What does it cost to run a mountain bike park?

Over the last couple of years, the finances of Mystic Park in Bright, Victoria have become central to the conversation about the park. We’ve reported extensively on Mystic’s financial woes and the solution that ultimately kept the proverbial doors open—the membership model.

Related:

• Mystic Park On The Verge | Financial strain and concerns raised by HVP could lead to park closure
• Mystic to adopt pay to play membership model
• Mystic Memberships 12-Months In | Is the bike park in Bright on the right track?

But Mystic is far from unique in grappling with the problem of creating sustainable revenue to cover the costs associated with running a trail network. From ongoing maintenance to land leases and new builds, there are costs associated with mountain bike trails. For larger tourism destinations, the cost of managing brake bumps, filling holes, and repairing storm damage can push into the millions, often in small regional council areas that don’t have an extra seven figures squirrelled away in their budgets.

How to keep the lights on is the million-dollar question everyone, from those who run your local trails to places like Blue Derby, is trying to figure out.

So how much does it cost to run a trail network, and how do you generate the cash to do it? We caught up with folks from across the country, ranging from private bike parks run by non-profits to council-run operations.

The Council run success story

Whenever there is a new trail network proposed, the words Blue Derby will come up somewhere in the planning documents. The tiny little town in Northeast Tasmania has gone from a place you wouldn’t even slow down driving on the highway through to St Helens to the poster child for the transformation mountain bikes can bring.

Blue Derby is a council-owned public facility and one of the best maintained. In fact, the term ‘The Derby Standard’ was coined by former Dorset Council General Manager Tim Watson because of the focus that is put on maintenance.

Coming up to the trail network’s tenth birthday, the Derby Trail Crew consists of a handful of full-time employees and a couple of part-timers—there’s roughly one pair of hands for every 20km of singletrack.

Chris Cafe, Chair of the Blue Derby Foundation, tells Flow that Derby could not exist if the Dorset Council weren’t onboard.

“The bulk of the money comes from the Council, and then the rest is supplemented by sponsorships — both local and some more corporate sponsorships, like Shimano,” he says.

“They also introduced camping fees, which the money generated from that also goes back into maintenance. But the most of it comes from Council coffers,” Cafe continues.

The amount that comes out of those coffers is somewhere in the ballpark of $750,000 to $850,000 AUD every year. Despite the purported $30-million the trails bring back into the Dorset Council each year — a proper study has never been undertaken — that amount of money being spent on a council’s niche tourism asset created some angst in the community.

So, as Cafe notes, when it came time for a new build or a significant facelift like the Flickty Sticks and the Blue Tier have undergone in recent years, all of that money came from grants.

“The Council would go to the Government and apply for grants — developing regional areas, local infrastructure, there was all sorts of things they could apply for,” he says.

Derby is the public model that almost every facility strives to match. However not every trail network has the luxury of the full level of support from a council or other agency.

What happens when the Council isn’t involved?

Looking North, Atherton in Tropical North Queensland is a trail network that hasn’t enjoyed the same level of support. Atherton received its seed funding the same year as Derby through a combination of State, Federal, and Council dollars. Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service opened up a 9,500-ha section of the Herberton Range State Forest in the Silvia Creek Valley to build a trail network.

“The park is on state-owned land, it’s managed by Queensland Parks in consultation with Tableland Cycle Sports,” says Tableland Cycles Sports Vice-President David Prete. “So the trails are managed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife in Consultation with the Tablelands Cycle Sports, and up until recently, the Council has only just dabbled on the fringes.”

Related:

• Flow’s Ride Guide | Up high in Atherton

With that, Prete tells Flow that the Council doesn’t own the trails, they don’t appear on its asset register, and apart from the initial investment, until recently, it has contributed very little to the upkeep and maintenance of the facility. Despite QPWS being the de facto land manager, their contribution is limited.

“It’s not the core of their business, and they are happy to tell us that we are one of their lowest priorities. They have paid campgrounds along the Tablelands, between that and fighting bushfires that’s where a lot of their focus goes because they get nothing out of us,” says Brett Piccone, President of Tableland Cycles Sports.

And to be clear, the folks in Atherton aren’t asking QWPS to foot the bill to have World Trial or Contour Works come in to revamp trails in the park or pay for a full-time trail crew, either. Instead, they want to leverage what a properly supported public trail network can bring to a region and are looking bigger.

“We were trying to impress upon the State Government that they’ve got to top it up with an interagency approach,” he says.

In the same amount of time, Derby has expanded into a 125km tourism behemoth, while Atherton has plateaued at about half that size. Prete and Piccone have long been advocating the potential of what Atherton could be; they just need a little help. And it does seem some of that lobbying has started to pay off.

