The club that is running the 1500 scm meet is being charged $600 for four hours that should cover the meet, including warmups and downs. They are running six lanes with a warm up-down lanes on the end. There will be no electronic timing. It is an outdoor pool with no building costs. They will pay for a lifeguard for the four hours. I have been trying to talk up the meet and encourage both old and new swimmers to enter and swim but the opinion is that the $20.00 cost is too much. It is not an open water swim where you get a T-shirt, awards and ususally a drawing. If we want to encourage swimmers to enter their first meet, the cost should be reasonable. Ten at the most.
The $600 is usually not all the costs associated with the meet. Besides your volunteer costs, there are phone, awards - if any, and thank you gifts for meet officials to name a few extra. You mentioned a lifeguard has to be paid for, how much is that? All of these costs have to be spread among the participants.
Last year the Pacific Masters 1500 Short Course Meters Championships had 33 contestants which would make it real tough to make a profit on $10/contestant.
michael
I'll assume that the LMSC is not underwriting the cost of the meet but, rather, a club is taking the $$ risk and investing a bunch of volunteer effort to make the meet happen. If this is true then the price should be whatever they decide the price should be.
In most volunteer organizations, volunteer time and effort are the MOST VALUABLE resources. And because this resource is limited, using it has a very REAL COST. So when an organization decides to SPEND its volunteer resources on a project, there need to be tangible gains for the organization or the organization is engaging in deficit spending. In some cases the gain might be new members. In some cases it could be warm fuzzy feelings. In other cases it might be money.
At a bare minimum, the REAL COST of volunteer time and effort is what the meet director would have to pay in real dollars to HIRE a person to do what the volunteer is being asked to do.
Let's assume that there will be, say at least 15 volunteers associated with this 4 hr meet. That would be 60 man hours. We can probably add AT LEAST an additional 20 man hours that at least one or two people will be investing pre- and post-meet. (All those meet directors out there realize I'm being quite conervative with my numbers here.) If we assume that each volunteer's time is worth $10 per hour (that would likely be considered low by the volunteer) and we assume 1 full heat every 20 minutes (I know, on average they'll actually take longer, but bear with me) then we can calculate a maximum of $1440 income for the meet.
The REAL COST of putting on this event will be at least:
Pool cost: $600
Volunteer resources: 80 man-hrs X $10 = $800
-------------------------------------------------------------
Total: $1400
WOW! A whole $40 profit!
And since they are NOT going to run 3 heats every hour for 4 hours (what with warmup and slower swimmers etc) and there will likely be even MORE volunteer resources spent than I estimated above, and I haven't even mentioned the lifeguard or awards or office supplies or hospitality costs or...or...or..., I still estimate they are undercharging for the meet.
Now, if the LMSC decides that they want to spend their members' registration money to subsidize meets, they can lower the cost of the meet. If the LMSC wants to encourage swimmers to enter their first meet then the LMSC should bear the cost, not the individual club hosting the meet. But to ask the club/meet director to go into debt, either in dollar or in volunteer terms, to make the meet more affordable to swimmers, simply doesn't make sense. If it isn't the swimmers who should bear the cost of having meets then who should it be?
You may be right that they have priced their event such that they have a small turnout and thus not realize a reward from the risk they are taking. In which case they'll learn a valuable lesson and others will benefit from that knowledge. On the other hand they may fill all their heats and generate a modest cash balance for the club. In which case they'll ALSO learn a valuable lesson and others will benefit from that knowledge.
Phil,
Amen, brudda! Given the opportunity cost of going to a meet (plus travel expenses if it is not a day trip), a $20 entry fee is a laughable consideration. If the meet itself fits my schedule, etc., I couldn't care less if the entry fee is $10 or $20.
Matt
When you consider the cost of attending a meet, even a local meet - transportation, time, disruption to the family - $20 is a very small expense. What the people who say they won't attend a meet because of the entry fee are *really* saying is that the meet isn't worth going to at all. I suspect that this meet will get the same number of swimmers as any of the others.
I doesn't matter to me personally to pay $20 to swim in this meet, I would enter it and pay the fee if I could swim. It was the new swimmers I was trying to encourage to enter the meet that complained. Next time I won't bother asking them. I plan on timing at this meet.
If you don't agree with the cost, don't participate. We all have choices to make and we shouldn't try making it a negative issue, just make the decision. I'll be there.
Jim
Since it is the LMSC that benefits directly from new registrations, the thing to do would be to lobby the LMSC to cut the registration fee for newbie registrants. Or lobby the Clubs that the newbies are swimming with (and, ostensibly, paying dues to) to subsidize the newbies' meet participation. Meet directors already have enough financial pressure on them to be giving away money in the name of recruiting for the LMSC.
