Monday, January 19, 2009

Bethel Spring Series - Actual Race Entry Costs

Okay. Because the 2008 entity Carpe Diem Promotions (CDP) is sponsoring racers in the 2009 Carpe Diem Racing (CDR) Bethel Series, there will be an entry fee published which will probably be higher than what the actual racer will pay.

Previously, I tried to explain the situation, but I didn't have solid numbers available. I have the numbers now, and I'll explain what they are and how we got to them.

First of all, let's look at last year's entry costs:

2008 Entry Fees for Bethel Spring Series:
Pre-reg, Series, one race: $72 ($12/race)
Pre-reg, Series, two races: $132 ($12/race, $10/race)
Pre-reg, one race: $13
Pre-reg, second race on a day: $11
Day of race reg, one race: $17
Day of race reg, second race on a day: $11 (same as pre-reg for a second race)

For 2009 we will change effective prices by either $1 or $2. For pre-reg we will only increase the entry fee to reflect the additional $1 insurance cost (through USA Cycling).

In addition we will increase effective day of race entries by $1. This is to encourage pre-reg entries, which cost much less anyway and save the promoters a lot of time and energy. If you pay by check by mail (which we accept), you won't have to pay any online fees, just 42 cents for postage and whatever it costs to print out entries and buy a check.

Note: If you do the snail mail method you MUST fill out a separate waiver for each week, and fill it out completely and legibly.

Let's look at how the fee schedule would look with these changes in place, the $1 insurance increase and the $1 day of race fee increase.

2009 Effective Fee Schedule, Bethel Spring Series:
Pre-reg, Series, one race: $78 ($13/race)
Pre-reg, Series, two races: $138 ($13/race, $10/race)
Pre-reg, one race: $14
Pre-reg, second race in a day: $11 (no insurance necessary, therefore no increase)
Day of race reg, one race: $19
Day of race reg, second race: $12 (+ $1 for day of race)

Now the tricky part - the Carpe Diem Promotions sponsorship. Carpe Diem Promotions (CDP), from 2008, is sponsoring the racers in the races held by Carpe Diem Racing (CDR) in 2009.

That's important so I'll repeat it again.

CDP is sponsoring racers in the 2009 CDR Bethel Spring Series.

CDP will pay a portion of every entry fee it can, until it runs out of money. To do this, two things have to happen:
1. CDP will cover a portion of the entry fee for each racer.
2. Once CDP's funds run out, the full entry fee must be charged. This is a legal requirement, else we'll be committing fraud or something like that.

Since we do NOT want to charge more for the entry, we tried to guess about how many racers will enter, i.e. how many entry fees CDP will need to cover. This was the tricky part. Then we divide the amount of money available by the number of race entries we hope to have.

Based on last year's numbers, we're figuring on some number north of 1000 actual race entries.

We have two goals with the CDP sponsorship.
1. Use up all the money.
2. Try not to use up the money too early (else racers have to pay more).

If CDP sponsored $10 per entry, it'd run out of money pretty quickly, perhaps after as little as 2 weeks. Since we can't revert to the cheaper fees, this would mean everyone would have to pay $10 more per entry after the first two weeks. That is not good.

After doing a lot of complex math (infinite analysis and the like), we've decided that CDP can pay $2 for each pre-registered entry and $3 for each day of race entry. This should cover everyone until the last week, when, at some point, folks may need to cough up an extra $3 to enter a race.

The effective fees, what we think you should pay, are listed above. To get the actual official fees (the full, legal fee), we have to add $2 to the pre-reg and $3 to day-of-race reg fees. Remember that CDP is paying for a portion of the entry fees listed below.

FULL 2009 Bethel Spring Series Fee Schedule:
Pre-reg, Series, one race: $90 ($13+$2/race)
Pre-reg, Series, two races: $162 ($13+$2/race, $10+$2/race)
Pre-reg, one race: $16 ($14+$2)
Pre-reg, second race in a day: $13 ($11+$2)
Day of race reg, one race: $22 ($19 + $3)
Day of race reg, second race: $15 ($12 + $3)

The "+$2" or "+$3" reflect the CDP share. Until CDP money runs out, you'll be paying the Effective fee schedule, the second fee schedule on this page.

Questions?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got a headache!

Aki said...

Yeah me too. Especially since (after some further discussion) I'm going to change it.

Yeah, it's changing. I'll do an update post when it's done, probably tomorrow.

I thought we had more money than we did, and my plan would have bumped the actual price up for a couple weeks of racing.

Sean said...

hey aki - i think most will appreciate what you are trying to do but i'm wondering if you can make it more complicated, that'd be great...

kidding. glad to see that you continue to push yourself to find ways to give back to the cycling community. seriously, kudo's to you aki.

i look forward to seeing you and the gang at bethel - i'll be there to try my legs at one or good two 3/4 races. maybe meressa will bring katie and i'll have a fan club!

keep the rubber on/down..

Sean