Last year our lead developer, Colin Reuter, pulled some fascinating charts about how much registration fees have gone up over the last decade for the events on athleteReg. As you might expect, every line was at least a little up and to the right. That alone could certainly evoke many different feelings and responses but Colin was also sure to add lines that represented the inflation rate in the United States as well.
With that context, it’s easy to see that race fees are tracking with the rate of inflation. Yes, the evolution of certain sports like gravel cycling and trail running may be driving slightly higher increases as those become more experiential events, but generally race fees are growing on pace with inflation.
Even still, we know raising prices can be a tough decision for event directors. So let’s talk about why, when, and how you should consider increasing your fees.
Rising Costs & Simple Economics
If you feel like everything has gone up in price – from aid station snacks to police costs – please know that it’s not just you. Every event director has felt the same thing as inflation has ticked up in recent years. These increases eat into your margins and force you to ask the question we started with: do I eat these costs or do I raise my prices?
It doesn’t feel good to lose money, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t feel good to raise prices either. There are three things I’d suggest you consider as you weigh the answer to this question.
1) Every Event (and Director) is Different
It’s easy to look at charts or listen to pundits and forget just how different events are from one another. Putting on an event from a place of passion or as a hobby is a very different scenario than putting on an event to pay your mortgage. If you’re raising money for a cause, you may be able to eat costs in ways that someone can’t when they are doing this for a living. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this one. You know your event the best.
2) Increasing Prices is Not Greed
Increasing your prices isn’t selfishness, it’s sustainability. To my point above, start with your individual goals. Is your aim to break even? Then model for a break event, add up your costs, add some cushion, and back into a registration fee that makes sense for your event. A $5 increase may feel like a lot to you because you see the total value of that multiplied across your participants, but is $5 a deal breaker for your participants? Probably not. No one should feel bad about rising costs because of the rise in inflation
3) Participants Want You to Stick Around
The last point I’d make is that your participants are as eager for you to stick around as you are. I’d argue that they’d rather spend a few extra dollars each year to keep it going than save a few bucks and lose your event forever. If you’ve built an event that people care about, increasing prices to cover costs is what it takes to go the distance.
What About Donations?
A simple way to offset at least some of the increased costs you’re dealing with is through donations. This may not work for every event, but the idea is simple: give your participants the option of adding a few bucks above their usual registration fees to help support your event and cause. Keep in mind, donations are not a long term strategy and shouldn’t be used to cover large gaps in your finances, but they can make a meaningful difference for some events in the short term.
This is one of the reasons why we spent a lot of time on the donation widget in the new event page redesign we’ll be rolling out in the coming months. Instead of an open ended field, we have built in recommended amounts, a sharp new layout, and maximum/minimum donations to help frame the request and give folks a simpler, one-click way to contribute. We think this is going to be a great tool to help events drive more donations than they ever have.
Again, donations are not something that make a massive difference historically, but they’re a great option to have in your back pocket and a small way for participants to feel a deeper connection to the success of the event.
Raising Prices is Part of the Game
At the end of the day we all want our events to be successful. We want to be able to put them on year after year and build an audience full of happy, loyal participants.
In order to do that you have to be financially stable. In order to be financially stable you have to cover costs. In order to cover costs, more than likely, you’re going to have to raise prices every once in a while. Yes, there are races that pride themselves in keeping registration fees flat. That’s fantastic if they’re able but, again, every event is different and what works for them may not work for you.
