Race Directing Tips from Dave McGillivray

AWARD CEREMONIES – THE LAST IMPRESSION

(March 26, 2025)

As race directors, we all work so hard on our races and are very sensitive to make sure that everything goes well. However, many times we tend to neglect the final phase of the overall event, the award ceremony. Typically, not enough time, attention or resources are committed to this part of the overall participant experience. Given that the award ceremony is the final activity of the day, don’t we all want our customers to leave with a good taste in their mouth? If so, many of us may need to prepare better for this “last impression.” Here are a few thoughts:

First, we need to decide if we even need a formal, full blown award ceremony. If we don’t, then don’t force it. Some races are now just awarding the overall winners and mailing out all the age group awards, thus totally eliminating the long, drawn out awards ceremony. Given that results are now being immediately emailed or texted out to runners and posted onto the race’s websites, runners can see their results sometimes just minutes after they finish and not have to wait for hours for the awards ceremony. For many who are busy, this is the more preferred way to go. Others who don’t mind sticking around, rather hear their name called out and receive their award in front of their peers (whatever number of peers are remaining at that time!).
There should always be assigned a dependable person to be the awards ceremony coordinator. Awards ceremony preparation, if done right, can take many hours of someone’s time and on race day begins even before the race starts. To do it right takes time, lots of planning and a small team of helpers.
Start time – we need to decide when to begin the formal awards ceremony – do we actually wait until the last person finishes or is it appropriate to start before then? The later the wait the greater chance our audience will diminish. So, timing is critical here.
Audience – we have to consider what is going to keep a good percentage of participants around to view the awards ceremony. We want more than just the award winners present. Food, drink and entertainment usually does the trick along with nice weather, of course!
Typically, there are two parts of an awards ceremony – all the thank you remarks, the short speeches and the check presentations to the charities and then comes the distribution of awards themselves. So that folks don’t complain of having a long award ceremony, maybe we should advertise it as two separate programs, e.g., from 10:00am to 10:30am is Race Acknowledgements and from 10:30am to 11:00am is the actual Award Distribution. I do this at one of my races and it seems to work pretty well.
The location of the award ceremony is important, too. If it is close to the finish where everyone is gathering, you most likely will attract a bigger crowd. If they have to walk far to it, you may lose a significant percentage of your audience.
Award winners – those who have won awards somehow should be notified right away so they have even more reason to stick around – text message, email notification, posting of results. Also, those who will be asked to come up on the stage should be asked to make their way to the side of the stage well in advance of being called up to help cut down on the time it takes to award everyone.
If you decide to go with a formal, extensive ceremony, a significant decision that needs to made is in what order do you distribute the awards – overall/elites first or age group winners first and same with other special categories. Some feel by holding off with the elite awards until the end encourages more runners to stick around longer. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t and we certainly don’t want to inconvenience our invited elite athletes to have to wait for an hour or so for their awards, either.
Number of awards – if we have 50-100+ awards to distribute, e.g., three deep in every 5-year age group, perhaps just have the overall and special category winners come up on stage and all the others report to an awards tent on the side of the stage to pick up their award, mainly to cut back on the amount of time it usually takes for winners to come out of the crowd and make their way up to the stage. Perhaps a compromise is to have the announcer still call out the winners names but do so very quickly and again direct the winners to the awards tent. Finally, you will have to decide what to do with any awards not claimed at the award ceremony. You can either mail them out, not mail them out or have a designed location and timeframe where runners can come by in the next week or so to pick up their award.
Prize money – awarding prize money throws in a whole new set of complexities – gathering W8 or W9 forms, deducting taxes, perhaps waiting for drug testing results and the list goes on. Usually, this can take up to 1-2 months after the race. And, if there are errors or if someone who was awarded prize money later is retroactively disqualified, then it gets really complicated trying to get the money back from the “cheater” and then making everyone else whole.

Whereas I could go on and on about many other aspects of an award ceremony, the main goals and objectives should be these:

We need to be sure to have someone “in the know” (race referee) quickly review the results for accuracy before we announce them. And, one of the keys here is having an experienced and dependable timing company.
Don’t drag the award ceremony out.
Definitely no long speeches. Speakers should keep their remarks to one minute or even less.
Be prepared well in advance.
Start on time, end on time. Tell the audience at the beginning how long it is going to take.
Assign a charismatic announcer but one who knows the running industry and perhaps knows many of the runners who are receiving awards.
Keep track of those who aren’t present to receive their award and have a plan as to whether you are or are not mailing out the awards.

