‘Viability is always a tight balance,’ says British Eventing CEO Rosie Williams

British Eventing’s CEO Rosie Williams talks openly about the positives and challenges facing the sport

Everyone knows British Eventing (BE) has been through tough financial times and I’m more confident with the numbers now and the way we’re managing the situation. That said, it’s still challenging. My job isn’t to bank millions, but to build appropriate reserves.

Viability and costs are a challenge for us, organisers and members. What we can do is limited – we control entry fees and membership fees; we can’t control whether people spend £3,000 on a saddle.

We have to reduce barriers to participation and it’s a tight balance between taking revenue – from membership fees and entry levies – and putting those fees up so they become prohibitive.

We also have to make our business as efficient as possible – we’ve saved money by moving offices to share with British Dressage and British Showjumping and we’re well into a digital transformation towards a more cost-effective system that will improve the customer journey.

Event challenges

The way the calendar fits together is complicated. The first draft for 2027 went to organisers a month ago. It’s important that we offer our members a blend of competitions as locally as possible.

Organisers have different business models from greenfield sites to equestrian centres. Costs such as fuel and timber are escalating and out of our control.

People entering late doesn’t make it easy because there’s a date when organisers have to pay deposits. Understandably, organisers get stressed because it’s their pocket and we have to push people to stay in the game. Two hundred entries isn’t viable on ballot day – but I don’t want to let those 200 people down by cancelling.

Only so many horses can run per day – how much are organisers making out of each horse? Higher-end starters offer more value to organisers, because they pay more, but we have to balance that with 75% of members being at BE100 and below.

We’ve had a good start to the season – memberships, horse registrations and entries are strong. The weather and ground have played ball.

We support organisers with a marketing toolkit and templates. We also see success from working with organisers to send geographically targeted emails. Payday affects entries so we have to think strategically about ballot dates.

Then you get disrupters in the market – Tetworth did a great job and had heaps of entries. We were faced with balloting local riders at BE90 and BE100, because the rules prioritise higher-level classes, which didn’t seem fair. We added an extra day – we have to consider the knock-on effect when we do that.

Hard ground is a challenge – organisers do all they can with the ground they have. Many people believe watering is the only answer, but it’s expensive, not always sustainable or effective and many events don’t have access to water. We are working on fixing up our ground-care equipment so that’s available to organisers.

We also have to ask what members are doing to prepare their horses responsibly for different ground and terrain – if horse or pilot are unfit, they won’t cope as well.

Vital training

The BE Training Foundation, set up with support from David Howden, is a charity focused on officials’ education, investment in BE Prepared, our rider training platform, and raising money to support these things.

We want becoming an official to be clearer, easier and more competency based. We are focused on developing eight new stewards and we launched a new officials’ syllabus at Badminton.

In the background, we’re working to build our commerciality. Our reach and ability to tell a story is improving.

We’ve done well over the past couple of years at listening to and talking to our members. Some things can’t be fixed, but sometimes someone has a good idea no one else has thought of and I’m always happy to have conversations.

Eventing is a wonderful sport with a fantastic community and we need to work together to continue the momentum of change.

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Pippa Roome

H&H magazine editor and eventing editor

Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.