Coronavirus Impact Week 4

Please see RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools.

Things have changed drastically in Week 4 ending Saturday March 21, 2020 from Week 3 and Week 2.  We have decided to throw out the YOY comparison we were using as so many events have postponed or cancelled this year’s event they are now useless.

The overall volume of transactions decreased by 78%. This means the average race who was expecting $1,000 of revenue was seeing $220 of revenue. In reality, this was even larger for traditional races, 7 of the top 10 races in terms of transaction revenue were virtual events, with one virtual event accounting for almost 8% of transaction volume. Donation volume was down 76% as well.

As of March 24 over 1,800 races have used our postponement tool:

We also have stats on what participants have chosen. Virtual seems to be the most popular choice that races are offering, and participants are selecting:

We continue to see about a 10X increase in Chargeback volume. Of course our concern is like the coronavirus numbers, this could become exponential. Chargebacks are being processed against even the most iconic races including Broad Street and Pat’s Run even though they both have communicated great options to participants very clearly. We continue to encourage customers to have a reserve to stay in compliance with their legal and fiduciary responsibilities to credit card holders. In an effort to help races minimize chargebacks, we instituted a new notification when chargebacks come in to that the race director can reach out to the participant and try to convince them to reverse the chargeback. We are finding some limited initial success with this, although it was just instituted and it takes time for data to flow thru the system.