There is not one person on the planet could have predicted how this year would have gone! It started with a bang and then just continued in its bid to make it into the history course topic list for every country of the World. Every person on Earth will have been affected in some way by the Pandemic we are living through, unfortunately some more than others.
Here at Horsevents we started with our 10th Birthday celebrations and looking forward to an even bigger year than the previous 10. In that, 2020 did not disappoint, we did have our biggest and best year to date, but that biggest year also had within it our worst ever month and our best ever month- a year of some serious extremes.
The chart compares this turbulent year's entries against the previous 5 years average and you can clearly see the massive dips caused by the first UK lockdown and then lockdown 2.0 in England in November. Outside of those lockdowns the number of entries have been massively increased over the normal average, caused in the main by a move away from cash on the day to more pre entry. It will be interesting to look back in 12 months when hopefully we will be out of the woods and returning to normal equine activities.
We haven't rested on our laurels this year after the launch of the new site layout at the end of 2019. We have been adding and tweaking that new site- and will continue to do so- to keep making amendments and improvements. This year saw the addition of Fixed Additional Costs, giving Show Organisers the ability to add costs by rider or mount above and beyond a class entry fee, useful for things like First Aid for example where you want to charge a fee per Rider regardless of the number of classes or horses entered.
Going forwards into 2021 more enhancements will be forthcoming
Have a good New Year and a much improved 2021!!