Is it really all about the route though? If that’s all they have to offer, then I agree. But they should be focusing on closing roads that might usually be busy (increasing enjoyment), bringing a vibrant community feel, providing competition to test yourself against, incorporating sponsors who add value to your experience, etc.
I personally get so much out of going to most events that I wouldn’t get by showing up on my own.
I always say: You can go to the concert, or sit at home and listen to it on Spotify….
This will be my 26th season. I haven’t done proper “racing” in about 15 years. What I saw though is that the first 10 years I was riding (2000-2010) almost everything was club and volunteer run. Stuff would cost $20 for an all day 100 mile organized century ride that had volunteer run food/drink stops along the way. But you would get absolutely nothing else for your fee other than some directing of traffic maybe. They would have a T-shirt you could buy for Extra.
Races were cheap back then too. 99% of us were on a club team and we were expected to volunteer a whole bunch. We had a weekly race series and it was as cheap as $5 if you already had a license. We’d have to pay a police officer about $500 to control access for 3 hours in the office park we ran the crit in as the 2-way road got changed to one way for the race, but since we’d have about 4 fields with the Cat 5 field limited to 50 and the others limited to 75-100 the club actually made money. Of course that would be a lot harder to make work today if only 10 people were showing up to race since road is no longer as popular. (We had a road race and a cross race each year too)
It seems now almost every event is being run by someone who has started a business and is trying to make themselves a financial success, so of course things are more expensive. Rules and regulations have contributed too, and it seems like we have fewer events in total, so the events need to be bigger and attract more riders to make the #s work. But because they’re bigger all the costs run even more out of control. Then they tack on all the schwag as included to make it look like a better deal but all that stuff probably has a really nice margin too, and now they force you to buy it. I have a bunch of even jerseys and stuff that I barely wear. It would have been fine to have saved $100 and not have to buy it so they could have everyone in the event wearing the same jersey.
Ironman seems to mix the models. High prices, run by a business, but heavily reliant on volunteers who haven’t figured out they’re being used as unpaid workers.
I’ve been doing this racing thing since 1989. I fondly remember doing 50+ mile road races for $25 and getting a free t-shirt to boot with entry fee. Mountain bike races seemed to be forever $35. The 1990’s all the way to the early/mid 2000’s. Those days are long gone.
For the record I am an accountant by day and tend to look at life thru numbers and percentages. Back in the 1990’s a race costing $0.50-$0.75 a mile was pretty average. Looking at it from a criterium perspective it was better to judge cost per minute. 40 minute race for entry fee of $25-30 was cool and penciled out in my head. Over time the free t-shirts with entry dried up and costs started creeping up into the $30-40 range. Still a relative bargain. Toss in the ever increasing cost of gas and the occasional lodging for a night and sometimes a weekend could cost close to $100 if splitting hotel with a couple teammates and carpooling. The funny thing is back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s I was making maybe $35-$45K a year in salary and the cost of racing wasn’t a huge drain on my finances.
”Back in the day” most races were promoted and run by local clubs, not professional promoters looking to make a profit. In 2013 we moved to Oregon and the vibe completely changed. There are a handful of promotion companies here who put on the majority of events. It is their livelihood, and I don’t begrudge them that.
I’ve done mostly mountain bike races since moving to Oregon and the costs were $45-50 for a two hour mountain bike race. Not bad, not great. $25 an hour for some fun. Toss in increased fuel prices and more of the races out here require an overnight stay (at least from where I live). A weekend now was approaching $150-$200 in entry, fuel, lodging, etc. The funny thing is now I make 3x the salary I made back in the early 2000s, but I also have a lot more things competing for those dollars. Things are a lot different in your 50’s compared to your 20’s - 30’s.
Anyways….2025 was the final straw. The season kickoff mountain bike race was asking $70 for a two hour race. Throw in travel and everything else and that weekend was going to be close to $300 just to race for two hours. I unofficially “retired” from racing in 2025. I’d rather leave on my bike from my house and return several hours later, or make the drive to someplace and do some mountain biking for free with some friends.
Looking at 2026, there is a very famous mountain bike race on the Oregon coast. They are asking $80 entry fee for all categories except juniors. The lap is about 10 miles, Sport/Expert do two laps, Novice do one lap. I can’t fathom asking some novice to ride their bike for 10 miles for $80! Just seems ridiculous to me.
Apologies for that rambling. I love riding my bike(s). I always enjoyed racing, but the cost/benefit for me (your thoughts are probably different) no longer is justifiable in my mind.
-Pete
The top three had zero road closures. Santa Barbara has the course running across an unmanned highway. Big Bear had some traffic control but all roads were open. And I believe BWR was also all open road.
BWR and Big Bear I felt you got the best bang for your buck. Super festive and loads of support. Santa Barbara, while having an incredible route was one of the most expensive with very little support, no traffic control and very little at the finish line
I agree, and I am voting with my wallet. There are a half dozen promoters in the several state area I frequent. One in particular is overpriced IMO, lots of pomp and such yet not great courses and really bad value for the $. IMO anyway. Not doing any of those this year. Two other promoters have great courses and crew with everything an event needs. I’ll be doing all of those.
