How do we increase the gate at meetings

[brands]

I today received a flyer from the CSMA about their festival at Brands in May and they are going to some lenghts to point out that it's free for all children under 16.

[Ian Sowman]

But the arrangements for this meeting are different I think, in that MSV don't take the gate. It is the same as the Oval Action Day at Mallory, when Incarace take over the circuit for the day and kids have to pay...

[Eddy V]

What always surprises me in the UK is that ticketprices at the gate are high, very high.
10 pound (sorry haven't got the sign on my keyboard) for a clubbie? 15 and more for a "big" event, per day?
In Belgium entry is about 10 pound for a weekend ticket. So it brings more people to the track, because it is cheap. Only problem here: we haven't got any decent racing at the moment, so people tend to go less to the races.
So shouldn't one option be to reduce the prices and therefore get more people to the tracks? It will take a while, but as soon as they find out, they'll be back.

[dtype38]

I was going to say that I'd give up the freebie tickets that I get with my race entry so that some kids could get in for free, but then I thought that I don't know if the ones I get are actually freebies. It seems silly of the organisers to complain about lack of paying customers on the gate and at the same time give away hundreds of free tickets with the entries. On the basis that I might have paid for these tickets with my entry fee, I once asked for my money back on them because I was by myself. I was told that I couldn't, so I went and stood at the main gate and gave them to the first people I saw walking towards the pay booth. They seemed very pleased. Do many of you just throw away unused complimentary tickets?

[Al Weyman]

D-Type you may have hit the nail on the head with their thinking behind these charges. By having a nice high gate fee and say giving entrants half a dozen tickets they can justify the high entry fees then say "Well I don't know what you are moaning about paying a £150 entry fee, we have given you back over £60 worth of tickets!". Now if only you could sell them on.......

[dtype38]

Al, they're gonna have to give me a shedfull of tickets to try that one for my first meeting this year. It's a club event at Snetterton where I have two 15 minute practice sessions, two 15min races and two 20 min races. Fee is £475 after discount.
Gonna be an expensive weekend :-(

[SpawnyWhippet]

Originally Posted by Tim Draffan

The BARC created a "classisc package" including sport, saloons, FF2000 and classic FF1600 which is the backbone of the CSMA Brands weekend, and it does attract classic car clubs to other meeting throughout the season, I often notced several rows of classic cars in the car parks at Mallory, Thuxton and Snetterton. So perhaps the way forward would be more promotion to the already converted car enthusiasts, through the one make clubs for modern as well as classics.

This is a good idea. You align your racing club with the most similar road car club (eg Porsche Cup - Porsche Club GB, F.Renault - Renault car dealers etc) then offer the car clubs / dealers free tickets to give to customers who buy new cars or join the club. Then at the race, you give these club members preferred (VIP?) parking & a couple of laps in their own cars behind the safety car during the break between qualifying and races. This gets them there early, makes them buy lunch and they have a much better understanding and interest in the following race, as they can stand there and say how they were on opposite lock through Druids etc etc. Everyone wins, the club gets free publicity, dealer gets value added sale, car buyer gets free laps, circuit sells more burgers. They may even come back for more.

The obvious downside is that the racing club needs to make a phone call to get free tickets by persuading the circuit that its in their best interest to allow more spectators to trespase all over the circuit...

[diz]

Originally Posted by dtype38

Do many of you just throw away unused complimentary tickets?

As of early last year, MSV reduced the allocation of tickets the clubs could give to entries from five, to four. The clubs have to supply a 'reconciliation sheet' by the following Friday for MSV's bean counters to play with.
So a measly four tickets per entry won't go far. One for the driver, one for his mate / spouse, one for his mechanical helper, leaves one spare. He might have two mates, so that's them all used up. That is the typical car on trailer club competitor.
A lot of drivers are now professionally run, so there is the driver, team boss, a couple of mechanics, the driver's mate / spouse, some work colleagues, sponsor [if they are lucky], potential sponsor [if they are hopeful] This is a potential double figure of attendees. So there ain't enough 'freebies' - which aren't freebies, as the four tickets per driver comes as part of the circuit hire fee, which is funded solely by the race entry fee of £175 minimum.