The Tablelands Regional Council recently announced a new strategy that will see the trails and rail trails in the area get an upgrade and provide a pathway for new funding for the existing infrastructure.

However, in the meantime, Prete and Piccone have been largely responsible for the park’s upkeep and fundraising.

“We probably do between 600 and 800 of volunteer hours a year. And that’s just the trail maintenance, let alone the social media and marketing, running races, chasing grants and the like,” says Piccone.

At the start of July, they had another win when it was announced that a new youth traineeship program funded by the Skilling Queenslanders for Work initiative will shoulder some of the load of maintaining the park.

Spearheaded by the Vocational Partnerships Group alongside the Tablelands Regional Council and Tablelands Cycle Sports, the new Tablelands Trail Builders Program will provide paid traineeships to disadvantaged job seekers in the region between the ages of 17-24.

The trainees will be up-skilled in trail maintenance and receive a Certificate in Conservation and Ecosystem Management.

Long before Mystic was faced with its financial woes, Atherton had even investigated a paid access model so they might have some breathing room to delegate part of the load the park requires.

“It wouldn’t have worked here anyway because there are so many points of access, but also legislation in Queensland says that you can’t force people to pay to access state-owned land,” says Prete.

Paid access is a difficult topic to broach with mountain bikers because we have generally enjoyed unrestricted access to the trails we use. When there is a park entry cost, it’s usually associated with a unique riding experience and large-scale bike parks.

Paid access and its pitfalls

Boomerang Farm is a small gravity park attached to the back of a golf course on the Gold Coast Hinterland. With only a small hill and about 20 trails, Boomers charge park entry and a fee for shuttles on top of that — though you can pedal up the shuttle road too and just pay park entry. While the park is technically a private facility, it’s run by the Outlook Riders Alliance mountain bike club, which, like any other mountain bike club, is a non-profit run by volunteers.

They have been running a paid access model for many years, but it’s not the cash cow that it may seem on the surface. Trevor Bath was the President of the Outlook Riders Alliance and tasked with the day-to-day running of the park for many years until he stepped down in February 2024.

“We (currently) have a five-year lease that runs into 2027. So we pay monthly lease cost, or a rent as you will of $5,665 AUD. That is per annum, and there is an increase in that built into the lease — so another 3% gets added each year,” says Bath.

While the folks managing the spreadsheets and bank accounts for the club are volunteers, Boomers sees paid full-time trail builders and paid contractors driving shuttles. Club members also volunteer their time on both of these fronts.

“We pay their invoices, we pay their superannuation,” he says. “That’s where the majority of the money goes is the wages with shuttle costs and trail work.”

Bath tells Flow between the shuttles, the water truck and the park truck, they spend between $350-$450 AUD on diesel per week, in addition to rego and vehicle upkeep costs. They also take out WorkCover for all of the contractors on-site to ensure that if something happens, they won’t be left out to dry.

This is far from a full accounting of the costs to run the park, but you get the idea. It ain’t cheap. Worse, Boomers are at the mercy of the weather.

“In May 2023, we were shut for five weeks straight. They (the land owner) was very gracious in letting us not pay rent for that month because we had no income stream,” he says.

“We’re a non-profit club, and we invest all the money that we generate into running the park. So every spare cent is used on projects or do we need a new vehicle? Or shoot, registrations on both the troopers are up, so you’ve gotta make sure the money’s there for stuff like that,” says Bath.

In December, Boomers had a price rise. Bath tells Flow it was something they deliberated over for months. They explored everything from getting rid of the shuttles and exploring what effect that would have and where they could trim the fat on efficiencies. Ultimately, the decision came down to closing the park or bumping the price.

On a much larger scale is Maydena Bike Park in Tasmania. Simon French, the man behind Dirt Art and Maydena, explains that they own about a quarter of the overall footprint and have a long-term lease—similar to what you’d get with a ski resort—with Tas Parks and Wildlife for the remainder.

“For us, we pay that lease based on the volume of trail. Trail networks like Derby, for example, the Council leases the Parks and Wildlife and Forestry land, in most cases — and I couldn’t speak for Derby, specifically — that is for either a peppercorn, dollar-a-year kind of basis, or something very nominal. But as a commercial entity, we do pay a lease cost based on the trail volume,” says French.

Given that Maydena has more than four-times the trails that Boomers does, it has all of the same costs and then some, with things like bike patrol. French tells us Maydena’s costs are well into the millions.

“The general principle we work off is if you’re trying to generate a revenue stream from a trail network, the best thing to do is to have the broadest base possible of revenue-generating activity so that you’re not relying on levying one part of the operation — it’s inevitable that you’ll have to put a really high levy on that one part,” he says.

