How bizarre/dumb.

Does anyone have a reason as to why they aren't allowing spectators?

I hope they have lots of marshals at the start of the stages to send all of the pissed off fans home.

I was planning to bring a few friends and spectate, but I guess not anymore.

Erik

I could understand why - but a backup plan might be a good idea.  Spectators are not always obedient.  

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out and what kind of precedent it sets.

Simple explanation, we're not trying to establish any precedent or end spectator support. It's this committee's first event, we didn't have much time, and we're constrained by a road in which it's almost impossible to find a clearing where we COULD put a spectator area.

Much of the adjacent land is privately owned and fenced with no access. We're looking into possibly making arrangements at a couple of spots for future years. The logistics will be difficult because there is not much room to park, so we'd almost certainly have to arrange bus service to any spectator area, there's no way to allow spectator cars into the road.

There was no time to make all those arrangements at this first event in the time frame we had. It's disappointing, we realize, but we couldn't commit to a spectator area this time and be sure that everything else worked out.

maybe next year you guys can find a way to talk with some of the land owners about possibly if anything a couple spectator points for a couple $s a person which would go to the owners for allowing spectators to get a glimpse. to charge it would have to be a nice spot with a bunch of passes but hey its just a suggestion. i plan to race next year but if i were spectating id put up a few $ to watch.

JFrancis wrote on 05/05/9 at 14:52:12:


The minute you charge money there is an implied higher level of liability. That is why most rallies avoid any sort of "admission". Even VIP programs only charge for the services provided, not for the spectating.

Hi Erik,

I understand what you mean. If nobody see what we do, then it limits how much you can grow the sport. If nobody is there to see, then how do you convince sponsors that rally is worth backing.

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.

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?

More and more, legal and insurance aspects enter the picture. Once you let spectators in, you have major responsibilities. Those responsibilities might one day be beyond the scope of grassroots motorsports clubs to handle. Pretty soon, you end up not organizing a rally, which is what we want to do, but you end up organizing a public spectacle, and once you do that, you're an event promoter, and the rally just happens to be providing the show. At that point, it seems to me, you cross the line of amateur motorsports into something else. The question is, do we want that?

Put another way, should a rally club be an event promoter? Is that what we should be doing ?

I haven't been on the Pines committee in years, but my guess is that their effort is probably 50%-75% event promotion nowadays, and the rest is the actual running of the rally. Nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want, but you should be in no doubt that you're no longer just organizing a rally at that point.

This is taking this thread way off topic and I apologize. It is probably a question that needs discussing at other levels of the sport. What happens at one first-time regional is a small part of the picture.

The other experiment is to charge admission, but to donate it to a local charity.  For one, you might see who's willing to cough up the change to see a rally. Two, the locals benefit, and three the rally comes off looking good in the eyes of the locals. Not 100% altruistic, but win-win all the same.  Isn't that a good thing?

There are a lot of angles to 'growing rally' in Ontario.  Many of the people working the stage events are from road rally, these are the real supporters. So, why not grow road rally? Regardless, of HOW we grow it, we have to ask "why is growth good?" How much growth can we handle? How many teams of organisers are willing to take on a regional that could attract 40, or 50, teams?  There goes your 1 day regional format that helps budget teams compete, which grows the sport.  Leave that up to the Nationals. Growth is always assumed to be nothing but good, but it's got to be *sustainable*.  Once you exceed the 'carrying capacity' it dies. e.g. how many willing sponsors are there to assist all these teams in a larger sport?  How many events can teams afford to enter?  Do we have enough communities willing to grant access so often, or to so many? The questions go on and on.  The myth of growth being nothing but good has gotten our entire economy is a knot (how's that for a parallel?!).  Unconstrained growth in a person is called cancer.  It's not sustainable.

Last year's GCFR had 22 cars, WOW!  LHFR has 23 or so, WOWSERS. Where's the problem?  Where at half a National, and we're probably bigger in entries than some existing Nationals.

I agree with Robert re 'event promoter' versus organiser.  In my other secret life I have organised two professional musical concerts in the last 15 months (one was a Juno nominee and CFMA award winner).  I can tell you, 'event promotion' was 80% of the job, the other 20% was a breeze: Book the artists, book the hall, get insurance, book the sound, show up, listen to music, pay the artists, pack up. One gig made $x00, the other lost all of it. Until YOU do it, you just have no idea what's involved.

Finally, calling us 'dumb' is not how to influence people to a positive outcome.  Maybe is just the way the hip kids are speakin' these days and us old squares just don't get it.  Maybe it means we're brilliant.  

Don't get me wrong, I like free stuff.  I'm cheap.  But there is another angle to the paying for rally thing, or paying for anything, thing.

When you think you have something good to sell (includes selling the idea that rally is good) but decide to charge nothing, the message you can inadvertently send is that it's actually not good enough to pay for.  

If Coldplay charge $5, instead of $100, wouldn't you wonder what THAT'S about?  Aren't they really good?  Aren't they worth at least $50??  Did they get so sucky they can only ask $5 now? Are they desperate? Did you miss some news about the band?

When you undervalue your product or idea, you can devalue it.  If we think rally is THAT good, why isn't it worth a ten-spot for hours of enjoyment?  Hours of fresh air in the country, in the sun, the rain of nature on your face, the laughs of your friends in your ears, the click click of cameras catching the awesome action. I mean, hey, it's freakin' awesome, right?  Isn't it simply the coolest motorsport out there?? $10 is cheaper than a crappy summertime movie!  

When you look at the real stakeholders in rallying, spectators are pretty low on the list (no personal offense to spectators, been there myself, I've flown places to be one).  Competitors (and sponsors by proxy of the competitors) are #1, volunteers, and their collective safety, and then the spectators who are a passive bunch.  They're not putting into the sport like all your rally buddies, and they're not even paying for the privilege.