So if the total entry is 147 cars and the club receive 1000 drivers tickets prior to the meeting, they have to return 412 tickets with the bean counters sheet.
Previously, these tickets could be 'acquired' by an "any chance of a couple of extra tickets for my sponsor" type phone call to the Secretary of the Meeting. Those days have sadly gone. As a co-ordinator, I am always being asked for tickets and pride myself on being 'quite a good blagger', but it is getting harder, if damned nigh impossible'.

I'm in total agreement with most of the sentiments previously expressed in this thread. If you read TT Dr. Palmer, please do something about it - and quickly

[DougK]

Perhaps if Dr. Palmer doesn't read TT perhaps someone would perhaps like to ask hime to join? So if anyone bumps into him pass on the details!

[dtype38]

Originally Posted by diz

A lot of drivers are now professionally run, so there is the driver, team boss, a couple of mechanics, the driver's mate / spouse, some work colleagues, sponsor [if they are lucky], potential sponsor [if they are hopeful] This is a potential double figure of attendees. So there ain't enough 'freebies'

It may be just that I'm at the lower end of the pecking orderand my perspective is skewed, but I find it hard to understand your logic. Surely if a driver/team is professionally run, with mechanics and the like, the tickets for them is a tiny, tiny part of the budget for a meeting. Ok so all teams need to keep costs to the minimum, but why should I have to pay for four tickets, when I personally fund my car, my travel, and everything else, and often as not am at race meetings by myself. I'm also absolutely certain that if I had the chance of a sponsor, I could dig in my pocket and find the money for his ticket. What I wouldn't want is that sponsor to come along looking to see how much advertising he'd be getting for his money, only to find empty stands and no one watching because of the excessively high price of tickets to the general public.

[Andrew Hornsey]

The kid's issue has given me an idea - free tickets to youth groups, be it scouts, cubs, cadets, or schools.

We need to be "catching" this kids now, as they are the future spectators paying the full adult price.

[HiRich]

So stupid, it just might work. Seriously, that's a great little idea:
- The organisation wants something different to do, to interest and teach.
- Circuit needs to build awareness.
- Cost to circuit: a couple of phone calls, perhaps a man to help out & tell the kids something.
- Cost to organisation: Probably nil, as a few parents chauffeur and help out.
- Immediate benefit to circuit: a few extra teas and bacon butties sold.
But the long term benefit is that some of the kids will want to go again with their parents (now paying), and some useful exposure.

In a similar vein, I saw on the local news that Wycombe Wanderers are opening the gates for a match (10,000 free tickets, against a normal crowd of 4,500), specifically to regain the audience they have lost in the past few years.

[Al Weyman]

As this chat on this long thread, in due fairness to the organsers if it was as simple as it appears to be then I ask the question, why have they not already done it? There must be other factors at play here, for example with the foorball analagy, I am sure for that the insurance on the day would be no greater if 4500 attend or 10,000 as they are hardly likely to killed by a stray football. But maybe at a race track the consequenses of a wheel flying into a crowd are far more dire and prehaps (I really don't know) the insurance leaps up by the risks involved if more people are in attendance and likely to get hit by the errant wheel.

The point I am struggling to make is that if there is just a few hundred people at the circuit watching as opposed to a crowd four or five deep around the perimeter of the track there is far more chances of someone getting hurt in the later scenario.

[Rod Birley]

The insurance angle does not vary a lot. Sometimes the organisers are asked for a rough estimate of likely crowd figures. Issues which do arise are the stewards/safety staff you need to man grandstands, stairways etc. Again this depends on the likely increase in spectators, but the cost is not much.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hornsey

The kid's issue has given me an idea - free tickets to youth groups, be it scouts, cubs, cadets, or schools.

We need to be "catching" this kids now, as they are the future spectators paying the full adult price.

At the Australian Grand Prix last weekend... they has a Thursday "free day" where the AGPC went to the Victorian education department and offered information packages to schools across that state, suggesting that they might like a run down to Albert Park to take a squiz at the racing cars.

The Victorians are quite progressive in this way, they did something similar at the V8Supercar Sandown 500 meeting last year, with the Friday a "free day", which saw no end of school kids getting up close and personal with the race cars.....

