Cycling Ireland membership is a complete rip off- Discuss

Wishbone Ash

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120922828#Comment_120922828

It's €50 for a CI leisure licence. If you also join a club it will be the CI €50 plus club membership fee.

Junior

I'd actually suggest the reverse is true, your €20 to your club isn't doing anything for you. By paying a fee into your club, you aren't getting a license, you aren't getting insurance, and your club spins are costing the club nothing. Your €20 is probably doing more to support the "leechy" racing cyclists in the club than anything at CI Level.

I'll add a couple of caveats here, I've been Club Chairman, I've done PRO, Race Director, Committee member etc. I have no ties to CI and no affiliation with them in anyway.

The Solution for both Club and CI is to roll the Leisure license and club membership into one. But that wouldn't suit either party as someone would need to be taking a hit. It would ensure everyone on a club spin had some level of cover, would allow leisure riders to events without getting rode for One Day licenses etc.

At a Board Level in CI because All revenue goes into the same pot, it feels like the Leisure cyclist is paying for Racing. And in no way shape or form is that true. As a club, if you want to put on a race, you find sponsors yourself, you find prize money, you find marshals, sh*t you don't even get finish line cameras from CI. You pay for the Comms, everything is an expense, you pay for Insurance, everything. So no Club is getting a hand out from CI to put on Races.

Most Leisure cyclists will offer up the opinion I get nothing for my €50. I'd kindly ask what do you want for your €50 ? And if you want something, you had better starting telling your leisure committee in your club to go represent you.

Ideally I think CI needs to re-mandate itself, and split into a couple of divisions, one related to sport, one related to leisure, and one related to advocacy for commuting, bike lanes, safety etc. And work accordingly. But that's just me.

Morris Garren

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120926512#Comment_120926512

This is an excellent summary; excellent points that have been made many times, almost ad nauseum, typically responding to the regular leisure cyclist whinge about money. I think much of the frustration on the issue is misdirected towards the competitive aspects of cycling when in fact the issue is more of an administrative and management of funds question. Its the CI mindset and the ongoing support for these structures that keeps things the way they are.

I think there needs to be a critical mass of non-competitive cyclists who genuinely want change to advocate successfully for a quasi-independent cycling group who get more 'bang for their buck' - then we will really see where their 50 quid goes. Why doesn't this happen? My guess is that the vast majority of leisure cyclists are not actually animated or upset by 50 quid. Admittedly, 20 for ODL can seem steep but people are paying 700 quid to see Taylor Swift these days!

loyatemu

FWIW - from the 2022 annual report:

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120926512#Comment_120926512

Excellent post.

Daroxtar

I never said anything in my original post giving out about the racing members. They pay double the leisure fee for their racing licences and they pay high enough entry fees for the races they take part in. My club has a very high ratio of racing:leisure cyclists. They're the lads I cycle with every week. My mates. Not leeches.

My issues relate to what my money is doing for me and the other leisure cyclists. Looking at the graphs and figures above, it's mostly paying for consultancy, admin, marketing and a handful of cyclists to train in the high performance program. What happened to the big An Post sportives, the Rebel tour, Yeats Tour, Sean Kelly? Why couldn't CI make sure these events continued? Insurance problems? Couldn't Marketing or admin help find some sponsorship? Stuff we're supposedly paying for?

Again going back, I'd have no issue paying substantially higher club membership. It is the club that organises our club spins, not CI, but if you don't pay CI you can't do a club spin. Their insurance is a box ticking exercise, nothing more. It is the club that put on family spins, the club members that organise our trips away. The club organises its anual sportive and its race. All the things that being part of a club entails, all entirely done by the club. What do CI do? Send out a couple of emails and leaflets around bike week and call it education?

iwillhtfu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120929123#Comment_120929123

Does €706k not seem pretty expensive relative to the income amount? Maybe it's just me but I abhor consultancy fees and not based on the latest RTE affair. I've seen eye watering sums of money wasted on consultancy fees over the years.

Weepsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120930184#Comment_120930184

Maybe due to the various legal hearings? But professional fees in 17,18 and 19 were closer to the 100k

Squidgy Black

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120930184#Comment_120930184

I would imagine last year was much higher due to the whole audit thing and legal fees, they’d both KOSI and BDO in doing audits last year

siochain

Genuine question. Do I understand it correctly that some of the leisure license free goes to support the racing crew?

siochain

Aye I’m involved in a GAA club but we are comparing apples with oranges here. Some of the frees go to supporting ground upkeep, training equipment, etc.

Dr.Tom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120926512#Comment_120926512

Great summary Derek.

Cycling Ireland seems to be turning into what Motorcycling Ireland became.

Weepsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933129#Comment_120933129

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933126#Comment_120933126

You'll find in gaa , a lot of clubs use money to bring I coaches and to spend exclusively on their senior teams, money brought in my members of juvenile and families that volunteer endless amounts of time. Plenty use the money brought in my members for things they have absolutely no business spending it on too.

GAA clubs are a bit of a cult

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933129#Comment_120933129

I was the one who introduced GAA membership fees to the discussion as it was an easy sports club membership comparison.

As Weepsie said, it is a bit of a cult alright.

