Robert Roaldi wrote on 05/06/9 at 12:43:25:There are very few free public access events. There are things like public jazz festivals, and that Red Bull manned flight displays (great event, btw), and those events are basically funded by one or two large corporate backers and usually some government support in some form or another. But, by and large, everything else you have to pay to watch. For some reason, we have stayed away from paid admission in rally.
BTW - for the past several years, the CASC-OR regional championship events have been free public access events... with a twist. If you just show up on race day with no ticket you'll still get charged admission, but you can
order complimentary tickets online, print off as many as you want, bring them with you to the track and get in for free.
AFAIK, the change from having spectators pay to giving out complimentary tickets was based on a combination of two factors:
- charging admission didn't bring in enough revenue to make it worthwhile.
- attracting more fans would be good for the organizing clubs, teams, sponsors and the sport in general.
I know that road racing isn't rallying and not everything translates directly between the two disciplines, but I think it's interesting to note the approach that other, substantially similar sports and organizations are doing.
Robert Roaldi wrote on 05/06/9 at 12:43:25:It would be an interesting experiment to try. Offer paid-for admission to a spectator area, say for $10 (or $20), and see who shows up. (Imo, $10 is a trivial sum of money; people will spend much more than that on gasoline and food to attend a rally.) With paid admission, you would then have some budget to hire crowd control, security, toilet, etc. Also, you would quickly find out whether people are REALLY interested in the sport; that is, if it's not worth $10 to people, that says something in itself. If we don't charge admission, then looking after those spectators is a problem that's not easy to solve. Most events run at break even or close. Do competitors want their entry fees increased to cover the costs of crowd control?
It's an experiment that has been tried. IIRC, all the events that Anders Green now organizes (Sandblast, Rally TN) charge spectators admission. Not just a fee for parking or the bus, but actually an admission fee for access to the spectator areas. I haven't heard a full evaluation of it, but he'd be the person to talk to if you wanted to know how it's worked out.