They also had a pit walk from memory, where the cars were in pitlane, and anyone in the vicinity of the pit paddock at a particular point in time, were allowed out onto the pitlane to take pics with the cars, to get a real good look at them.

Now these kids, a lot of them brought racing memorabilia to get signed... caps, jackets, shirts... so they were aware of the series, the racing.. and one of the motor manufacturers in that series helped out by offering a showbag, with info about current car models, as well as a poster or three for the big name drivers to sign.....

I noticed more than a few came back Sunday for the big race... as paying spectators... with their mums & dads....

Its the only way to get the grass roots family membership involved....

[dtype38]

That's a great idea and a great story GTRM. Its a shame most British meetings seem to be run by the "we'd rather have less people because its less hassle to organise" brigade. :-(

[SpawnyWhippet]

Originally Posted by dtype38

That's a great idea and a great story GTRM. Its a shame most British meetings seem to be run by the "we'd rather have less people because its less hassle to organise" brigade. :-(

Sad but true. THe Melbourne race was very well organised, and everyone involved seemed to enjoy it, apart from a bunch of SAPS protesters

[brands]

Well the boy and myself duly turned up yesterday at Brands, since I was driving to the South bank the lad in the ticket office couldn't judge the age of my boy (14) in the car........I could easily have got away without him paying.

However when I was asked " is it one adult, that's £12 then" because I already knew of the over 12 policy change my conscience kicked in

I do hope Palmer enjoys my £26 (compared to £12 last year) gate money because apart from the CSMA and maybe the SuperPrix meetings that's me done with Brands Hatch this year........the son and I will watch the BTCC meetings on Motors TV, the A1GP on Sky and we'll just go to Castle Combe, Thruxton, Silverstone and Donington more often, where they treat families of early teenagers properly.

[gixxer]

Originally Posted by brands

Well the boy and myself duly turned up yesterday at Brands, since I was driving to the South bank the lad in the ticket office couldn't judge the age of my boy (14) in the car........I could easily have got away without him paying.

However when I was asked " is it one adult, that's £12 then" because I already knew of the over 12 policy change my conscience kicked in

I do hope Palmer enjoys my £26 (compared to £12 last year) gate money because apart from the CSMA and maybe the SuperPrix meetings that's me done with Brands Hatch this year........the son and I will watch the BTCC meetings on Motors TV, the A1GP on Sky and we'll just go to Castle Combe, Thruxton, Silverstone and Donington more often, where they treat families of early teenagers properly.

Well i know what i'd have done in that situation!!!!!!!!!!!
That's exactly why i would not bother goimg elsewhere except for the latter u mentioned,charging for kids under 15 is wrong and going by your comment it does show that this keeps familys away!!!

[Al Weyman]

Me too, why should you have a concienence not paying full price for your boy, they certainly have no qualms trying to get away with it, it seems to me that the gateman, maybe a family man had your best interests at heart and was trying to do you a favour.

[ss_collins]

brands the MN meeting should be well worth attending in july

[Tim Falce]

Originally Posted by dtype38

Al, they're gonna have to give me a shedfull of tickets to try that one for my first meeting this year. It's a club event at Snetterton where I have two 15 minute practice sessions, two 15min races and two 20 min races. Fee is £475 after discount.
Gonna be an expensive weekend :-(

You aren't going to get 2 lots of tickets just because you have spent enough money to pay for a holiday in the USA.

[diz]

Is a 13, 14, or 15 year old now allowed into the pit lane? Don't shout "insurance implications" at me"
If they are classed as full paying adults on one hand, surely they can't be classed as a child on the other.

[pitcrew]

under 16 should be free!! my little sis has to pay personally it dont effect me directly but it does stop familys! but i think diz that if they have payed for ticked they will then be in the higher class therefore no problem in pits etc

[Woolley]

Originally Posted by diz

Is a 13, 14, or 15 year old now allowed into the pit lane? Don't shout "insurance implications" at me"

As a paying spectator (which is what we're looking at here) that doesn't apply. There is a separate thread concerning the issue of 'children' in Trackside, and while they're related, may I suggest that we keep the promotion/children threads separate as I think both subjects warrant their own discussion.