The financial impact of hosting competitive swimming.

Believe me, we have heard it all. But the reality is a well-organized competitive swim program can impact your bottom line in a positive nature and provide a host of other benefits to your aquatic program.

Listed within this article are several key areas that today's aquatic managers could use to generate revenue from their competitive programs. A financial analysis included.

Swim-Team Lane Rentals

The goal of an aquatic manager is to fill every possible square foot of your pool during operating hours Renting out the deep-water lanes to local swim teams is one of the best ways to do that. Many United States Swimming (USS) clubs work out 12 months a year, high school teams practice five to seven months a year in most states, and in some warmer climates, 11 months a year. Managers can charge anywhere from $4.00-$10.00 per hour per lane for each team, depending upon your location. At Oklahoma City Community College (OKCCC), we charge $5.50 an hour. and our gross annual income is approximately $30,000. Additional fees can be charged for use of workout equipment, timing system, exercise equipment, and more. Higher lane rentals may be assessed during peak hours. For 50-meter pools that are divided into two pools, you may consider charging more for long-course lanes to cover set-up costs, as well as exclusive usage of the entire space.

Hosting Special Events

The next phase of working with competitive swim teams is to host swim meets at your facility. There are three ways to approach this: through a direct outside contract, a third-party contract, or run the swim meet yourself. Depending on the size of your facility and size of meet to be held, facilities can earn $30-$130 per hour to host a swim meet. At OKCCC, we currently charge $50 an hour for the lap pool or diving well, or $75 an hour for exclusive use of the entire facility. There is a two-hour minimum.

Additional charges include $10 an hour for each lifeguard, $12 an hour for security, and $12 an hour for maintenance and janitorial services. Clubs can save money by providing their own certified security or by using a volunteer off-duty police officer. They also can reduce a portion of the janitorial bill by having volunteers clean up throughout the meet. As a result, you may charge for two hours of final janitorial service rather than billing them to have a janitor on site throughout the entire event. As the aquatic manager, it is critical that these two are part of the contract because this helps alleviate wear and tear on the facility. Also, USS Swimming requires an official meet marshal! to control and be prepared for emergencies.

If you are deciding to host your own swim meet, there are several key factors to consider before doing so. The type of meet to be held, the time, equipment and space needed to host the event, and the volunteer base and financial commitment required. Although many swim meets can bring in additional dollars for your facility, Et poorly planned meet can drain your staff and create a disaster and a financial loss. A punch list of expectations is included within this article.

Entry and Admission Fees

Your biggest revenue source from a swim meet is the entry fee. Fees can be determined for your meet as a set amount per swimmer, such as $10 or $15, depending upon the size of the meet. Some may be as low as $3 and others as high as $25. Also, you may charge a set amount per number of events entered' which is usually anywhere from three to six events. This may be in the range of $2 to $6 per event, and is issued on top of the surcharge fee. The more events a swimmer enters, the more money you earn.

Depending on the size and duration of the meet you are hosting, you may decide to charge an admission price. This can be levied as a one-time rate for all-day meets or a per-session rate for preliminaries and finals. Sometimes an event charge may be assessed for multiple-day meets with a variety of sessions, allowing guests to come to all sessions. Preliminary meets draw the largest number of swimmers, but finals draw the largest number of spectators. The charges for admission should always be very minimal and should only increase if the quality, size, and stature of your event increases. Often times. you can split your admissions with the club or give the entire admission to the club (if they completely manage it), and then negotiate a higher contract rate, which gives you a guaranteed income regardless of attendance. That also allows the club to charge a higher-than-normal rate because the parents know it's a source of income that supports the club.

Miscellaneous Revenue Producers From Swim Meets

Concessions always bring in additional revenue. Both food sales and retail sales can mean big money for your facility. Both of these services can be contracted out or run by volunteers. Often, a parents' club supporting your local team or pool may provide baked goods, salads, nachos, popcorn, or baked potatoes. These are relatively inexpensive items that you can sell. Avoid name-brand candy bars, canned soda pop, or other name-brand items, because your profit margin is not nearly as high.

With the previously listed items you can sometimes earn up to 70 percent profit compared to 15 percent on name-brand items like a candy bar. With home-cooked items, concession sales usually need to be managed by a volunteer group and sponsored by a club that holds liability insurance, in the event that someone gets sick.

Local or regional swim shop retail companies can set up a full line of swim attire and accessories, and you earn a percentage from the total sales. You can earn between 10 to 25 percent of the net profit from sales and oftentimes work with the vendor to create a special event t-shirt, from which you can gain 40 to 50 percent of the profit. Working ahead with your vendor can prevent sales issues if you are selling special event shirts, hats, shorts, towels or swim caps. If you staff your own booth, your profit is even higher.

To keep your spectators informed of what is going on, the sale of a heat sheet or program allows for yet another source of revenue. This is the ideal place to also give credit and publicity to your volunteers, donors, and supporters. A simple heat sheet can sell for fifty cents; a full-fledged program can bring in several dollars. Large-meet programs, such as our Big 8 meet, were selling for $10. Advertisements can also be sold ahead of time to fund the printing cost of the program so that the sales are 100 percent profit.

Sponsorship

The easiest way to ensure success for your swim meet is to secure sponsorship from within the local community. Sponsorship can come in the form of printing, food, items for athletes, items for volunteers, official shirts, volunteer shirts, cash, and other incidentals that are needed for the operation of the event. Hotels are another source of income for sponsorship. By using a single hotel as the "host hotel" for your event, many will cut great deals on cash back for room nights reserved and provide complimentary rooms for your key officials and volunteers.

