What to say to British Rowing?

[TomR]

good luck, rick. i'd love to make it to boston for another go. not sure the moon and the stars and the spine are going to align, tho.

did you see there was a roadrunner sighting on this thread? the scrawny scot endures.

[Mike Caviston]

did you see there was a roadrunner sighting on this thread? the scrawny scot endures.

It's great to see Rick and Dave still around, but I was even more surprised to see you have come out of hibernation.

[Dangerscouse]

Thought I should update this post to complete the story from my perspective. After two months I'd heard nothing at all from my original email so I forwarded it to Alastair Marks (CEO BR). He apologised and asked James Lee and/or Kenny Baillie to respond to me saying they were in charge of Events and BRIC. Two days later I got this helpful, lengthy, but still worrying, response from Kenny:

Dear Mike,

Thanks for getting in touch and giving us your feedback. The cancellation of the British Indoors last December was disappointing for everyone, especially the competitors who enjoy it so much but we were faced with a very substantial financial loss which would have had a negative impact on the governing body so the decision was made in the best interests of the sport.

I thought you'd like to see some stats from the substitute activity - the Festival of Indoor Rowing...

LEAGUE

Categories
2km, 500m, 1 minute and 4 minute for everyone.
Juniors :2 min (Year 7), 3 min (Year 8), 4 min (Year 9), 5 min (Year 10), 6 min (Year 11) and 2km (Sixth Form).

Overview of sign ups
One time Registrations - 2,442 (In which 2,301 registered and submitted a score when the LEAGUE was open)
Things to note
Adult entries accepted as valid - 359 (12 of which were adaptive)
Junior entries accepted as valid - 1,712 (1 of which was adaptive)
Male entries who submitted a valid score - 1,299
Female entries who submitted a valid score - 771
Non binary who submitted a valid score - 1
Great Britain - 2,008
Other 19 countries - 63The machine numbers used in the event with valid scores were:Concept2 - 2,062WaterRower - 2RP3 - 3Other (low cost machines such as ) - 4This was the biggest number of entries we have had to an online LEAGUE with leaderboards in 2 years.
C2 ErgRace Races

Overview
56 sign ups44 open entries/ 12 female47 Adults (35 HWT/ 12 LWT)9 Juniors9 Races delivered on the day. 2000m and 500m for adults. Timed race for Juniors.
Things to note
The LIVE C2 racing element was only open to sign up for just over a week. So numbers were always going to be quite low. You had to have access to a Concept2 with a PM5 monitor and the ErgRace App making this limited to who could access this part of the festival.We also had partners offering other opportunities on the day of the Festival than just the above.The LEAGUE and online racing was only advertised for two weeks to our collective BR channels. Whereas Virtuals and BRIC would be open for a much longer length of time and would have substantial marketing behind it to achieve higher numbers.

All of this happened in a short space of time after we had to cancel the British Indoors.

We are going to use this data -plus data from other events like the European Championships and World Championships - to inform what we do going forward in terms of virtual and in-person events.

I hope this has helped and that you will again look out for our events in the future.

Best wishes,

Kenny

It was good of them to share the stats with me but I'm still worried that they are seeing this pulling a success from a bad hand rather than a systemic issue that needs to be dealt with. I responded pretty much straight away :

Hi Kenny,

Many thanks for your response and letting me see the stats for the Festival. As I'd seen from the results, the entry numbers were dominated by the school kids. While its great to see such interest from the youngsters as the future of the sport it serves as a stark contrast to the adult numbers which would normally be in the thousands rather than low hundreds.

Since we therefore can all see that there has been a crash in adult entry, the issue is why was that, why was the French Euro's not similarly affected, nor the Worlds in Canada, and what can be done to ensure there's not a repeat at the next competition? The key rationale you set out is the lack of time and publicity surrounding the Festival given the fairly late cancellation of the Arena event. OK, but that doesn't begin to explain why the main event tanked to such an extent that it had to be cancelled.

Since it seems that the threat of facing a significant financial loss was the primary cause of the cancellation then clearly the cost base and its mitigation needs to be addressed, as well as how to make the event more attractive to ergers. Hosting it somewhere less prestigious than the Velodrome perhaps if that is the most significant cost contributor. Also is there any greater sponsorship opportunity?

To make it more attractive to enter, again costs will be a significant factor. Hosting it somewhere not involving London accommodation costs would help. Cutting entry fees would help - you could perhaps maintain entry fees, but offer 50% (or more!) discount for early entry, with a cut off (back to full price) say 6 weeks before the event. This way I'd expect a significant part of the entry to sign up early giving you more confidence in being able to stage the event with decent numbers. Also hosting somewhere more accessible and with parking might be a helpful move. There's more people wedded to their personal transport than there are evangelising the public transport ethos followed by a long cold and potentially wet walk through a park in December.

I'm pleased to read that you will be looking at the Euros/Worlds data and hopefully the French and Canadians will be able to throw more light on the issues by what they did differently. I'll look forward to attending a revitalised in person event somewhere next year with a fully subscribed race programme.

Regards
Mike

I've heard nothing back and don't expect too - they don't work for me! In fact, although I said the Worlds were well populated (and in comparison to BRIC they were), I heard that the total number of athletes was only 1600 - well below the ~3000??? I recall from a few years back. Will be interesting to see if the CrashBs get the numbers on Sunday. If anyone is motivated to ask any further questions you can email these people at BR using the format firstname.surname @ britishrowing.org (no spaces).

Thanks Mike. I'm really not sure that the solution is, but you make some very valid points and suggestions

[TomR]

did you see there was a roadrunner sighting on this thread? the scrawny scot endures.

It's great to see Rick and Dave still around, but I was even more surprised to see you have come out of hibernation.

and you, sir. i have no new tricks and am so old as to have forgotten any previous ones, whatever they may have been. . . . but perhaps a boy can dream.

trust you are fit and happy

[Yankeerunner]

did you see there was a roadrunner sighting on this thread? the scrawny scot endures.

It's great to see Rick and Dave still around, but I was even more surprised to see you have come out of hibernation.

and you, sir. i have no new tricks and am so old as to have forgotten any previous ones, whatever they may have been. . . . but perhaps a boy can dream.

trust you are fit and happy

Great to hear from both of you!

Tom, back when we were sneaking under 7:00 for 2K it was hard to imagine it being difficult to break 8, but here I am.

Mike, I miss the camaraderie of our little group of zealots; you, Dennis, roadrunner, John Harvey and me. It might have only been once a year, but it was special.