GRRC Membership

[hotpowner]

You may or probably not be interested in the strange goings on at the GRRC

As some of you might know, GRRC membership costs £200 a year with a 5 year waiting list.

This year of course with no Goodwood events taking place, you might wonder what you get for your membership?

Well Lord March sent a letter to all members 'inviting them' to donate this years membership fee towards the Goodwood Supporters Association, I.e The Goodwood Estate.

This gets you a car sticker, a badge and your name on brass plate on the fence.

if you donate the tickets that you ve bought, or £300 you get a gold badge.

Or if you ask for a refund, they kick you out.

The GRRC, Goodwood Road Racing Club, is an unusual club, it has no premises, no committee, no meetings of its members,
5000 members? @£200 a year = a £ 1Million plus, for this you get a badge, a car sticker and a hard bound book of last years events, plus the opportunity to buy tickets
the year before last the GRRC paid the Goodwood Estate a £5,million Dividend

This not being enough The Duke writes a begging letter to its members

Edited by hotpowner on Saturday 11th July 18:39

[85Carrera]

hotpowner said:

You may or probably not be interested in the strange goings on at the GRRC

As some of you might know, GRRC membership costs £200 a year with a 5 year waiting list.

This year of course with no Goodwood events taking place, you might wonder what you get for your membership?

Well Lord March sent a letter to all members 'inviting them' to donate this years membership fee towards the Goodwood Supporters Association, I.e The Goodwood Estate.

This gets you a car sticker, a badge and your name on brass plate on the fence.

if you donate the tickets that you ve bought, or £300 you get a gold badge.

Or if you ask for a refund, they kick you out.

The GRRC, Goodwood Road Racing Club, is an unusual club, it has no premises, no committee, no meetings of its members,
5000 members? @£200 a year = a £ 1Million plus, for this you get a badge, a car sticker and a hard bound book of last years events, plus the opportunity to buy tickets
the year before last the GRRC paid the Goodwood Estate a £5,million Dividend

This not being enough The Duke writes a begging letter to its members

Edited by hotpowner on Saturday 11th July 18:39

Agreed, he’s taking the piss with the begging letters.

Am deciding whether to renew or focus on other, cheaper events going forward (with cheaper, more readily available accommodation).

The GSA has no meaningful benefits, except, possibly (as they’re pretty vague about this) if you are happy to forfeit your ticket money on top of your membership fees for this year.

He’s doesn’t give a toss what you or I or any other member thinks as he’s got a 5 year waiting list that somehow he has managed to persuade people to pay to be on ...

[NickUSA]

85Carrera said:

He’s doesn’t give a toss what you or I or any other member thinks as he’s got a 5 year waiting list that somehow he has managed to persuade people to pay to be on ...

The (paying) waiting list is 15,000 long.

[No ideas for a name]

hotpowner said:

You may or probably not be interested in the strange goings on at the GRRC
...
Or if you ask for a refund, they kick you out.

Being careful with what I say here, as I too have no desire to be kicked out...
Full disclosure - I am letting them keep my £240 for this year, and will probably make a small 'donation' to get the Gold GSA badge.
BUT, I don't see what we are 'getting' for that, nor do I necessarily see that a business that paid a dividend of £6M last year should go begging to its 'members'. Again for clarity here (for anyone who doesn't know) , a 'member' is just a type of customer... it isn't a shareholder, or anything like that.

It is an odd situation, however, I would like to know a bit more detail as I suspect it depends what you asked for.
I was originally hoping that the GRRC would heavily discount next year's membership, effectively rolling this year's membership through to next year.
As I understand it, the wording was you can 'forgo any refund or discount' for this year, and be enrolled in the GSA 'free' (AKA £240).

If you asked for a refund on this year's membership, that is effectively you turning the clock back to the start of the year, and deciding to not renew.

If you enquired about a discount for next year and they kicked you out, then that is shocking.

EDIT: I see from usernames, that the OP might not actually be the guy who has been kicked out - so won't be able to answer my question.
OR, maybe more have been kicked out?

Edited by No ideas for a name on Saturday 11th July 20:55

[tighnamara]

hotpowner said:

You may or probably not be interested in the strange goings on at the GRRC

As some of you might know, GRRC membership costs £200 a year with a 5 year waiting list.

This year of course with no Goodwood events taking place, you might wonder what you get for your membership?

Well Lord March sent a letter to all members 'inviting them' to donate this years membership fee towards the Goodwood Supporters Association, I.e The Goodwood Estate.

This gets you a car sticker, a badge and your name on brass plate on the fence.

if you donate the tickets that you ve bought, or £300 you get a gold badge.

Or if you ask for a refund, they kick you out.

