Balancing prize structure, race costs
The relationship between prize money, sponsorship, entries and costs associated with the organisation of a major road race is one that navigates bumpy territory. When it comes to average annual provincial or club races the relationship is more tenuous still.
On the one flank of the discussions around this topic is the requirement, indeed need, for the best runners to be adequately remunerated for their efforts and talent. On the other is the huge swell of social runners who simply want to run and take home the “T-shirt”.
It is true that the single biggest cost in any local race is in fact the shirt. It is also true that the large numbers of social runners contribute emphatically to the race budget through their entry fees.
Sponsors, corporate or otherwise, are the determining factor of how much can indeed be offered in the overall make up of any event, and without them there would be no sport as we know it today.
This week I was informed about a blow up on social media between athletes, bemoaning low prize money and race organisers, who say they cannot afford big prizes and use the cost of the race shirts, medals and the like to defend that position.
Social media allows people to express views that they do not need to substantiate, have direct knowledge of and are often emotional and inaccurate. I have no firsthand knowledge of that clash of views and find such public arguments tiresome.
The problem is a societal one, where interests differ based on the means of the in dividual, and efforts should be made to bring the divergent views closer together.
Over racing is another feature of this complex issue, where potentially good runners will solicit an entry fee from friendly sources, win prize money and survive on it as best they can. Chasing every race to earn more is counterproductive to winning the big one.
There are two different issues in race organisation – one where there is no or very limited sponsorship, and thus the events become self funded via entry fees; and the other is where a lucrative sponsor means that all or most costs are covered, and the entry fee goes into club or, in some instances, individual coffers.
Way back in the 1980s the maximum first prize for an every weekend race was R500 per category. That was a fair amount of money then. Permit events could pay thousands of rands, but they were highly regulated and overseen by the governing body of the day.
So when races today cannot and mostly do not reach a similar standard it causes dissatisfaction. Let us keep the discussion open in an unemotional way.