If you think about the other expenses for the weekend. Gas round trip$100; hotel/motel for 2 nights $125 -$175 (Motel 6 - Quality Inn); Food/meals (free breakfasts, packed lunches from home and dinner out) $200, total cost for the entire weekend - $640 (cheaper motel 3 races) $690 (more expensive hotel and 3 races). Way out of our reach at present finances. Glad the kids are older and paying their own way and not oreinteering any more.

Now as the USA Junior team administrator I have to chime in that I don't see this helping us to get more juniors involved in orienteering which is suppose to be a goal of USOF right now I thought.

Another way to look at this cost is:

Sprint winning times 15/18 mins cost $15/7.50

Middle winning times 25/30 mins cost $28/14

Long winning times (aver) 45/75 mins cost $28/14

Using the longer winning time an adult would spend $86.00 for 141 mins in the woods and the juniors would spend $34.00 for 121 mins (used orange course times) or the entire time in the woods for the family is 524 mins or 8.8 hours with the cost at $240 ( I didn't include the relay in this) or $27.30 per hour. What other family acitivity would you be willing to spend this kind of money, saying nothing about the other costs. I realize that expenses go up but I think that the entry fees for A events are going up to much and we are possibly pricing families right out of the sport.

Up here in the NE we can go to A events weekly starting with the QOC event right through to the beginning of May. With this kind of cost for a weekend how many families are going to be able to do it. I would venture a guess of NONE. That they would have to pick and choose which onces they could afford and go with them. I have not looked at the cost of the other A events this spring but I can guess that most families are going to pick the 2 cheapers ones or the ones that they would get the most for their money.

Just food for thought!

Are the maps offset or laser?

laser

You may not want to read this if you get pissed off too easily....

I am generally all in favor of higher meet fees because (1) the meet fees for any event I am traveling to are usually a rather small percentage of the total cost, so paying a little higher fee doesn't make much difference in my total cost, and (2) given the work to put on an event, I certainly hope that the club is making some money on it, so that it will be motivated to make more maps and hold more events.

So my gut reaction to this is to support the club, even if it does seem in this case that the fees are a bit high.

But then I went looking around, because I had heard not too long ago that QOC was doing rather well financially. The figure I heard was that it had something in the vicinity of $75,000 in the bank.

Now, I don't know if that is true or not. So, as I said, I went looking, and I found a copy of QOC's latest tax return (for 2007). And the bottom line was that during 2007 QOC had a surplus of about $40,000 and it ended the year with net assets (presumably cash in the bank) of right about $90,000.

Now that was a year ago. It may have all been spent. It may have been invested with Bernie Madoff. They may be about to go under. They may have lots of commitments or plans for the money. But if they are still sitting on 75K or anything like it, while at the same time getting folks a little concerned about some unusually high fees, well, it does make me wonder what the hell is going on.

Oh, here is page 1 for the tax return, the essence of it. The entire return (about 10 pages) is on Guidestar.

Your argument (1) is usually what I hear when someone mentions high meet fees. While it is true that the higher fee is a small percentage of the total cost of meet attendance, it doesn't change the fact that you are paying more for something than its worth.

You can't justify paying $9 for a $3 slice of pie just because you were also having a lobster dinner.

And then there are locals (in this case, like myself), where the meet fees are indeed the largest percentage of the total attendance cost.

QOC should have no trouble clearing a profit at $23/day in this situation. I haven't heard of any club taking a loss on an A-meet with the current average meet fees, but I suppose it does happen. I've seen the budget for this meet. Maybe I should post a copy here.

it doesn't change the fact that you are paying more for something than its worth.

Something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it, right?

haven't heard of any club taking a loss on an A-meet with the current average meet fees, but I suppose it does happen.

I should perhaps abstain from the discussion as a deeply self-interested party, but here it goes. PG is missing a (3) from his list. This reason is that current fees are reasonable equilibrium fees to support the costs of putting on an event, and maybe making a few new maps. But they do not and cannot support development programs. Absent funds for development, clubs end up serving themselves and not the general public (Eric Bone discussed this way of looking at things in detail earlier). The net effect is stunted growth.

In most other countries, the simplistic picture is that external funds/grants go towards development, including making maps, and event fees pay for the costs of events themselves.