Re prices, another aspect to look into in an article is the phenomenon (in the US at least) of adding the online reg service fee to the cost. This wasn’t the case when doing an event in Europe - maybe they have better consumer protection laws? At any rate, bikereg fees add insult to injury. Increase the entry fee if necessary but don’t tack extra costs on that the consumer has no option to avoid.
While the original post was about gravel, your comments about club and events are spot on. USAC eliminating the requirement for clubs to put on a race was the start of a bad trend. The rise of the professional promoter has sort of taken over that role but at a much higher cost, at least in $.
I am trying to build up a small event series, so I can share some insights into the costs. We are based in Europe, so some things are probably different, but if @wade_wallace or someone else from the EC team wants to write about it, please feel free to contact me I am also up for putting the events in the member purchase program.
We are different from the Gran Fondos and Gravel Events mentioned above in two important ways
we are multi day events
we are keeping them small deliberately, so we are from an insurance perspective more like a travel group
The biggest cost factor for us are
year round costs, especially salaries (although we only pay 1.5 people at the moment year round)
accommodations & food (those you won’t have at one day events)
At the events, we normally have one crew member per 5 to 6 participants, and beyond a certain point, these crew members have to be paid, also from a moral perspective.
Can you or I organise a cycling holiday cheaper? Most certainly. So why sign up for an event?
the community – we are having small events because we want people to meet new cycling friends
competitive spirit – it is fun to have others to chase or be chased
someone else puts in the time for all the planning – I need at least a week per stage in preparation (between visits on the ground, clarifying scheduling conflicts with other events, permissions, route planning on a digital platform …) – you can ride in areas you don’t know (yet) and have a great experience without being komooted
logistics are taken care of (luggage transport, feed stations, massages, transfers)
you are not alone out there – whatever happens, a snowstorm or just a missed turn, someone will help you
These points apply obviously not all to all events, but some of them are probably true for most. It costs time, and therefore, unless completely volunteer-run, money to organise any kind of event. It might be not worth it for you personally (for a number of reasons), but outside of Ironman-branded events, I have the feeling that most of the time there is a decent value provided for your money.
Few things are more amusing to me than being at the start line and listening to people bitch about entry fees as they are standing over their shiny new Tarmac S-Works SL8 with Princeton Carbontech wheels, new Nimbl shoes and a full areo kit right down to the aero gloves. Nothing costs what it did in the “good old days” why should cycling events?
I’ve organized fondos and centuries in the eastern U.S. multiple times over the past 15 years. The costs have certainly gone up, especially insurance, permits, and law enforcement (LEO) costs. The events I organize typically don’t have any road closures but the permits require LEOs at major intersections to help allay fears of locals who “hate dem biker types.”
When I organized my first century back in 2010 the entry fee was $35 for club members, $45 for all others. It stayed that way for a few years. But when the event (which was the main fundraiser for the bike club) stopped making even a small net profit we had to raise rates. And then all of the associated fees skyrocketed. The same event in 2025 had an entry fee of $110 for club members, $140 for non-members.
And fees for events I love have gone up - or the events have gone away. Some of the best events I’ve ever done (e.g. Bridge-To-Bridge in North Carolina and Mountains of Misery in Virginia) disappeared because the costs became too high and riders demanded more “gimmes” for the price, not realizing the sunk costs to run an event. Many have now pivoted to being charity rides where the entry cost is somewhat masked by the required fundraising to enter.
But when I enter events in Europe - the Marmotte Granfondo Alpes, for example - the overall cost of entry is a bargain for an event that has a partially-closed course, excellent support, a looooong route, and a great finisher’s medal. And the Etape du Tour events are also a relative bargain given what’s included in the entry fee, especially compared to U.S. entry fee inflation.
It’s not an easy nut to crack. The costs are higher and aren’t likely to come down soon. Sponsor money is less abundant. And folks can - and will - vote with their pocketbooks.
Everyone wants entry fees to go down. Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps increasing, and the costs of putting on a charity or gran fondo keep going up. Meanwhile it’s harder to get corporate sponsors to throw in some dosh to reduce event costs.
I get the desire for lower prices and fees, but how do you do that when the cost of putting on these events keeps going up? You certainly can’t decouple such an event from local economic conditions, and I don’t think anyone putting on such events is getting rich.
Those events are profitable because they are so big. If you can split fixed costs on 16000 (!) participants, some things get easier (and the Etape often requires additional investment for logistics).
Audax. $6 (in AU) if you are a member ($80 a year which covers insurance) or a $15 one month membership. This year I decided to cater one of the checkpoints and charged an outrageous extra $6 for the pleasure. Of course, no traffic management, no finishing chute, no nothing really apart from good routes, good company and fun times sharing some of my favourite local gravel routes with the community
I hath not read through the comments and will do so shortly, but this is an issue that gets right under my wick Roy. High entry fees are one thing; semi colon; cancellation due to prohibitive insurance is a killer for wonderful, chunder- enducing events like Fitz’s Challenge. As a retired bureaucrat, my first question is “ what, if any, is the role of government” and second question is” is there a market failure?” I shall ponder and get back to yers.
I am also up for putting the events in the member purchase program.
