Egg prices might finally be leveling out, but unfortunately for the running event industry, eggs are not one of our key ingredients. Anecdotally, we have heard from people throughout the industry that the operational cost of everything from police to porta potties is rising rapidly, shrinking profit margins and causing cutbacks in areas like swag and staffing.
Of course, the current economic uncertainty isn’t helping. Last week, we published an article that captured a wide range of industry leaders’ take on potential tariffs on Chinese imports (which have since been temporarily paused, but the sentiments remain relevant).
Now, we want to go from anecdotes to actuals. Today, we are releasing the first in a series of surveys meant to provide a guideline of industry standards and a pulse check on key topics. You may recall the Race Director Survey. This is the new iteration of that. It takes the topics of that survey and divides them up to be completed by the person in your organization best suited to speak on a specific topic. Of course, I know in smaller organizations it may just be one employee wearing many hats!
This first survey focuses on operational costs. What percentage of your budget are you spending on marketing? Are you forecasting an increase or decrease in participation? What are your costs for traffic control? It’s not long. It takes less than 15 minutes to complete. But, your 15 minutes is invaluable to the success of this project. As always, this survey is completely anonymous. I ask that you take a few minutes over the next few days to answer the questions. The compiled data will be available to all members of Running USA. Future surveys will be on topics like sponsorship, staffing and retention and participant experience. If there is a topic you would like us to cover, please let us know.
Speaking of surveys, the Global Runner Survey sponsored by Active is open until the end of July. We are hoping for 10,000 responses and the momentum is positive with eight weeks to go. We rely on our members to share this survey with their audiences. If you haven’t shared it, please do. If you have shared it, I’d love for you to share it again. You can request a custom link from our team and we will provide you with the data from the responses associated with that link along with the completed report in early September.
Finally, it’s been exciting to welcome new and returning members to Running USA. We will be having a very casual virtual meet and greet on June 2 at 1 p.m. EST. You can register to join here. It’s open to all members to say hello, hear about the Running USA membership program and make new connections. I hope to see you there.
Happy Running,
Jay