How your British Eventing entry fee is spent

We asked three event organisers to share their costs with us in order to work out how the average entry fee is spent. Here’s what we found out…

Where does my money go? What does it cost to run an event? One of British Eventing’s constant challenges as the sport’s governing body is balancing the cost of entry fees for members against what it costs organisers to run an event.

There’s no getting away from it – handing over your entry fee is not a small investment and in one hit it can seem like a very big one. On the other side, organisers have to cover their ever-increasing costs to stay viable. But where exactly does your entry fee go, and how far does it need to stretch for events to run?

We spoke to three organisers who run BE national classes from BE80(T) to Intermediate to find out what the average spend is for key areas of running an event and to find out what your entry fee is paying for.

While this aims to give you an insight into the cost of running an event and where your money goes, it’s important to remember that these figures are a snapshot of event costs and will also vary between events and organisers.

For example, the cost of building and designing courses will depend on the level and amount of courses on offer at the event. Some organisers will also have to pay a fee to hire the venue – this figure can vary greatly and, of the three organisers we spoke to, only one had a venue hire fee and it accounted for 12 per cent of their overall outgoings.

Other things to consider include events that fall during a very dry or very wet time of year, which may need to increase their cost on ground care compared with one that’s enjoyed perfect weather, and organisers with a newer event will usually have significant investments to make in their first few years than one that is well established.