28/05/2026
Morning All,
I'm sure most of us have seen the social media feeds of various events around the country being cancelled due to lack of numbers. There have been lots of comments from competitors suggesting that 'allowing entry on-the-day would help'.
I have also had a few questions about why North East Crit League doesn't offer 'entry-on-the-day'.
Here is why 'entry-on-the-day' simply does not work for organisers and I hope this basic table of event costs helps. **Please note - these basic costs are for a closed circuit event. Road race costs are way more than this**
The costs associated with putting on events is increasing and many suppliers need to be paid in advance to confirm the booking, sometimes weeks in advance and with the majority of entries coming in the last week, even on the closing date, organisers are left to take a punt whether there will be enough entries to cover costs.
As can be seen below, most of the expenditure occurs BEFORE the event and in most cases far enough in advance that the entry fees haven't yet been processed and paid out by British Cycling.
In fact, due to weekly processing, the entry fees received in the week before closing date, won't be processed and transferred to the organiser until after the event......
In summary, entering early, ideally 2 weeks before the closing date, gives the organiser confidence that they will have enough income to cover the costs, pay suppliers, medics, commissaires, etc without having to dip into their own pocket.
Just to put things into real terms, at last Sunday's NECL Summer Series R1, I arrived at the circuit at 09:00 to set up and after packing up, I left the circuit around 17:00. There was an overall surplus of less than £13.......
Thanks. Graham.
