Originally Posted by
tetonrider
in my region, the penalty for late registration is usually $5-15. with on lie reg available until the night before and with variable weather, potential for low-turnout, other issues coming up (a crash the prior weekend), it tends not to make sense to pre-register unless one is super strapped for cash.
i get that this isn't good for promoters, but the penalty for late reg (or the bonus for early reg) isn't generally enough to align racers' goals with those of promoters.
Did I say this before? I'll say it again, regardless. My theory, as a promoter, is that it's nice to get the late fee. However the late fee needs to be much more than the online reg fee. Typically it's 10%, so for $20 it's $2 or something. For $30, $3. A $5 late fee doesn't encourage online reg. A $10 is a little more encouraging, especially for a $20 race.
However I went to a race where it was $32 online, $42 day of (I ended up paying the $42). Only 5 were registered in the two fields racing together in the race I'd do (40-44, 45-49) and I think 12 took the line. Weather was spectacular, maybe 75-80 deg, sunny, just gorgeous, and it was forecast to be that for a while. Weather was not a factor. I wished I'd pre-reg so that other riders would know that there were more people showing up. With a field of 5 that's really discouraging, at least around here. On any other weekend I wouldn't have shown up but we were meeting family after the race so we'd be going there anyway.
So now I revised my theory on pre-reg. I think pre-reg is good until the field numbers get okay, like 30-50 riders in the field. After that I would be inclined to give the promoter the late fee bonus.
For the Series I try to really discount the full Series, so $17/week, $27? for two races/week. $22 pre-reg for daily, $27 for day-of. With a normal/good turnout I'm giving $1500 in prizes a week, $3000-4000 on the last week (larger fields typically and I do a field-based prize tier and GC prizes basically double the daily prizes). Unfortunately I need a minimum number of entries and this year we didn't hit that on any week.