Return to Fun Runs - August Report

Image Source: HBF Run for a Reason

Introduction

At the beginning of August Register Now conducted another round of the “Return to Fun Runs during COVID-19” survey to understand the general sentiment of the Australian running community and how it develops as conditions develop.

Topics around comfortability of attendance and general participation numbers were assessed to give event organisers some understanding around consumer confidence toward running events in a COVID-safe society.

Respondents were asked during the period 3 August to 12 August 2020 to indicate their comfortability around Fun Run event participation, how comfortable they would be participating in events now, in three months (November) and in 2021.

How data was collected

Register Now contacted current Clients that have held running events over the past 12 months. Clients that wanted to be involved then emailed their respective event databases or Register Now did so on their behalves. The survey was also posted and promoted to the broader Australian running community across social media (Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn).

1088 respondents participated in the survey, the majority of respondents was split equally between an audience from Queensland (30%) and New South Wales (31%). 24% of respondents were from Victoria which is important to note as this state is currently in stage four restrictions. All other states in Australia during this time were easing their restrictions, which is important when considering the data. If you would like to view the data for a specific state be sure to contact us directly.

All data:

• 70.31% of participants said they would feel comfortable participating in a Fun Run in 2020.
• 8% of participants would not take part in any Fun Run events till a vaccine is found
• Respondents were asked to rank (1-6) out of a list of safety measures, which one would make them feel most comfortable when deciding to enter a Fun Run during and post-COVID. This is what participants rated as most important:
  1. Limiting Participant Numbers (34.55%)
  2. Refund & deferment policy (19.66%)
  3. Social distancing guidelines/policies (16.85%)
  4. Temperature checks on arrival (14.47%)
  5. Hand sanitiser stations (2.53%)
  6. Limiting/eliminate spectators (6.18%)
  7. Contact tracing (5.78%)
• 72.13% of participants said they would feel comfortable participating in a Fun Run this weekend with up to 500 participants involved and 27.86% only feeling comfortable with up to 100 participants.
• In three months time (November) 27.56% of participants said they would feel comfortable taking part in a Fun Run with up to 5000 participants involved and 8.95% of participants would feel comfortable with an event up to 20,000 participants.

The plan going forward will be to survey these respondents again at the beginning of each month to track how attitudes evolve as virus hotspots move and restrictions change around Australia.

Conclusion

This data is a reflection of respondents’ attitudes towards returning to participation based Fun Run events and not a reflection of Government restrictions/ permissions. Insights show that a significant portion of previous Fun Run attendees already feel comfortable enough to participate immediately, in smaller groups. However participants seem less confident to participate in events as they did during our last survey in July, this may be due to some parts of Australia’s locking down further in the past month. The answers also reflect that when looking forward to 3/6/12 months ahead participants are far more confident to return to events - a hopeful sign for the events industry.