Entry Fees Up

Entry for the 200m? $290.00

We used to say that gravel riding and racing was a cheap way to enjoy competition or to just have fun. Heck, many of the earliest gravel events of the 2000's were free or had a very low bar to clear to enter. I recall someone saying that it was such a good deal because many events were so cheap to get into and long enough that you could ride your bike all day. Choosing any gravel event as something you put on your calendar was often predicated upon whether or not the travel time was longer than the event riding time, not on race fees. 

My! Times have certainly changed! 

The old way I used to gauge expenses is out the window now. I just got off of BikeReg, which lists a little over 300 events as "gravel" on that site. I just randomly went through and picked out about eight or nine events to check on where race fees are at these days. I was shocked. 

Once upon a time, back when the Dirty Kanza 200 was getting "big" and raised their entry fees to just under 100 bucks, someone piped up and said to me that if race fees went over a buck per mile of the event's course, that they would quit going to that event. Well, let me tell ya, there are not many events you've heard of that are even close to a buck-per-mile anymore!

Would you pay more than a dollar/mile to ride on this?

Now, of course, gravel events are more than just riding on gravel/dirt/whatever roads they use for their courses at whatever events you want to name. You've got timing and scoring. Then you have all the pertinent "furniture"- barriers, finish line arches, podiums, etc. You've likely got insurance, materials to facilitate the event, race numbers, tape, etc. 

And maybe you've got merchandise, you've maybe got an event headquarters you need to pay for, permits to close down streets, police, ambulance, and medical staffers, maybe. I don't know everything about these massive productions like Unbound, but yeah- There is a LOT going on there to produce the event. I get that.

But I've said it before, and I'll say it as long as I am able to- Gravel events don't have to be like that. 

You don't need thousands of participants, you don't need twenty-five categories for race participants, you don't have to have finish line arches and big time concerns with cities, police, etc. The gravel experience exists outside of those confines, but the big events have put all that inside their own boxes and have put the focus on other stuff. Is that what you want? Cool.... Join the thousands of others that are all about that too. I understand I probably am in the vast minority of opinions here, but "big time gravel" has become just like "big time roadie events" and "big time MTB events". Crowded, expensive, harder to get into due to what perceptions are about equipment, and broken into so many sub-divisions of people that it becomes less about overall community and more about individual groups. 

And then you top it all off with really expensive entry fees. 

I took a look at several events, as mentioned above, chosen at random from across the country. Various distances were included. Plus, I also looked at pricing for sub-categories. Following are my 'not-so-scientific', random findings*. 

• The more well known the event was, the higher the entry fees were. No big surprise there, but what caught my eye was one of the events that I looked at, which is fairly new, is the most expensive per-mile-of-course I found and the hardest to get into as well. Due to a somewhat convoluted registration scheme where riders can defer their participation to a following year, giving them dibs on a roster spot, and due to this particular event focusing on diversity and inclusion initiatives along with a preference to entry for sponsor's athletes, the "regular person" takes a back seat. But it is their event to run, so.... 
• The longer the event, the cheaper it is per mile: This seemed to be universal across all the events I checked out. Some made sense, others, not so much. When the featured distance costs the same as all the other distances you offer, that's sort of odd! 
• Not all events are really expensive. In fact, I found one long-time Pennsylvania event was actually under  a dollar-per-mile of its course. But just by ten cents! 
• The average cost per-mile-of-course for all the events and categories I checked out? $2.05/mile. The cheapest, or if you'd rather, best bargain event I found, was a sub-event of the Swamp Fox Gravel Fondo which at 177.6 miles costs .28 cents a mile to enter. The most expensive? A 25 mile option at a Vermont based event that was $6.00/mile to enter!

*All figures and information for these findings was culled from currently available data on BikeReg.com for the events I looked at on 1/25/23

Now- Let me say this- I know that many events are cheaper per-mile. I get it. Don't get your hackles all up and come at me with your examples of particular events that don't fit my story here. I understand that for as many events as there probably are, most are not all that expensive. But you are not going to see any of those written up in mainstream cycling media, and many of those I checked on are those events. Some weren't, but most were. But of the events I knew of that are not what you'd call "big-time gravel? Even most of those were more expensive than a buck-a-mile. 

 Image from Trans Iowa v10 by Wally Kilburg

So, what do we make of all this?- Obviously, everything is more expensive as time goes on. Call it "inflation", evolution, or what have you. That's just the way things seem to go. Time goes by, things get more expensive. You can pretty much count on that. 

Well, according to the almighty Google, a buck in 2009 is worth a $1.38 today. So.....yeah. Inflation? I get it, but event fees have essentially more than doubled in the course of 12 years. It's got more to do with than inflation. 

Demand? Yeah, maybe.... That's part of this. I always said that event directors who were trying to make this gravel thing into a career were going to keep jacking up entry fees until they perceived a ceiling had been reached. And rising tides raise all boats to a degree. I mean, when smaller events see what Unbound gets out of racer's wallets then they see an opportunity to match "what the market will bear", I think, and that's natural. 

And again- people are paying these fees gladly. Well, I assume that they are, because I don't see rosters and field limits less than full. So, I have to adjust my expectations as well. A buck-a-mile is dead. Entry fees are up, and they are not coming down anytime soon, or so it would seem. There are still cheaper events- I was invited to such an event in Minnesota a few days ago. Twenty-five bucks to enter and I could ride whatever distance I wanted up to 300+ miles or as little as 25. There are still events that are free, just not very many! So, I have options. 

And I can create my own adventures. The roads are free to ride. I don't need a permit, finish line amenities, or aid stations to do a fun, adventure filled gravel ride. I can even compete on a personal challenge level. You can too if current event prices have you down. The "gravel experience" doesn't have to be a wallet-draining one. It was never meant to be like that. 

But if the thrill of all the things those big events bring to the table tickles your fancy? Go for it. We've got plenty of choices.