SALISBURY HALF MARATHON 2020 CANCELLED

Posted on: July 15, 2020

It is with much sadness that Immortal Sport in March came to the difficult decision to cancel Salisbury Half Marathon for 2020.

All entries will be automatically deferred at this time to the 2021 event (October date to be confirmed) or to another of our 2021 events to the same value or money off (same as the entry fee paid) a more expensive event. Once the 2021 events are open we will email you again to explain how you can transfer to another event.

This is still an extremely difficult time for the events industry, and we have had to close our business in March just days before one of our biggest events of the year, leaving us in an extremely vulnerable position like so many others.

We understand that this news is extremely disappointing for you, and we know that this will generate a number of questions for you which we will try to answer below:

Doesn’t your insurance cover you for this type of thing? We are extremely well insured through our business insurance, the Sport’s Governing body insurance and separate event cancellation insurance. However, none of this covers the current unprecedented situation that we are all facing.

Why can’t you just reschedule to another date? We agonised over this long and hard, but sadly we don’t feel we can guarantee a date this year when all the requirements to deliver safe event will be in place. At the moment we just don’t know what the next 6 weeks will hold for us let alone the next 6 months.

Why can’t I have a refund? We have been in the event business for a long time and we thought we were pretty good at it. We have very solid evidence which we base our expenditure and forecasting on which allows us to spend the vast majority of entry fee monies on event delivery before the event, on items such as road closures, traffic management, medals, event licensing, the list goes on and on.  The risk is high, and the margins are low. Entry money is not ring-fenced per event.
Each year entrants have left it later and later to enter. This is a trend across the industry for events that don’t sell out immediately. We have now had to close entries for all 18 of our events in 2020 which means we have no income whatsoever for the foreseeable future.
We simply don’t have the money to refund your entry, but we are able to roll your entry over to 2021 when we are really hopeful that with the support of the industry and the running community we will be able to continue.

Immortal Sport is a tiny business of 2 people, and over the last 4 months we have lost everything.

We know that the whole country is facing a huge amount of uncertainty right now, but we urge you to be please be kind when responding if you have any further questions.

Stay Safe,

Lucy and Jody (Immortal Sport)