The above is not to advocate the specifics of the approach taken in this specific case. If you want to do yield management, there's a variable in said model that roughly translates to "pissed-off customer". I would gently suggest per-family maxima, bundle discounts, and steep discounts or kickbacks for your best hopeful future customers, i.e. those younger than others. Steep price increase with time, however, is one of the features of yield management that seems perfectly appropriate in this case. If you didn't care much to pay early, but really really want it, you should be able to fork out for your enjoyment.

Well there's no lack of opinions in this thread, even if some of the data cited may be misleading! And there are definitely some deeper philosophic and strategic issues too, like those involving how orienteering grows (or not) in the US vs internationally.

In the short-term, we (QOC) need to launch the online registration system soon for this A-Meet, which you'll note we have not done yet (and the website home page says the information is preliminary). Obviously we'll review our fee structure in light of this discussion, as well as an up-to-date review of our projected expenses. Stay tuned and hold your fire if not your breath.

My hope is that we'll have the final fee structure announced 4-6 weeks before our first registration deadline (which may change slightly too).

In the longer term, the more strategic discussion about O and it's growth (or lack thereof) in various countries is one that isn't exactly a stranger to AP threads, but should still always be encouraged here as well as in the larger O'community.

My hope is that we'll have the final fee structure announced 4-6 weeks before our first registration deadline (which may change slightly too).

Especially since 6 weeks before first deadline (March 2) is about a week away. :-)

Thanks for taking another look at this issue.

The entire QOC Board surveyed >5 major A'meet entry fees from over the last 2 years, including our 2007 US Champs

It looks like this data was gathered before a severe recession hit. People making fee decisions (both at the local and USOF level) may be surprised to learn that this recession is actually affecting people, alot of people, (tho likely not the people making the decisions, or they possibly would show more forebearance on increasing race fees (both here and across the board) at this time).

Bad economic times make people more sticker price conscious. This may not be rational (as PG points out, the other costs of getting to the meet can far outweigh the race fees), but people still look at sticker prices just the same. I even know some of these people. I guess I'm in the wrong crowd. I know people who are now not letterboxing in certain parks because of $3 park entry fees. Rational or not, it is what it is.

The free market, at the end of the day, will decide if these race fees are excessive. I don't know why orienteering clubs need to make massive profits, and have massive balances, but so be it if that is the case. (Quite frankly, after all the volunteer effort put it over the past 10 years (at least on my part), I think they should be paying me to race with those fat accounts; it feels like a kick in the b****). In any case, the current community seems willing to pay up, in general, regardless of the economy; they are starved for races. Does that mean we should soak them because we can?

I'm expecting the trained economists to correct my errors. That's fine. My only actual point is to suggest that IF growth (outside present community) is a goal, THEN raising race fees on both a spot basis and across the board in a deep, severe recession is possibly a bad idea.

But this is speculation, of course. We can look at the numbers now, and after the race fee increases have been in effect for a while, and see if I'm right. Of course, I realise growth may not be a stated goal. We'll see.

The entry fee may be only one component of an orienteering weekend but it is the one you have no control over. If I don't like the cost of a motel room, I can fill it with roommates or camp. If the cost of fuel gets high, I can carpool. I can even pack my own food instead of eating out. But I'm stuck with the entry fee.

People making fee decisions ... may be surprised to learn that this recession is actually affecting people

IF growth ... is a goal, THEN raising race fees ... in a deep, severe recession is possibly a bad idea.

To my partly informed eye, the post-dot-com period of 2001/2002 was a huge boost to trail/ultra-running and adventure racing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Once people got laid off, they were free to do what really mattered to them. And they generally paid and currently pay more per hour to do these things than anybody pays or ever paid anywhere in the world to orienteer.

Seems like the entry fees have been reduced. If you sign up early, it's now $25 for an adult for each of the longer events (down from $28) and $10 for each of the sprints (down from $15). So $80 for everything (down from $101).

$80 = 5 races for an adult USOF-member registering by March 2, while $40 = these 5 races for any Junior and/or Intercollegiate competitor registering by March 2.

Also, while the Sprint prices stay the same and there's no registration deadline, day-of registration is subject to map availability so it's best if you register in advance.

Letterboxers spend hundreds of dollars on GPS units and then balk at a $3 park entry fee? I guess that is why Garmin is doing so well and cities are closing their parks.
My frames of reference are golf green fees, triathlon and Adventure Race fees so what I pay for an orienteering event has always seemed ridiculously low. We are SO lucky to have these events run in a professional way by volunteers for non-profit purposes.

Thank you for the discussion which lead to a lowering of the entry fees. I will owe someone, probably PG, a good (ie Canadian) beer.