Best New Event

Kentucky Derby Festival Tour de Lou

a.

Louisville, , has seen a tremendous push from city government, corporate business and school systems to create healthy lifestyle choices for adults and children in our region. This new advocacy for healthy living falls in line with the tremendous growth in the running and biking communities. The Mayor of Louisville has created two large healthy lifestyle event weekends with combined running, and water activities and over 10,000 attendees.

Seeing the growth of the biking community the Kentucky Derby Festival identified a need for an organized cycling event that would showcase the great parks and urban icons within Louisville. The new Tour de Lou cycling event was created under the direction from the Kentucky Derby Festival Board Leadership and after extensive research by staff and volunteers. The brand new cycling event would be held for the first time in 2014, during the three week Festival .

With more than 70 events on the current schedule of events, the Kentucky Derby Festival staff reached out to the Louisville Bicycle Club organization to help develop, plan and execute the newest event. The Louisville Bicycle Club is a cycling club in Louisville, and serves the greater Louisville metropolitan area, including Southern with weekly captain rides, education and regulations regarding cycling, team competition and group rides. The Louisville Bicycle Club worked hand in hand to help educate KDF staff, Board members and volunteers on the basic premise of creating a cycling event along with the knowledgeable bike captains to help support the event with operations.

b.

The Kentucky Derby Festival created a non-competitive cycling event for all ages and all levels. We created three classifications for various levels of participants. The Tour de Lou is not a race or competition therefore providing separate distances for different levels of experience allowed for a larger range of participant levels – from four miles for families up to 35 miles for the experienced riders who want to get miles in. We developed three courses that would fit the experience for each level of rider. 1. Family Ride (Children under 12) – 4 Mile Closed Course 2. Intermediate/Fitness riders – 20 Mile Open Course - Beginning/New cyclists 3. Moderate/Experienced riders – 35 Mile Open Course – Experienced/distance cyclists

In working with the Louisville Bicycle Club a portion of registration benefited the Louisville Bike Club organization. The LBC provided support with 65 Bike Captains, volunteers and access to their database of 2600 avid cycling members.

c.

With any new event we wanted to target the niche audience in our market that had participated in other biking events within Louisville along with families looking to new and exciting events.

The target demographic for the Tour de Lou was Middle Class Income to high income individuals and families. Along with Corporate/Semi professional Riders, many of the larger corporations have professional riding teams in Louisville. In addition to overall public audiences, we also targeted messages to our database of participants within the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon and Half Marathon. The Marathon and miniMarathon is the largest road race in Kentucky and Louisville is a host for a yearly Ironman competition, therefore providing targeted athletic audiences for the Tour de Lou and the longer distances used for training for these local events.

d.

With any brand new event it can be a challenge to predetermine the potential income and expenses. The Kentucky Derby Festival prides itself with providing reasonable entry fees to all participants to make it accessible for all levels of income. In our planning process we budgeted for 1,000 total riders across all three levels of participation. We created a scaled entry fee schedule similar to many of our athletic minded sporting events for registration income.

Adult - 12 and over Dates Price Entries Early Registration Nov-Jan $35 300 Registration Feb - Mar $45 550 Late Registration April $50 50 900

4 Mile Family Child 12 and under Dates Price Entries Early Registration Nov-Jan31 $10 25 Registration Feb 1-Mar 31 $15 55 Late Registration April 1-14 $20 25 100

The other source of income for the Tour de Lou was sponsorship. There is always excitement around the ability to provide a sponsor with a new event that will showcase their product or associate a company with a healthy initiative. Our Marketing team was able to secure multiple contributing level sponsorships. With the timing of the event we were not able to secure a title sponsor. The total revenue for the event exceeded our original budget with a total $60,000.

We based all expenses off 1000 participants which included: t-shirts, water bottles, participant pins. In addition we estimated operational expenses: tents, electric, security, etc. with the knowledge from working with our vendors on other events. However, our expenses exceeded our original budget during the planning process. As with any event, situations arise during the production of the event that have to be addressed onsite, therefore exceeding the original planned expenses. The total first year expenses were $35,000 to produce the 2014 Tour de Lou.

e.

The first discussions of a new cycling event were presented in late fall of 2012, however with the 2013 planning period already underway it was difficult to begin the process and produce a high quality event for the 2013 Kentucky Derby Festival. The schedule allowed for the development of the event in 2014 due to a three week schedule; therefore allowing event staff to plan and develop relationships prior to the upcoming Festival.

The 2014 Kentucky Derby Festival Tour de Lou was officially announced in late October of 2013. A committee was assembled with both KDF Board Members, Louisville Bike Club representatives, Volunteers and avid community cyclists to begin the planning process in early November. The committee met monthly to decision making and recruitment ideas while the operations team met bi- monthly to develop courses, set-up, etc.