I do also know when I was involved in managing an underage team some years back, I personally paid a number of the referees out of my own pocket (€20 a game) but this was only for a few games. Also, there were several players who were not members but the community spirit of the GAA meant that the club wasn't going to stop them playing. Some of these non-paid-up-member players were on the senior team and not short of funds.

So (in my GAA experience) you get some people happy to pay more than their fair share and others who don't pay at all. On an annual basis, I pay loads more towards the GAA than I do to CI. Not sure which I get more value from though.

Junior

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933782#Comment_120933782

The only thing I can say in favour of any GAA Club is that you can visit their Pitch/Field, you can see changing facilities, you can see a clubhouse. A Cycling Club, yarra sure it's a tuesday the club meets at Jimjo's old post office for a spin.. If it's sunday, well then they meet outside the Spar..

As a whole, a big issue for me is the fact that cycling clubs are invisible to the public, invisible for funding, and completely intangible. So you can feel that right your €50 Gaa Fee keeps the lights on, the grass cut, jerseys for the youths etc.

beggars_bush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933802#Comment_120933802

Unless your club has a clubhouse, like many clubs in rural towns do.

Weepsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120933802#Comment_120933802

The bar is what keeps the lights in my former GAA club, that and the fairly good grants they got and the "charity" fundraisers, that saw money pissed away on things that were not needed. MY experience of GAA clubs is they are often a fiefdom for a handful of people

Also most teams were not allowed use the pitch. Got token use of training pitch. Reserved for the more senior teams. At times they wouldn't allow it to be used at all to protect it, go use the public pitches in the park instead which involve trapsing around the place

Wishbone Ash

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120934160#Comment_120934160

I can only think of one club that has it's own clubhouse.

Large bottle small glass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120935162#Comment_120935162

Bray I'm guessing.

Don't forget Islandeady!

Wishbone Ash

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120935269#Comment_120935269

Yes, Bray.

I'd forgotten about Islandeady. No doubt 'The Ringer' helped smooth the way there!

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120935162#Comment_120935162

I'm based in Kildare where allegedly most GAA clubs managed to improve their grounds including building big clubhouses all courtesy of the taxpayer via Charlie McCreevey

Macy0161

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120934830#Comment_120934830

Underage and Ladies teams generally get to use the main pitch for matches at my GAA club, but are routinely dumped out of the new dressing rooms for the men's teams. A bit like school "voluntary" contributions, there's an expectation that any and every fund raising initiative is financially supported (even if it seems most of the money goes to the senior men's team).

The height of the additional expectation above my annual subs for my cycling club is that I marshal at one of the two open races. My club does have an active leisure section, which is supported through club funds. This is a fairly recent development - it needed the leisure members to support and get active. The club have coaches, who are more active with the leisure side with skills advice than with the racing members.

I know a few groups that act as de facto clubs* (jersey's, regular meet points etc) - which is all fine when all is going well, but I do wonder (given our litigious society) how they'd fair if there's an incident.

*One I know is made up of CI and/or TI members of various clubs, so would assume ok, but another one has no affiliations afaik.

The Davestator

The One Day licence is 20 euro. There is a cycle against suicide sportive in my locality soon and its 50. I would like to do it, as would a number of my friends but we are not doing it because of the ODL. The charity is going to be down at least 300 in fees because of the ODL that used to be €2 not too many years ago.

mamax

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120952622#Comment_120952622

Our club holds a sportive for local charities so when CI upped the one day licence fee by €10 we dropped the reg fee by €10 so the total fee remains the same for the cyclist this year.

But it's the charities that loose in all this, is there a way to run and insure a sportive without CI ???

Macy0161

You can try and get insurance yourselves. I think the cost of insurance is going over a lot of people's heads when it comes to CI and ODL. Did everyone miss the public liability insurance crisis that's been going on that has forced a lot of businesses to close? Do they think CI are immune, or that full members should sub the ODL?

fwiw a local sports club to me formed a cycling club effectively to run a fundraising sportive. When I was on the committee of my club, we were regularly approached to run sportives "in conjunction" with charities mainly so they could use the CI affiliation.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120952622#Comment_120952622

I hate to be that guy but you can just give the 50euro to charity and do the cycle on open roads, you lose the benefit of insurance but it is no riskier than just going out for a spin.

Large bottle small glass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120955598#Comment_120955598

What crisis?

https://www.piab.ie/eng/news-publications/news/injury-claims-numbers-down.html

muddypaws

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956898#Comment_120956898

Or register with the free CI community bike rides scheme and do it as a solo ride, which includes insurance.

Weepsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120955598#Comment_120955598

Insurance related expenses were down by nearly 90k in the last 2 published accounts now 2022 might have seen another big jump, but they fallen back close to 2018s level so some of the claims are a bit disingenuous, as they had already increased related costs to cover this level of expenses.

2015-2018 saw a bigger jump in insurance costs and

They also actively sought to change the policy to bring the excess of to a point of the insurance being worthless for most at the same time as th fees started to increase.

This just going by what they have put in their annual reports.

They'll bandy about the insurance thing as it's convenient, but it's only a half truth

Macy0161

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120957147#Comment_120957147

Cost of insurance, rather than cost of claims. I know a number of outdoor businesses around here have at least claimed that the cost of insurance is the main reason they closed.

I can only really think of one regular sportive that feels they can go it alone without CI. If it was all such a rip off, it's surprising that more aren't going the own insurance route?