The cost of Century Rides

On 4/20/2016 7:43 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/20/2016 7:34 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at 3:01:54 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
I was at the Sea Otter Classic last Saturday and visited
a booth of a
California cycling magazine which had information on a
bunch of upcoming
century rides.

I looked at the one for my old bicycle club, where in the
1980's we
argued about raising the entry cost to $12 from $10 (or
maybe it was $8
to $10). Our century was never intended to be a
fund-raiser, so we set
the price to just break even.

I saw that the registration for that ride is now $80 ($70
for early
registration) and that a tee shirt is another $20.

Are there enough people paying $70-100 to ride on public
roads to keep
all these century rides in business?

Of course the smartest cyclist guys of all time were the
ones that began
the Cinderalla Classic
http://www.valleyspokesmen.org/cinderellaclassic

I also notice that the clubs no longer require or perform
any bicycle
inspections. Way too much liability if they allow an
unsafe bicycle on
the ride. At least that ride is a slightly more
reasonable $58.


$30-40 up here for a standard century. $70-80 for the
deluxe free beer/wine good food ride -- with a crappy
route. http://www.portlandcentury.com/ I don't typically
ride organized centuries -- and there are not that many up
here. I think the SCV has way more of them -- and more
people with money.

I did a super-expensive century last year in Washington --
which was $135, but I got in free because my sister-in-law
was working support. That fee also included an O.K.
jersey and a shuttle bus ride. You could get the ride
only for $60 (along with admission to the "festival"):
http://giganticbicyclefestival.org/#...r_registration.


Interesting point-to-point ride -- you had to shuttle to
the start or from the end back to the start. I got a
shuttle ride to the start and then did the ride back to
Snoqualmie.

Wow. Seems to me it's another example proving that there's
no upper limit to what some people will pay.

Normal economic theory always said that when prices rise,
fewer sales will occur (a phenomenon known as "elasticity"),
so maximum profit can be visualized as the intersection
between the profit-per-sale curve and the sale-vs-price
curve. Or something vaguely like that. (Hey, it's been
years.) But there are buyers that defy the logic, and pay
very high prices for products that most consumers would
reject. Which is _not_ to deliberately slag custom lugged
steel frames...

One of the _Freakonomics_ books had another example of
that. A very intelligent woman, maybe (I forget) with
degrees in economics, liked sex very much. She turned
professional and did quite well, with "johns" who were
upper-income and generally pleasant.

But it got to be just too tiring, or something, so she
decided to apply elementary economics and raise her prices
sky high. She found to her surprise that she had about as
much business as before; but she was raking in a lot more
money.

So in economic terms, the demand for a good whore is
inelastic. Maybe the same can be said of a "luxury" century
ride.


The term you want there is "Veblen goods".

Over in the economics department overfilled sagging shelves
are rife with theses on pricing theory but you do have the
essence of it above.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971