Buying and Selling Races

If you have built a business putting on races, chances are you would have thought of maybe selling some or all of those races at some point in the future. You may also have toyed with the idea of buying races from others as a way to grow your event portfolio.

Buying and selling races still remains a big mystery for most race directors - even very experienced ones. How do you go about it? How do you find events to buy, if you’re a buyer, and where do you turn to sell your event, if you’re a seller? What is an event even worth on the market? And how does a typical purchase and sale transaction go down?

Well, we’re going to be going into all that and more today, in a super-exciting episode with the help of my two guests, Tony Sapp and Porter Bratten. As you’ll hear in a minute, Tony and Porter have a lot of experience in buying and selling events, and they have tons of great tips to help you get a good feel for where you stand as a buyer or seller of races in this market, and how you can make the most of the opportunities available to you in this very peculiar post-pandemic environment we find ourselves in. 

In this episode:

• Finding suitable buying opportunities: matching type of event, time of year and race location
• What a good buying opportunity looks like
• Reaching out to race directors with an offer to buy
• Selling through a business broker: what business brokers bring to the table, picking the right broker, preparing your business prospectus
• The importance of instructing and consulting with a contract lawyer
• Buying event assets vs buying the events company 
• What assets go into an event sale: physical, digital, intellectual property, sponsorship and other third party contracts
• Purchase price allocation and tax implications of your event purchase
• Preparing for an event sale: organizing documents, keeping track of your business data, anticipating buyer questions
• The purchase and sale agreement: asset lists, exclusions, non-competes, indemnities, transaction timelines and transition periods, price adjustment clauses
• Additional provisions/considerations when selling a race mid-season
• Transitioning key contacts and making introductions with vendors, sponsors, volunteers
• How to calculate the value of your event as a multiple of your revenue and net profit
• Price negotiations and agreeing on a price
• Is this a good time to buy or sell a race?

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about buying and selling races or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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