Like with many things, there is no right or wrong. It all depends on your individual situation and your objectives. My motto is, “it’s your race so it is your rules.” The key is to be on time, be accurate, keep it moving and keep it brief and perhaps a little entertaining. That should go all long way in leaving a lasting impression we all can be proud of.

Dave McGillivray

DMSE Sports, Inc.

WHO OWNS AN EVENT?

(Updated June 17, 2024)

There was a time when I thought a road race could never be sold. Who would buy it and what exactly would the buyer be buying anyway? Today, however, races are now being bought and sold left and right. Boy, did I miss the bus on that one…well, maybe and maybe not.

The more appropriate question might be, who actually owns an event and can it truly be owned the way a piece of real estate can be or a private business can be owned? And, what about a non-profit event? I’m not an attorney so I really don’t know the answer to this question. However, even if one lays claim to owning an event what, in fact, does one truly own? And who does the liability of the event rest with? If there are claims against the event or money owed from the event, who is responsible for all of that?

The easy answers would be that one could own the trademarks or registered marks of the event, that is, the name and the logo. Additionally, one could own the database of past entrants of the event and other intellectual, race related property. OK, now what else?? Maybe you are buying some goodwill and perhaps a covenant by the former owner not to compete. Maybe there are other tangible assets (equipment, supplies, etc.) but generally speaking there really isn’t a lot more you can own that someone else couldn’t easily just bring to the table themselves.

So, maybe the more important question should be, who controls or authorizes whether an event can or cannot take place? Most events are conducted on city or town property. We all have to get “permission” in the way of permits to conduct our events. If we don’t get permission, we don’t have an event…so, what do you then end up owning…maybe not that much in reality.

I once helped out with a triathlon on Cape Cod. The race had a race director and had a longtime sponsor. After a few years of working together, they decided to “split” up. However, both still wanted to put the race on so both individually went into the town office and applied for permission to conduct the event. However, neither could actually prove that they owned the event. The Board of Selectmen wanted no part of deciding whose race it was so they asked both of them to leave and resolve this on their own with only one of them coming back in with the request or risk having the event be cancelled entirely. They resolved the conflict between each other and a permit was eventually granted. I believe the sponsor simply “paid off” the race director and took control of the event from that point on. Interestingly, that event does not even exist anymore.

A few years ago, I attended a Road Race Management conference. There were about 100 race directors in the audience. One of them asked me, “so, how do I determine what my race is worth?” In response, I fired two questions back, “has anyone ever purchased a race before?” Not one hand went up. “Has anyone ever sold a race before?” Again, not one hand went up, where upon I responded to the original question of what a race was worth – “well, if no one is willing to buy it, I suppose it not worth much of anything is it?”

However, the road race landscape has changed since then. Prior to the 2020 pandemic, sponsorship and participation were at an all-time high. And now, a case can be made that the business is finally “recovering” from the pandemic and some will say we are totally back to “normal.” The fact of the matter is that the stakes are much, much greater today than they were say 20 years ago. Venture capital and private equity money has been pumped into the industry. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen.

Personally, I’m not sure I would ever buy an event. If I want to direct another race, I can just create it myself. What if I bought it and then the permitting authorities told me I couldn’t have permission to conduct it? Now I have nothing. When I first started my event management business, a case can be made that I own everything I managed because I created it all. After about fifteen years of this structure, I decided I did not want to own any event and continue to take on the responsibility of the entire event (marketing, communications, participant recruitment along with all the operations). I decided just to work on events that we were hired to manage operationally but did not “own”. We were guaranteed a management fee. That seemed like a much less risky approach.

In some cases, the events we were hired to manage were eventually sold by the owner. As such, either we were let go as we were no longer needed or we were kept on for a transition year or two. On five different occasions, the events we used to manage were discontinued because the new owner could not increase the field size enough to cover their higher overhead. So, maybe the original owner made out like a bandit, but this was certainly not a good move by the buyer nor was it good for the running industry at large since runners liked to participate in those races and now they were gone. Some investors and private equity firms think there is a lot of money to be made in this industry but they eventually find out that this is either not the case or they learned that the amount of work needed to invest in the event to make that happen doesn’t justify the return.

I used to be able to accurately predict what the next year or two might look like in our industry. Now, it’s next to impossible so I’m taking the less risky route of not owning events and not gambling on striking it rich any day soon.

The point in all this is that getting permission to conduct your event from year to year is just as important or even more important than actually owning the event. Having a good relationship with the permitting authorities and agencies is paramount. If you are thinking of acquiring an event, it would be prudent to first be sure you can secure the permit to conduct it for years to come.

Dave McGillivray

DMSE Sports, Inc.