While the Bikepark is more or less the only business in Mayedena by necessity — it’s way out there — everything from the shuttles, bike shop, bike school, merch store, and restaurant is feeding back into the park.

While Maydena has all of those in-house, there are other ways to bring revenue back into the park. Ski resorts around the world have bed taxes, where a small portion of every room booked comes back into the resort. Derby has come up with a clever take on such a levy that’s arguably more beneficial to everyone involved in the transaction — the accommodation booking platform.

Cafe explained to Flow that the Blue Derby Foundation is encouraging all of the accommodation providers to transfer over from AirBnB, Stayz and the like to the in-house booking platform on the Blue Derby website. The idea here is rather than the fees from these booking services going overseas to Silicon Valley, that same amount of money could go directly back into the local trails.

Of course that system only works when the bike park is the major driver of people booking accommodation.

French says the most obvious levy land managers and bike park operators can apply is the paid access model. While somewhere like Maydena, which has run this way from the beginning — bar a short period during Covid — has had very little resistance, there was a significant amount of friction when it was implemented after the park had been running as it was at Mystic. We should note that Elevation Parks, which is the bike park management arm of the French’s operation, has just recently won the contract to operate Mystic.

“There was a lot of friction and a lot of noise when that got rolled out, and they (the ACP) took a lot of the heat for us because, with the cost of running the park, we would have had to do it anyway to keep it open. But I think that they did a good job of just communicating and explaining and just being really open about it, and saying, look, it’s either this or we shut the facility,” he says.

Of course, places like Mystic and Maydena are big draws for tourism. And for the same reason that Boomers had to increase their prices, in the case of Maydena, they are seeing the effect the cost of living is having on their clientele.

“Households just don’t have as much money to spend. We’re certainly seeing it (at Maydena) where groups may have come twice or three times a year are only coming once. We’re (Maydena) in a bit of a unique situation in that we have a captive audience within Tasmania, but the vast majority of our business comes from outside the state,” says French.

“We’re not a cheap place to come on a holiday. Our overall numbers are still really good, but a lot of our regular visitors aren’t coming as often.”

Live and die by the grant funding bodies

Prior to Elevation Parks taking over Mystic, it was run by the Alpine Community Plantation, which was also a non-profit volunteer-run operation.

ACP Executive Officer Jess Short explained to Flow that prior to the membership model, the money that came into the park was largely contributions in grant funding from HVP, the Alpine Shire Council, a few other stakeholders who used the park, and anything else they could scrounge up. We should note that this was before Short took her post at the ACP.

“That led to it not being overly sustainable, and we’ve had to review how the system works,” she says.

“With grants, you’re kind of bound by the funding agreement to do what you can and can’t do. Rightly so, they’re very particular with how they want you to spend the money. It did create some constraints on what we can do in the park,” she says.

Of course, the precursor to grants is that you not only have to be eligible to apply for it but even if you meet the criteria, the funding is not guaranteed. It also may not be enough to fully address the problems at hand.

According to French, there are very few grant programs where upkeep and ongoing costs of a bike park are within the purview of what the money can be spent on.

“There are basically no grant programs that will fund ongoing maintenance. If there are, they are very rare. Significant upgrades of existing trails usually fall outside of grant programs as well,” says French.

For Atherton, Piccone says they have found a way to thread that needle and grants have allowed them the likes of Contour Works and World Trail to refurbish some of the network and fix problem areas. However in times they have needed money, sometimes there just isn’t enough.

“We’re super appreciative that some of that funding is available to us, but sometimes it’s peanuts. Like the disaster recovery funding after Cyclone Jasper that came through was $5,000 AUD. We had just spent $100,000 AUD refurbishing one-and-a-half trails (prior to the cyclone), and now we need to refurbish the refurbishments. We’re appreciative that we can get the money but $5,000 just doesn’t scratch the surface,” he says.

Contractors, commercial and events

Whether it’s a race, festival, or even a shuttle service working in the park, in most cases, it requires a permit or some other contract, and there is usually a fee involved.

Hosting events is another solid avenue for bike parks to have some revenue coming in, however it’s not just a matter of chucking it on the calendar and needs to be a considered decision.

“Event organisers pay a permit fee to be in the park, that’s from a risk management and safety perspective and the impact on the park. So we’ve got quite a thorough evaluation matrix that determines what the cost would be to the event organisers,” says Short.

“So it’s all those kinds of bigger picture things that would affect the user experience for those not participating in the event and mitigate risk as much as possible, ” Short says.

Beyond just the effect on the trails, people are also required to run them. For many of these trail networks that are already leaning on volunteers out of necessity, asking more of them can be a recipe for burnout.