The Tour de Lou packet pick-up was also held in conjunction with our 2014 Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon and miniMarathon expo. This gave the participants an opportunity to pick-up their event materials and interact with sponsors and retailers associated with the new event. The Expo was held the week prior on April 17th & 18th.

The augural Tour de Lou was held on Sunday, April 27, 2014 at Waterfront Park. The event kicked off at 7:30 am with onsite packet pick-up and check-in for participants and volunteers. The rides were staggered at 9:00am, 9:15am, and 10:30am. The event ended at 2:00pm.

f.

With the newest KDF event officially underway, the Marketing team had a new and exciting event to sell to potential sponsors. When the Tour de Lou event was announced in the fall of 2013, all the local media outlets picked up the story and created a new buzz about KDF’s newest event. This opened the door for many new opportunities with clients KDF had not worked with in prior years. The Tour de Lou secured four contributing sponsors with Baptist Sports Health, Courier Journal Media, Scheller’s Fitness & Cycling and 102.3 The Max. The event also added two supporting sponsors with the Louisville Bicycle Club and Louisville Water Co. These sponsors received benefits such as course signage, start line signage, logo placement on KDF.org website, eblast with sponsor recognition and the opportunity to display during the post ride party. These sponsors received one on one interaction with their targeted audiences from the initial announcement to conclusion of the event. The overall event generated over $900,000 in total publicity value, therefore showcasing sponsors of the event as well. The Kentucky Derby Festival has a very good retention rate with the over 4,000 volunteers it takes to make the Festival operate. This was clear as well for the Tour de Lou. As soon as we opened online registration for volunteers all available opportunities were instantly full. Tour de Lou utilized 142 volunteers and made it possible to provide assistance at the packet pick-up, set-up, check-in, breakdown, etc.

In addition to our sponsors and the Louisville Bicycle Club we provided an opportunity to local charitable organizations to get involved by providing nutrition and entertainment to all the participants along the course. We allowed these groups to develop their own styles, procure their own retail partners, entertainment, etc. These groups provided between 15-30 volunteers at each Pit stop location.

Pit Stop 1 – National MS Society, Kentucky-Southeast Indiana Pit Stop 2 – Olmsted Parks Conservancy Pit Stop 3 – Bike to Beat Cancer Pit Stop 4 – American Diabetes Association- Kentucky Tour de Cure Pit Stop 4 – Baptist Health Foundation

g.

The course included a scenic Olmsted Park Tour around Louisville, showcasing Shawnee, Chickasaw, Wayside, Iroquois and Cherokee parks. Cyclists on the more experienced rides also travel through neighborhoods around the city from Downtown along Main Street and Waterfront Park, to Portland, Algonquin and South Louisville; as well as Old Louisville, NULU, the Highlands and Butchertown. Another highlight along the course included seeing the Twin Spires of Churchill Downs with both the 20 and 35 Mile rides.

We wanted to offer the right amenities and make sure participants received a great value for their entry fees. All participants received the following items:

Registration Includes - T-shirt, Water Bottle (20 & 35 Mile Rides Only), Event Pin, SAG Support and 3 Water Fill Stations

Addition Registration Benefits - Bike Valet, Two lane or Bike lane provided over 90% of the open course, Bike Captains on course, DJ/Route Entertainment, ability to purchase inaugural cycle jerseys, Post Ride Party – Vendors, Sponsors, Etc., Portion of entry to Louisville Bike Club and Tracked mileage for all Louisville Bike Club members.

Participants also had the opportunity to purchase a custom designed inaugural Tour de Lou cycling jerseys. The Jerseys’ retailed for $70 and outsold our original order of 100, selling 226 total jerseys.

h.

The inaugural Tour de Lou was a tremendous success. We were able to call an official sell out the week prior to the event with more than our original goal of 1,000 participants, officially closing with 1256 total registrants.

Not only did the Tour de Lou exceed registration but also brought additional recognition with 17 different states, as well as Ontario, Canada represented. What originally was thought of as a local riding event resulted in a regional and national cycling event for all levels of cyclists.

2014 Tour de Lou Final online Breakdown (4/23) 20 & 35 Mile Rides (Adult – 12 & Over)-1117 20 Mile 428 35 Mile 687 4 Miler (Adult – 12 & Over) - 141 99 4 Miler (Children – 11 & Under) 42 Total 1256

Ranking State/Province/Region Number of participants 1 Kentucky 1025 2 Indiana 183 3 Unspecified 11 4 10 5 6 6 4 7 3 8 3 9 2 10 2 11 2 12 1 13 1 14 Unspecified 1 15 Montana 1 16 Ontario 1 17 1