Do you live near San Diego, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or San Fransisco?
If so, you have a BattleFrog scheduled to come to your city in 2016.
How about Nashville, Washington, DC, Richmond, VA or Charlotte, NC? You are in luck.
Far west cities like Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle? You guys get ’em too.
What about the Canadian OCR freaks in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto? Yep. Yep. Yep.
All told, BattleFrog has 27 races currently scheduled for 2016. This does not include locations in Georgia and Florida, which still have races in the coming weeks in 2015. We are under the assumption BattleFrog are are holding off on announcing those 2016 dates until this year’s events pass.
There is an issue that may cause some to pause before excitingly typing in their credit card digits to register. There are currently no venues listed for these 2016 locations.
As it turns out, the 2 race locations in Florida that are taking place this fall, still do not have locations listed, as of this posting.
There have articles written here in ORM, as well as other places, that specifically warn against registering for a race in which venues have not been locked up. Too often, those races are “postponed” for low signup numbers and then never come to fruition. The mantra for the wise ocr consumer has been: No location. No Race.
While BattleFrog, has established a track record, of putting on races consistently regardless of attendance, (They’ve only cancelled 2 races to date, which were D.C. and Nashville, both which were announced with very little lead time to get ample registrations) this latest North American calendar explosion may or may not instill faith in the OCR community.
When we spoke to BattleFrog’s new CEO Ramiro Ortiz back on July 3, we talked about the current state of BattleFrog. We asked how averaging 1500 finishers per location* so far in 2015 was going to equate to future success. He told us to expect 38 races minimum in 2015 and that he and his team were committed to the long term success of BattleFrog no matter what.
We spoke to Mr. Ortiz again this afternoon. He told us that the “Miami race is taking place at Amelia Earhart Park”. He was surprised that the location was not listed, and made reference to the new site having some bugs that are being worked out. He went on to say that “Our Orlando race is taking place on December 12th and will be our Championship. The location has been signed, sealed, and delivered. We have some other details that are going out around our Championship, and we want to put everything out at once”. “Middle of next week the latest, it will go out.
He went on to say that “For the 2016 venues, we are literally negotiating them now”.
While there seems to be little doubt, that the 2015 Florida locations will go off without a hitch, the verdict is still out on what 2016 will bring for BattleFrog’s growth.
What do you think? If “TBA ” is listed as the venue, will you register for a race today?
*Finisher numbers for the 2015 races come from Athlinks and BattleFrog’s website. It is normal for the finisher totals in the OCR industry to be lower than the actual number of registrants. There is typically a no show rate anywhere from 10%-20% for any given race.
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Matt B. Davis
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Hi nice to meet you battle frogs, when will be arrive in México? ?
When did Minneapolis become “Far West”? Is this the 1820s?
(I kid in what is intended to be good nature. Although, why hasn’t there been an 1820s OCR yet?)
We need to get Human Movement to create that one!
I find it amusing that BattleFrog came on the scene blowing money on things like helos and festival rigs, boasting that they’d have 60 races on the schedule this year and over 200 races in the calendar for this next year coming up spread out into 6 nationwide teams, and yet that’s nowhere near the tune they’re playing now. I guess over this year they got a good reality check… It’s hard to make money in this industry. Only time will tell if they stay afloat as a company.
When “they” “came on the scene” weren’t you working for them?
It’s gonna be awesome having Battlefrog come North of the Border,we will get to see Atkins,Bedard and Godbout battle it out in their home Provinces.
Find it hard to believe really. I was given false promises of 25+ races for the 2015 season when I ran Pittsburgh in 2014…I’ll believe it when I see it.
27 announced events in 2016 and no venues listed creates some doubt and raises a big red flag. I know how much time and effort goes into site selection and then calendar scheduling. I hope that the new BF team is able to meet the expectations they are setting. I don’t think the OCR industry has the patience for any more restructuring or downsizing… However, there are still a select few with BF that I know will move mountains to make things happen!
I really enjoy battlefrog, but they did this same thing last year, then canceled all the Sunday races and changed the entire race format. Whose to say they won’t do it again? I hope they succeed, but my experience has been them over promising, under delivering.
I’m not putting any money down yet with no venues. I was burned alng with many others by Superhero. They are also offering 40% off every race which is not a good sign. I ran SC which was soon after they changed the whole format. I like the race but think they are overextending themselves.
There is a lot of doubt, which makes sense. History has shown us that OCRs that reach this far do not last long, with the exception of Savage (and they were modest). They’re getting the paperwork set for those locations as we speak, according to their CEO – which is promising. This is their all-in. If this works for them with little to no cancellations, this is huge.
I really want these guys to win. It’s very rare to see two of any company staff go out to your own team’s special event (T3) and spend the entire day giving their professional assistance in the mere hope that the 15 people in your event register for a battlefrog in the future. For future reference, if Spartan/TM ever does that for a future T3 I will shit out of my dick.