Race Costs

Interesting article in this months Runners World that has a bit on how much the Brighton Marathon costs. 2012

Entry fees £427K Sponsorship and other income takes total income to £1.1m.

Costs - Organising Company £380K,
Infrastructure (barriers, toilets etc) £238K,
Road Closures £114K,
Timing,medals £94K,
Expo £60K,
Event Staff £48K
Elite Runners £42K,
PR £38K,
Medical Cover £34K
Support Race £12K,
Run Brighton £8K

Easy way to blow over a million quid

380 grand on Organising Company - needs a bit more explaining??

Agree it would be good to have a better breakdown of that figure - not sure its available

But guess an all year round organisation soon builds up costs with salaries, buildings etc

Interesting thing is how much they raise from entr fees compared to sponsorship - shows how important sponsors are in modern events

True, although I suspect there is also an element of Parkinson's Law - they could do some serious trimming if they had to & still stage a decent event a lot of the time. The Olympics is a good example.

There seems to be a specific budget for every post, plus one for the organising company.  Are they really saying that their biggest spend is actually not directly for the event?

My mate Barry will do it for half that next year...!!

I never realised how much putting on such a big race event costs

Laurent

I guess (although an not an apologist for the brighton marathon organisers) that the organisers costs soon mount up. So although road closure costs are covers, the organisers costs would be covering the many meetings with police, local authorities etc in te build up arranging it all. Similarly meetings with sponsors, giving interviewsetc etc.

350K odd would soon go on a relatively small permanent team plus recruiting some additional specialist help in months before.

K

The organising company do pretty much nothing but the Brighton marathon so it's not like sums are being creamed off into other events.

Looking at the limited accounts data on the public record I would venture that very little if any profit has been made by them since the Brighton marathon started 3 or 4 years ago.

That said, it is a privately owned company so they could be making a wedge of profit and we would never know!