The GRRC, Goodwood Road Racing Club, is an unusual club, it has no premises, no committee, no meetings of its members,
5000 members? @£200 a year = a £ 1Million plus, for this you get a badge, a car sticker and a hard bound book of last years events, plus the opportunity to buy tickets
the year before last the GRRC paid the Goodwood Estate a £5,million Dividend

This not being enough The Duke writes a begging letter to its members

Edited by hotpowner on Saturday 11th July 18:39

In a nutshell, received begging letters and had a reply to my question on the begging letter.
3 e mails to GRRC about requesting a refund to my FOS payment has seen no correspondence.

It’s not just the money, it’s the blatant disregard to responding that Is getting to me, very disappointed as I have £1200 sitting out plus this years membership.

I had no intention of asking for the membership back but was looking to have my outlay for FOS refunded.

Seems as they have no care in the world to those who have purchased for this years events.

Interest free loan maybe...................

.

Edited by tighnamara on Saturday 11th July 22:04

[85Carrera]

NickUSA said:

The (paying) waiting list is 15,000 long.

And the trouble with that is that they can take the piss out of existing members.

As another poster had mentioned, they should have rolled over membership to next year at a discounted rate if not for free. Despite the begging letters they’re not short of cash and are sitting on millions of pounds of ticket money from this year’s events (which I was originally happy for them to keep until next year, but if they’re so short of cash, maybe I should ask for my money back before they go bust ...)

[Bobajobbob]

It definitely doesn’t sit right with me. The whole GSA concept is just a way to generate more money for old rope and a cheap badge and feels like the opposite of what Goodwood has always stood for.

Look at what Wimbledon has done this year. Paying prize money to all competitors despite not happening for how things should have been done.

Grrrc membership should be free next year as far as I’m concerned plus free tickets to the members meeting (which has increasingly become the non members meeting in recent years due to over selling of tickets to non members.)

[85Carrera]

Bobajobbob said:

It definitely doesn’t sit right with me. The whole GSA concept is just a way to generate more money for old rope and a cheap badge and feels like the opposite of what Goodwood has always stood for.

Look at what Wimbledon has done this year. Paying prize money to all competitors despite not happening for how things should have been done.

Grrrc membership should be free next year as far as I’m concerned plus free tickets to the members meeting (which has increasingly become the non members meeting in recent years due to over selling of tickets to non members.)

Trouble is, you know as well I do that if you don’t renew there’s plenty of others who will take your place.

But what do we really get for our membership? Discounted tickets (but not by much), massively overcrowded members areas and the opportunity to be fleeced for things that non-members are not able to be fleeced for.

I’ve always know that the deal wasn’t great, and that the overcrowded Lavant Bank enclosure (for example) was a bit better than the other massively overcrowded bits of the Revival but I’ve increasingly been of the view over the last few years that profit is the be all and end all and that the events, and certainly GRRC membership, has lost something as a result.

I’ll probably still do the members meeting (as it seems to be very easy to get tickets without actually being a member ...) but other than that there’s better value elsewhere.

Lord March may have shot himself in the foot here by being, or appearing to be, a little bit greedy. Folk won’t forget ...

Edited for typo

Edited by 85Carrera on Sunday 12th July 00:45

[mk1coopers]

Goodwood events exist to sustain the estate, I believe the turn over is in excess of 100 million but all the operating 'profit' to sustain / improve and build the next year comes from the 3 Motorsport events, so not having them run is a big blow, they would have already spent around a million on the physical set up for the Members Meeting, which they will have to spend again next year.

I can understand people's frustration on not getting refunds as quickly as they would have liked to (or not at all yet) this hasn't been exclusively a problem relating to Goodwood, many companies are offering vouchers and trying to delay refunding as long as they can simply to survive, so that I can accept, (yes I have let my tickets roll over) personally with the GSA (not being a full GRRC member) I have paid to join (with the fellowship costs I've effectively paid the same as being a full GRRC member), so giving the GRRC members a 'free' extra for continued support is recognising you are supporting Goodwood both financially and figuratively. I've not got any benefits out of any memberships I have this year, I'm am aware that I could ask for everything back from everyone, if we all did this there's a good chance that we could all lose the facilities and events we love to use / go to (for anything you are interested in), which is why I've made the decision to support the various companies I have spent money with for this year.

Of course everyone's personal circumstances will be different and choices will need to be made, if people want refunds then I'm sure Goodwood will eventually get to them, I know they have two thirds of thier staff furloughed, so those of them working will be under a lot more pressure than normal (and have thier own set of personal circumstances to deal with) give them time and they will get it all sorted, emailing multiple times isn't going to cut down on their workload, one well worded email should be enough.

Edited by mk1coopers on Thursday 16th July 12:16

[Ian Wegg]

Bobajobbob said:

... members meeting (which has increasingly become the non members meeting in recent years due to over selling of tickets to non members.)

