Letter: Race entry fees explained

Editor’s note: The following letter to the editor was submitted by Burke Mountain Academy student, Dominic Shackleton. His research was conducted independently and has not been fact-checked by the Ski Racing Media team. We do this to encourage writers to submit their work. To submit your own work, email [email protected].

As all American skiers are painfully aware, the cost of ski racing is a significant obstacle on the road to success. Earlier this winter, I straddled on the third gate of my first run. In conjunction with a gut-wrenching frustration over my performance, was a guilty feeling that I flushed a fistful of money down the drain. While this is a chronic feeling for almost all FIS racers, I’ve noticed it becomes amplified on race days when athletes personally punch in their credit card details. This persistent stress over money is a distraction that affects many racers’ performance and as I rode the chairlift back to the start, I wondered if anything could be done about it.

In Europe, FIS races are half the price of American races, so I initially wondered if there was a way to implement part of their system in the U.S. Of course, it didn’t take long to realize that those lowered costs were a result of the wildly different culture surrounding the sport and achieving the same price point in America is virtually impossible. Because of this, I decided it would be beneficial to research and explain why race entry fees are so expensive in the first place.

I was fortunate to have access to a ledger showing the revenue and expenses of a competition season at a small mountain in Vermont. Below I have compiled the approximate costs per athlete at a FIS race with 100 entries.

Simplified, there are four major categories:

• Lift ticket ($20)
• USSA/organization dues ($18)
• Prize winnings/club revenue ($15.60)
• Necessary expenses ($11.40)

As lift ticket prices have doubled in the last twenty years, discounts for racers have been reduced significantly. Although this mountain is on the cheaper side with a $20 charge (over 75% off of the retail price), some resorts charge $50 or more, bringing the total race fee well within the $100 range.

Many mountains, especially those owned by corporations such as Vail or Alterra, do this to maximize profits – they know what most people will pay. However, mountains would generate much more revenue from an extra ten racers spending money on hotels, lodge food and parent tickets than they would adding another $10 to their lift ticket fees. These mountains should recognize that it is in their best interest for ski racing to become more popular and accessible, and that they have the power to influence this.

USSA charges a $10 fee per competitor at a scored race in addition to a regional and divisional fee that varies across the country. This charge contributes to USSA’s income and goes towards its multitude of operating expenses, including national development programs. America is somewhat unique among major national ski teams because it receives no funding from the government, meaning it relies solely on the generosity of private donations and its own revenue channels. The perpetual need to fundraise is another example of how the culture surrounding ski racing is different from Europe, resulting in higher expenses.

While some races do offer prize money to attract better skiers, most do not. As a result, the “prize winnings/club revenue” section is mostly club revenue. Like USSA, clubs struggle to meet the ever increasing costs of B-net, gates, hill space, etc. Instead of charging their own members through program fees, many take profit from races; I would guess that $15 is on the lower end of the spectrum.

Finally, all the necessary components to run a race come in at a cost of just over $10. The majority of this is self-explanatory: batteries are needed for equipment, FIS needs to send someone to homologate the hill and so forth, but the price of timing equipment is surprising. For example, the LED start clock that shows the time and interval to the racer in the gate costs nearly $3,000. This is a result of the niche ski racing market, a factor that only drives prices up further.

Unfortunately, for the mountain I looked at there is not a clear way these fees could be reduced; every expense can be justified. That said, clubs need to continue to think critically about how they can make races – and for that matter ski racing in general – more affordable. After all, race fees are just a small portion of the huge number of expenses that make ski racing inaccessible to many.