How To Make Money for Your Race With RaceID

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We speak with many race directors every day that organize different types of races, and each one of them has a different reason or motivation for why they make events. Common for all is that you want to give participants a spectacular experience and provide them with unique memories that make them want to come back to experience them again. Some organizers live off their races and have made it their primary occupation, while others do it in their free time – perhaps to raise money for an organization or a charity. 

No matter your reason or goal with your race, it is important to keep your finances balanced. You will always need to at least break even – and oftentimes that is not the easiest thing to do! A race is like a business, and a prerequisite for creating longevity and sustainability in that business is to earn money to sustain it year to year. 

Your income does not only have to come directly from your registration fee or sponsors (read more about how to get sponsors here). In this article, we break down all the ways you can earn additional revenue from your race with the help of the RaceID platform. 

There is also a great article by Fred Newton with 10 general tips on how to make your race profitable – make sure you read that one as well! 

Registration Fee – Set it Right and Use Early Birds

Like with any platform, you can set and adjust your registration fee within the RaceID admin. If you are a new organizer, it can be tough to know how to price your race – but we help you with that in this article on how to decide what your race should cost. 

Another crucial way to ensure you fill up your race earlier in the season and prevent late registrations is to employ an Early Bird pricing strategy. Within the RaceID Super Admin, you can easily set up price ladders beforehand, which automatically come into effect on your selected date, so you don’t have to worry about remembering to update prices throughout the season. More on how to determine your Early Bird strategy here, and how to set prices in RaceID Admin. 

Sell Extras & Merchandise Directly in Your Registration

When your participants register for your race, they’re excited and ready to go through the process and make the payment. While they already have their (nowadays, digital) wallet out and are going to pay for the registration anyway, make it easy to add a T-shirt or piece of merchandise into that shopping basket as well, at the same time! As an organizer, you should take advantage of extras and make sure to add them to your registration flow so that participants can just tick them off and add them to their total sum when they register. 

Examples of items you can add to your race registration:

• Race T-shirts and other clothing (hats, caps, hoodies)
• Accessories racers always need (buffs, running bags or belts, socks, etc)
• Food and meals (after-race meal, lunch, dinner, snack) 
• Transportation options (bus or shuttle to or from the start) 
• Spectator packages for loved ones 
• Energy items such as gels or sports drink mixes (excellent idea to coordinate with a sponsor!)

With the RaceID tool, you can add extra items even with pictures if necessary and set separate prices and VAT on those items. Read more about how to add extras to your checkout here. 

Offer Training Plans

Training Plans are an excellent help for your participants to get them in shape for your race. Get in touch with us if you would like to sell RaceID Miles AI Training plans in your registration, and earn a kickback commission for any subscriptions generated from your race. 

Add Refundable Booking 

A common trend after the Covid-19 pandemic is that participants register later than usual. This makes your work and planning as a race organizer much more difficult, as you want to ensure revenue and participants as early as you can in your season. 

In our survey, over 20% of participants stated that they feel more comfortable buying early if they can add a refund insurance. We made it easy for you to offer this together with our partner Refund Protect. To give your racers this option as they check out, simply activate the toggle for Refundable Booking and it will show up as an option after your registration form. 

Don’t forget to also communicate in your marketing that Refundable Booking is available. Read more about terms and pricing. 

Add an Admin/Booking Fee 

Nowadays, consumers are used to encountering fees in various circumstances as they book and buy products online. The same applies to races and experiences. Many organizers on our platform add a small fee at the end of their registration called a booking fee or the like, to cover administrative costs. You can do this too, and it will help your bottom line as these small fees add up, especially if you have a race with many participants. It can also be used to offset the commission fee you pay to us for our services. 

As you know, the RAceID platform already has a small participant booking fee built in, but you can add an additional one to your race registration as a custom field using the tickbox form field with a price of your choice. 

Grow Your Number of Participants 

It’s easier said than done to increase revenue by getting more racers to sign up for your race (if you have the space of course!). This is done through marketing, and there are millions of ways you can market your race and find new racers. 

First of all, make sure your race is updated in the RaceID calendar! It is free for all events, and you can utilize the reach of the platform and RaceID app to get your race noticed by more athletes both from within your sports and from other similar sports. Also, check out this article to find a list of additional calendars in which you can list your race. Even if your race date is yet to be decided, you can still add it to calendars with a TBC (To Be Confirmed) note. Another good idea if you haven’t opened registration yet, is to add an email sign-up list for people that come to your page or calendar entry, to get notified when you open registrations. 

We have collected a number of tips on how to market your race with email, social media, local clubs and more in the Event Marketing section of the Organizer Learning Center. Make sure to read a couple of posts there and take action to improve your marketing.

Ready to earn more revenue for your race with RaceID? Get started today.