Not enough members bought tickets for the first MM in 2014 for it to be viable, so sales were open to the public (or at least to "car groups" which amounted to the same thing). The proportion of tickets bought by members has increased every year since and no public tickets have been available since 2018. This information is available in the company accounts, which appear to be popular reading at the moment.

[No ideas for a name]

Bobajobbob said:

... members meeting (which has increasingly become the non members meeting in recent years due to over selling of tickets to non members.)

As far as I understand it, it is the "Members' Meeting" named after the original BARC Members' Meetings in the 50's amd 60's held at Goodwood.
Goodwood 'appropriated' that name and applied it to a meeting predominantly for members of the GRRC.

As mentioned above, whilst 'getting the meeting going' Goodwood were straight and told people there was a break even point of a certain number of tickets sold. To make sure that happened, initial meetings were thrown open to all.

I don't see it as an issue if non-members get tickets either directly, via joining the 'Fellowship' (Associate Members [prepare to be shot by GW]), or by getting a Member to buy them. Members get the option of purchasing first - sales open to Members before anyone else.

Speaking as a Member, I don't see any issue with non-members coming along. All are welcome. The only issue is if the event is 'ruined' by allowing too many attendees. It is presently the best event, due to the absence of crowds.

[Bobajobbob]

As a long term member and having attended the very first revival I just feel that numbers at both the Revival and MM have grown to the point that I don’t enjoy them as much due to the crowds. The Members meeting was always better but in recent years the numbers at that also seemed to grow significantly. I didn’t go last year however so maybe numbers have stabilised.

I know there is a massive waiting list and also the fellowship but Foodwood really do need to start treating members better and offering them a bit more for that membership.

Re the events and costs this year I can only assume that the events were not insured as well as Wimbledon. If they were and still the begging letters then all the more disappointing.

[RichB]

No ideas for a name said:

Bobajobbob said:

... members meeting (which has increasingly become the non members meeting in recent years due to over selling of tickets to non members.)

As far as I understand it, it is the "Members' Meeting" named after the original BARC Members' Meetings in the 50's amd 60's held at Goodwood. Goodwood 'appropriated' that name and applied it to a meeting predominantly for members of the GRRC.

As mentioned above, whilst 'getting the meeting going' Goodwood were straight and told people there was a break even point of a certain number of tickets sold. To make sure that happened, initial meetings were thrown open to all. I don't see it as an issue if non-members get tickets either directly, via joining the 'Fellowship' (Associate Members [prepare to be shot by GW]), or by getting a Member to buy them. Members get the option of purchasing first - sales open to Members before anyone else.

Speaking as a Member, I don't see any issue with non-members coming along. All are welcome. The only issue is if the event is 'ruined' by allowing too many attendees. It is presently the best event, due to the absence of crowds.

I believe it is capped at 20,000 (not sure if that's 10k each day or 20k both days) I believe the revival is 120,000

[Bobajobbob]

Thanks for the numbers. When relaunched the MM certainly felt like the revival used to be before being semi ruined by the crowds. Then the numbers seemed to creep up and increasingly pressure was put on members to buy tickets quickly as it was ‘selling out’. Having said that I didn’t make it last year as the date clashed with something else and of course this year it was cancelled.

It sounds like numbers stabilised which is good to hear. I don’t have a problem with non members attending as long as attendance is capped and as long as members get a discount on tickets. Actually I think members should get at least a single free ticket to this event.

[No ideas for a name]

RichB said:

believe it is capped at 20,000 (not sure if that's 10k each day or 20k both days) I believe the revival is 120,000

The famous report says;

MM75 in 2017, 35000... over the two days
MM76 in 2018, 31000 (down slightly due to the weather)


2017 Revival, 150000
2018 Revival, 147000 over the three days

11,100 'Fellows' as of the end of 2018

[RichB]

No ideas for a name said:

RichB said:

believe it is capped at 20,000 (not sure if that's 10k each day or 20k both days) I believe the revival is 120,000

The famous report

Thanks, where can one find the Famous Report?

[NickUSA]

RichB said:

Thanks, where can one find the Famous Report?

Companies house, submitted annual accounts

[RichB]

NickUSA said:

RichB said:

Thanks, where can one find the Famous Report?

Companies house, submitted annual accounts

OK, didn't realise that the accounts at Companies House would have event attendances.

[Voldemort]

x 5000

[Ian Wegg]

Attendances have been capped since 2004, the FoS and Revival at 50,000 per day and the Members' Meeting at 20,000 per day. The highest recorded FoS attendance was 158K over the 3 days of 2003.

I get bemused when I hear of the Goodwood events being overcrowded. If you look at the footage of the motor circuit races in the 1950s and 1960s you can see the huge crowds that attended "in period". MotorSport magazine reported a crowd of 45,000 for the 1961 Easter Monday meeting, which was a day of heavy rain. I have never had a problem finding a space to watch the racing.