Minimum required attendance

[mwx40x40]

Any clubs out there have a minimum required number of attendees to hold a match. Between COVID and ammo shortage our attendance has running at 50-60% of normal attendance and continuing to drop. Our match leadership is trying to establish a minimum requirement before we throw in the towel and not run a match.

Anyone else taking this approach? If so, what’s your number?

[Sarge]

As long as I get help setting up and tearing down I’ll run the match with one squad.

  I’m sure your matches are made up of die hard shooters who have ammo/components to last for years. Those guys are your bread and butter. Don’t yank a match out from under them or they might leave for greener pastures.

[EEH]

Also remember it’s Christmas month, a lot of shooters may be doing other things, you know with the wife. I’m without my shooting buddy right now due to eye injury, and I have to drive by myself. Last month at low country we were down some people but may have been weather related. I wouldn’t cut out match like sarge, of course you a long way for me.

[Racinready300ex]

When our club shut down in the spring due to covid. 6 of us went to the range and had a "practice" we set up 3 stages on the 3 bays and shot each one twice with different start positions to make a 6 stage "practice". Of course we also got chewed out by the king of the club. Yeah, we have a President, VP and BOD but then there is this guy who really runs things. But, that's probably another story. 

 

Anyway, my point was it really only takes a handful of guys to set something up and shoot a match if you really want to. If you talk to old timers, a lot of bigger clubs started off like that. Barely enough guys to fill a squad but they wanted to shoot so they made it happen.

[quiller]

I'll admit I have not shot in months....and I was only practicing with the USPSA guy when I was shooting. But there was a match last weekend and it was very quite. I'd say it was down 50%. But as mentioned above....all looked like hard core with lots of components on hand type shooters. My guess is no wheel kickers till the ammo shortage gets addressed, only seasoned competition shooters.

[Barcode1337]

Smallest number I've shot with was 4. Was a frustrating day. But that's what I like about this game. As long as I'm there I can still shoot.

[Silver_Surfer]

My guess would be five,

Our numbers hasn't really changed as of yet but with this primer thing I expect it will drop next year. 

Edited December 11, 2020 by Silver_Surfer

[CHA-LEE]

Minimum staff to run a match and base expenses associated with running the match are going to be the primary deciding factors. People generally focus on the minimum staff needed or head count attending in order to justify hosting a match. Sure you need people to set it up and competitors to attend. But you also need to understand the minimum paid competitors needed to break even financially. There are fixed expenses and variable expenses to consider. Fixed expenses are range use fee's, consumables (Targets, tape, paint, etc), and stuff like that. Variable expenses are setup help/BOD discounts, registration processing fee's, USPSA fee's and similar head count based fees. Every club has a unique financial situation they are dealing with so there isn't a magical minimum attendance number that justifies a "Break Even" head count match. For example, the club I run we need at least 20 paid full price entry fee's to cover the minimum expenses in running a match. This usually translates to 30 - 35 total competitors when you combine the full price entries with the discounted or free entries that consist of the setup crew & BOD match staff. If clubs have less or fewer Fixed expenses then the minimum head count attendance will also be lower.

 

If a match consists of 2 squad or less of competitors then its likely going to be a financial loss and unsustainable in the long run. Its up to each club to determine if hosting club matches that are a financial loss are really worth doing or not. For example, my club accepts the fact that our winter time matches will likely be a financial loss due to reduced attendance, but we make enough profit on the other matches throughout the year to cover that expense. With the COVID and Ammo Shortage situations now impacting the attendance of "Normal" matches with 50% attendance or less that might change our strategy on what we consider "Minimum Attendance" going forward in the winter time. We have plenty of $$$ in the bank to weather the proverbial storm while hosting club matches which are are a financial loss. But if this continues well into 2021 then some hard decisions are going to be needed.

[TonytheTiger]

3 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

 But you also need to understand the minimum paid competitors needed to break even financially. There are fixed expenses and variable expenses to consider. Fixed expenses are range use fee's, consumables (Targets, tape, paint, etc), and stuff like that. Variable expenses are setup help/BOD discounts, registration processing fee's, USPSA fee's and similar head count based fees. Every club has a unique financial situation they are dealing with

Yes!

I spent the last season running what is probably the most expensive local 3 gun match around. The people who ran it in the past typically had end of season payouts, catered food at a big shoot off and lots of other cool stuff. They also had 50-75 shooters. I charged the same fee and had similar costs to run the match but had 20-35 shooters all year. By the time I had the bills paid I broke even, but never heard the end of the bitching about lack of freebies. Pretty sure there was an assumption that I directly profited from it and very few people could understand that it costs money to run a match.

[Silver_Surfer]

On 12/15/2020 at 1:04 PM, TonytheTiger said:

Yes!

I spent the last season running what is probably the most expensive local 3 gun match around. The people who ran it in the past typically had end of season payouts, catered food at a big shoot off and lots of other cool stuff. They also had 50-75 shooters. I charged the same fee and had similar costs to run the match but had 20-35 shooters all year. By the time I had the bills paid I broke even, but never heard the end of the bitching about lack of freebies. Pretty sure there was an assumption that I directly profited from it and very few people could understand that it costs money to run a match.

