{"id":3922,"date":"2010-10-17T20:25:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T19:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3922"},"modified":"2013-11-29T00:09:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-29T00:09:00","slug":"london-2012-olympic-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3922","title":{"rendered":"London 2012 Olympic prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s almost as if the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics are incapable of learning anything from anyone.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the gaze of the equestrian world was focussed on the World Equestrian Games (WEG) in Kentucky USA.<\/p>\n

The WEG is the World Cup of all equestrian disciplines. Like other World Cup competitions, the WEG is held every four years; the venue changes on a ‘bid’ basis, this is also like other World Cup competitions.<\/p>\n

In terms of competition ‘difficulty’, the WEG is a CCI**** (four star) competition, this is the highest degree of difficulty in the equestrian world.<\/p>\n

The only other four star competitions in the normal *annual* Eventing calendar are:<\/p>\n

Lexington (US), April
\nBadminton (GB), March
\nLuhmuhlen (DE), June
\nBurghley (GB), Sep
\nPau (FR), November
\nAdelaide (AUS), November<\/p>\n

To this list we have to add the two four star events that occur on a periodic basis:<\/p>\n

WEG (US), October 2010
\nOlympics (GB), July 2012<\/p>\n

Let’s add, to the list of *annual* four star events some additional information:<\/p>\n

Lexington (US), April US$50 (incl car parking) – \u00a331
\nBadminton (GB), March \u00a3101 (incl car parking) – \u00a3101
\nLuhmuhlen (DE), June \u20ac80 (incl car parking) \u00a0– \u00a370
\nBurghley (GB), Sep \u00a370 (incl car parking) – \u00a370
\nPau (FR), November \u20ac51 (for VIP pass incl car parking) – \u00a345
\nAdelaide (AUS), November A$80 (incl car parking) – \u00a350<\/p>\n

This tells us that, for those of us in Europe, amongst the annual four star competitions, Badminton Horse Trials is exceptionally poor value.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Europe, Pau, Luhmuhlen and Burghley all seem to be more or less in the same financial ballpark.<\/p>\n

So we have a market.<\/p>\n

Let’s add to the marketplace, the prices for this year’s WEG in Ketucky: \u00a3200 (incl car parking).<\/p>\n

Fucking… ouch!! That’s painful.<\/p>\n

OK, so now let’s add the final ingredient, the prices for the London 2012 Eventing competition: \u00a3275 (*not* incl car parking).<\/p>\n

Fucking, fucking, fucking OUCH!!!<\/p>\n

A point of clarification: the prices for four star Eventing competitions are not set by the local\/national discipline. Oh no.<\/p>\n

The prices for four star Events are set by the sport’s international governing body, the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the organisers of this year’s WEG have taken a financial hammering. According to today’s Sunday Telegraph, the FEI managed to sell just 52% of their tickets.<\/p>\n

I can’t help wondering how many of the \u00a3275 tickets the FEI reckon they’re going to sell.<\/p>\n

I’m seriously pissed off with the FEI, they seem to be guilty of what the Americans call ‘price gouging’.<\/p>\n

The prices the FEI charged for the CIC*** (three star) competition at this year’s Gatcombe Horse Trials were absolutely criminal.<\/p>\n

What is it with sport governing bodies that seems the make them see the punters as nothing more than cash cows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s almost as if the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics are incapable of learning anything from anyone. Earlier this month, the gaze of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}