Event (Sports) Business Ideas

9 November, 2009

On Saturday I ran my first ever trail race, the EnduranceLife Coastal Trail Series. I entered the 10K, which was more than enough for me at the moment. They also run a half and full marathon version of the race. It was an amazing experience, trail running turned out to be much harder than I expected, but far, far more rewarding that road running – I can’t wait for the next race!

As usual, once I’d finished the race and hooked up with my family I started looking at the event organisers and their business and picking it apart in my head. After all it might just inspire a post about sports/running related business ideas!

When you look at it, running sporting events is quite an attractive business opportunity. It’d be a lot of fun if running a business around your sport. Then there’s the financial side, for example, there were around 600 runners this weekend, who had probably paid an average of £30 to enter the race, bringing in roughly £18,000 of revenue, on top of that there’s some additional revenue from sponsors and sales at the event shop. The cost of running such the event shouldn’t be too high covering, staff, medals, timing, route signage, insurance and costs for the event base and access to the land. Overall I’d guess the event could make in the region of 50% (£9k) gross profit.

Sounds pretty good really, run a few of those per year and you’ve got a nice lifestyle business. It’s not quite that simple though as you’re also going to have overheads to cover (marketing, insurance, website, admin and office costs etc.) which will all further eat into the net profits. On top of that there’s a limited number of events you can run per year – limited by the time it takes to organise them, the risk involved (i.e. advertising and organising an event that might not be profitable or have to be cancelled) and the access to venues.

Overall I doubt that such a business will ever make anyone rich, but if it’d certainly be a great business to run if you’re into sports and fed up of being stuck in an office all day. Alternately it’d be a great business to run part time with some friends in order to make a little money on the side from your hobby.

Photo by: Dawn – Pink Chick.

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