Question, what would you do if you lost 1/2- 3/4 of your shooters due to Covid, lack of ammo or primers?  This is a real possibility here next year if things don't change. 

[TonytheTiger]

No match. It's as simple as that. If it costs $1000 to run it and I get $700 worth of paid shooters the math doesn't work out so great.

[Silver_Surfer]

19 minutes ago, TonytheTiger said:

No match. It's as simple as that. If it costs $1000 to run it and I get $700 worth of paid shooters the math doesn't work out so great.

Wow! Not sure what our regular weekend match cost. Our normal match fee is $10-$15 RO's and Staff work for free without lunch.  99.9% of our shooters helps with set up.  No one grumbles. 

[TonytheTiger]

6 hours ago, Silver_Surfer said:

Wow! Not sure what our regular weekend match cost. Our normal match fee is $10-$15 RO's and Staff work for free without lunch.  99.9% of our shooters helps with set up.  No one grumbles. 

To be fair its a bigger production than the average club match. Lunch and water, paid and fed set up crew and RO's, a couple hundred paper and over 1k clays per match, lots of paint, pretty hefty range use fee, shirts for season pass holders, stages that take 8-12 guys most of a saturday to build and troubleshoot, etc.

 

I could cut costs significantly, but if I've learned anything its that I'll get at least as many complaints about loss of features as I have about match cost. Can't please everybody.

 

The $1k number I threw out was just a hypothetical. Its actually at least double that.

Edited December 18, 2020 by TonytheTiger

[Sarge]

1 hour ago, TonytheTiger said:

To be fair its a bigger production than the average club match. Lunch and water, paid and fed set up crew and RO's, a couple hundred paper and over 1k clays per match, lots of paint, pretty hefty range use fee, shirts for season pass holders, stages that take 8-12 guys most of a saturday to build and troubleshoot, etc.

 

I could cut costs significantly, but if I've learned anything its that I'll get at least as many complaints about loss of features as I have about match cost. Can't please everybody.

 

The $1k number I threw out was just a hypothetical. Its actually at least double that.

From your example it's obvious that different matches have wildly varying circumstances. In our case around here as far as USPSA is concerned, the local clubs don't charge fees to host a match that I know of. If one does it's minimal. And when all is said and done USPSA brings in far and away more revenue to the clubs than any other discipline on a routine basis. The clubs are membership based and are not for profit type setups. So long story short, if the MD's get help setting up and tearing down, we could have a match with one squad and still be just fine. Could we do that forever? probably not. But we could definitely shoot a season without any problem.

[TonytheTiger]

@Sarge yeah every club is very different. I've had nearby 3 gun MD's look at me like I have 3 heads when I explain the above. From what I've gathered, most USPSA or 3 gun matches in my area have a situation similar to what you describe.

[rowdyb]

Just lurking around on practiscore even in the good times I could find lots of local uspsa matches that never seemed to have more than 20 people. That's dedication and really low overhead.

[MicahSwan]

On 12/10/2020 at 5:25 AM, Sarge said:

As long as I get help setting up and tearing down I’ll run the match with one squad.

  I’m sure your matches are made up of die hard shooters who have ammo/components to last for years. Those guys are your bread and butter. Don’t yank a match out from under them or they might leave for greener pastures.

I like that. 

As long as it can happen it is guns happen. 

[MikeBurgess]

I shoot a monthly ICORE match, it varies between having enough shooters for 1 or 2 squads, it is actually quite fun to shoot a super small match, it has a very different vibe than a 80-120 shooter USPSA matches I also shoot. 

 

[motosapiens]

On 12/15/2020 at 12:37 PM, CHA-LEE said:

For example, the club I run we need at least 20 paid full price entry fee's to cover the minimum expenses in running a match. This usually translates to 30 - 35 total competitors when you combine the full price entries with the discounted or free entries that consist of the setup crew & BOD match staff. If clubs have less or fewer Fixed expenses then the minimum head count attendance will also be lower.

 

 

dang. If we know registration is light (like it was in the rain/snow/xmas the last 2 matches), we only put up 2 field stages and run them from 2 different start positions, plus 2 classifiers, so 30-40 paper targets at 70 cents or so each. we are too lazy to paint in the winter, but if we did paint it would be 1 can of paint at $4 for the good stuff. So I figure our fixed expenses are about $30. We had 13 people (and a mild blizzard during setup, but it stopped and was quite pleasant for the shooting) last weekend, and it was really fun. 7 out of the 13 are M or better in at least 1 division, so there was some heat too.

 

I think if it was going to be fewer shooters than that, we'd probably just do an impromptu practice day. Set up one stage and run it, then move stuff around and run it again, then do that 2 more times. Only collect enough money to pay for the targets consumed (a buck or two per shooter), and have some fun. Of course we don't pay anything to use the range..... or maybe we pay *everything* to the range (except for the activity fees to uspsa)....

Edited December 30, 2020 by motosapiens