By securing these kinds of sponsorships, operating expenses are kept at a minimum, and the revenue producers listed above provide for a better profit margin for your event.

Larger aquatic facilities, such as ours, can oftentimes benefit from major corporate sponsorships. Many new aquatic facilities are being built from a combination of private funds, contributions, and in-kind support from major manufacturers and public funds. The public funding comes along with a contingency for public support of certain types of programs.

When you are preparing your proposal to seek large contributions or in-kind donations from major corporations, it is always a good idea to include an economic-impact study as a part of your proposal.

This study illustrates the overall benefit to supporting your program because corporations need to feel a direct, and sometimes indirect, relationship with you. In most areas of the country, swimming does not have the marketability that football, basketball, or many other sports have. As a primarily individual sport, it is hard to sell to a corporate executive the need to support your pool unless they have an immediate relationship with swimming. An economic-impact study says "yes -- swimming does bring money into our community, and it does impact our local businesses." To find out how much of an economic impact a quality event may impact your community, contact your chamber of commerce.

In Oklahoma City, a study was conducted and provides basic economic impact from the Oklahoma City Visitors and Convention Bureau in 1992 (see Table 1). The figures would be slightly higher to day and do not include spectator attendance, TV media coverage, and sponsorship.

TABLE 1. BASIC ECONOMIC IMPACT OF AQUATIC EVENTS

                Number of      Length of        Daily     Total
Event           Athletes        Stays (days)     Rate     Impact

Swimming

Zone Age Group        600         6           $  75    $ 270,000
Junior Nationals    1,200         6             100      720,000
Senior Nationals      800         6             125      600,000
Regionals             500         3              60       90,000
State Meet            300         2              60       36,000

Synchronized

Masters               200         7             125       175,000
Open                  250         5             125       156,250
Senior                150         5             125        93,750
Age Group             300         5             100       120,000

Water Polo

Sports Festival
 Qualifying           120         4             75          36,000
Junior Nationals      120         5             75          93,750
Nationals             200         6             100        120,000

Diving

Zone                  250         4             75        75,000
Junior Olympics       250         5             75        93,750
Nationals             200         6             100      120,000

Master Swimming

Zone                  600         6             125       450,000
Nationals           2,000         7             125     1,750,000

Note: Daily rate includes hotel accommodations, meals, airfare, car rental, shopping, entertainment, and taxes on all purchases.

This chart compiled by Mark Hokkanen, former director, OKCCC Aquatic Wellness Center.

When compiling a report of the economic impact that your facility creates for your community, include the following items:

* Number of out-of-town visitors attending your event:

   High school athletes    $40-$60 a day
   College athletes        $60-$75 a day
   Coaches                $75-$100 a day
   Spectators (parents)       $120 a day

* Any TV/media exposure and the relational cost if you had to purchase that time/space

* Number of FTE jobs your facility provides and that cost

* Dollars spent to support your facility (maintenance, overhead, etc.)

* Taxes you pay (if any)

* Employee tax contributions

* Contributions from your facility (scholarships, free programs, etc.)

Compile this information into an annual report. The economic impact of what you do may be used for some of the following purposes:

* Corporate support for large contributions or in-kind donations

* Board of directors for budget increases, new programs, raises, new positions

* Hotel arrangements with a reimbursement package

* Local in-kind donations

* Fund-raising

* Renovations (capital improvements, equipment, etc.)

* Endowments

* Scholarships

* Team-travel support

As you can see, for larger pools, competitive swimming can be big business; and for many smaller 25-yard pools, it can still effectively impact your overall bottom line. The competitive element attracts more children as a part of your "learn-to-swim" program because they can develop and feed into the competitive swimming, diving, and junior lifeguarding programs. In addition, it extends your program pyramid and provides additional opportunities to promote swimming as a life-long sport, especially if you develop a master's program.

Look at ways to rearrange your pool time, and contact your local high schools if you do not currently have a program. Along with the many wonderful ideas that come from the National Recreation and Park Association's Aquatic Council and its membership, there are a number of resources to assist you in developing your competitive and overall program.

RELATED ARTICLE:

Below is a punch list of things to consider before a swim meet. These may or may not be applicable to your facility.

BASIC

* Timers for each lane

* Lifeguards in proper rotation

* Security with a list of specific information

* Emergency action plan

* Diabetic emergencies, exercise-induced asthma, seizures, etc.

* Officials

* Volunteers

* Starting unit charged up and in proper place

* Pencils, stopwatches, clipboards, chairs for the timers and officials, etc.

* Tighten starting blocks

* Tighten lane ropes

* Hospitality room available and ready to go with enough tables, chairs, extension cords and power strips, trash cans, extra trash bags, and cleaning supplies

* Sound system in working order

* Check fuses on scoreboard, have lots of back-up fuses

* Duct tape

* Straighten touch pads

* Speakers behind the lanes for swimmers

* Backstroke flags, false-start ropes, lap counters

* Copy machine available (plenty of paper and extra toner)

* Awards table, blocks, runners and gofers

* Trash cans in good locations around swim teams (with extra bags)

COMPUTERS

* Computer working (printer paper, ribbon, good cables)

* Trained computer operator(s)

* Relay, scratch and DQ forms

FIRST AID

* Guard stands in appropriate areas

* Fully stocked first-aid kits

* Radio communication/headsets (if available)

* Rescue tubes

* Backboards

* Whistles