While British Eventing has recently announced a 3% increase in prize money in 2014, they have also announced a 3% increase in entry fees, causing plenty of comment in the eventing world. However it isn’t just in England that people are discussing the cost of entries and the prize money at events as the questions being raised by riders are similar here in Australia.
The announcement on the British Eventing website advised that
“The membership and registration fees are used to develop the sport further and ensure long term sustainability of the business. Around 50% of the membership and horse registration income is spent directly on the provision of the sport, and Membership services. The remaining 50% contributes to IT developments, the Youth Teams, our membership of the BEF as well as running the Head Office and corporate governance”
Recently a Twitter account has been created called Eventing PrizeMoney (@EPrizemoney) for people who “would like to see higher prize money in eventing” which has attracted the support of top riders such as Paul Tapner and Mark Todd. Many of the comments from followers refer to the huge disparity between the huge prize money now available in show jumping compared to that provided in eventing.
“Why are we such the poor relations in the horse world?” asks Sir Mark
In response British Eventing has invited members to send in prize money queries to their panel of Organisers for a prize money question and answer session. BE Chief Executive Mike Etherington-Smith says
“We would like to think Organisers give the best possible prize money they can afford to offer; costs differ for all Organisers, for example there is a significant difference in costs for Organisers who have to pay a facility fee to a landowner/host and those that are run by organisers who own the land on which they run their competitions.
“This presents obvious challenges when setting entry fees; in light of this we have asked several organisers to help us to dispel some of the myths that surround profits made by events for our Q&A”
The resulting answers (not to mention the questions) may prove to be of interest to both riders and event organisers around the world. If you are interested in forwarding questions, you can submit to @beventing using the hashtag #BEQuestions or email them to [email protected] by 5pm Tuesday 15th October 2013; the questions will be addressed to three BE event Organisers whose viewpoint will be shared online via the BE website on Friday 18th October 2013.