“They’re not a huge revenue stream. But our biggest consistent revenue stream is the eight-hour event that we run every year and then a few other events depending on how we’re all feeling. We also have put our hand up to host national level stuff and then international I suppose like the Croc Trophy. You know, the Crop Trophy might get us $2,000 of sponsorship,” says Prete.

Corporate Sponsorship

If you have been to one of the big destinations no doubt you will have seen signs with big brand logos or even at your local trail network, certain bits of singletrack may be brought to you by a particular local business.

Any sponsorship is about creating awareness for the organisation that is paying to have its name put in lights. These arrangements come in all different shapes and forms.

In Derby, Cafe explains the Blue Derby Foundation has just revamped the sponsorship program and has been working to get all of the local businesses on board so that these operations can give back to the trails without which they would not exist. But they are also looking further afield.

“We’re talking to some of the bigger players like airlines, airports, the Spirit of Tasmania; like these guys all make big money out of Derby,” he says.

Cafe also says with some of the environmental initiatives, they are working in Derby — like becoming a plastic-free destination — and are using that launchpad to court renewable energy companies in Tassie.

“We’re talking to some of the wind farms about getting some e-Bike charging stations in and setting up some partnerships with green energy companies. Very similar to what they do in the Snowies with Red Energy and Snowy Hydro,” he says.

For Atherton, they haven’t had much success in direct corporate sponsorships, and Mystic had mixed results. Boomers have had some luck with Fox Racing and Dirty Possum for contra trades to help with things they need for the park.

While there are some examples of local businesses chucking in some money for a sign in an effort to give back to their community — Red Hill and Lysterfield in Victoria, and Wedding Bells State Forest in Woolgoolga NSW to name a few — for the big dollar deals that will fund a new trail or upkeep of a shuttle vehicle, as Simon French put it, sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze.

“I think the trap that people fall in sometimes is taking on a commercial partnership without understanding the amount of work that’s required to actually service that partnership properly. So obviously, when a partner jumps on board, they’re not just giving you the money just to be nice. They have a range of expectations, and they need to see a return on their investment, even if that’s a passive return,” says French

“And what looks good on paper may make a little bit of money, but if you have to dedicate a whole bunch of staff time and other resources to service that partner and keep them happy, sometimes it’s not worth it,” says French.

Can you bring me home a T-shirt? What about merchandise?

From the St Helens stubby cooler in my cupboard, to the Maydena socks in my drawer and the Cowhide Ride Rockhampton coasters on my coffee table, merchandise can be a lucrative option provided some preconditions are met.

Atherton and Mystic have both dabbled in merchandise without much impact. However for Maydena and Blue Derby it buoys the bank balance available to cover the running costs of the trail network.

Cafe tells us that Blue Derby has trademarked the brand. So, in addition to the official mech that is sold, when a shop makes an ‘Air Ya Garn’ T-shirt, the trail network gets a slice.

“It’s a small mechanism being put in place where every time they (local businesses) produce new merch, a small percentage of that will all come back to the Foundation and obviously for the trails,” he says.

French says merchandise has pretty low margins, but that is underpinned entirely by the brand’s strength.

“The brand at Maydena is really strong, and margins on merchandise are really good in terms of profit margin. Even though you might not move that much merch in the scheme of things, the profit margins are generally pretty good,” he says.

Donations

Clubs and trail networks can also raise money through various means, from cash boxes to QR codes and even card tappers — not to mention the donation of time, effort and expertise folks provide on volunteer dig days, events and running clubs.

Derby, once again, is the prime example for donations, as there is a card tap station next to every single cash register in town and QR codes in all of the accommodations. According to the Cafe, people use them more than you may think.

“When we implemented this, a lot of people were telling us it wouldn’t work. But it’s not unusual for us to get $3,000 AUD a month out of those tap stations,” says Cafe.

In Atherton, the club is working with the Australia Sports Foundation, which provides a facility to be able to collect donations directly from users without having to add more to a volunteer to-do list.

“They give us the facility to become a charitable organisation. The donations go to ASF, they take a small handling fee, and all the money comes back to the trails. We have it set up, we just need to promote it now.

When the membership model came in, the Alpine Community Plantation implemented a sweat equity program. If members of the Alpine Cycling Club put in a certain number of volunteer trail-building hours, they would receive private shuttle privileges. They also added that facility to the membership platform for tourists or members of the community who aren’t riders but want to support the park.

“It’s been surprising how much contribution there has been, which is amazing. That really tells us that people enjoy the park and value the park and want to see the park at its best. So obviously, that all goes straight back into trail maintenance and trail building.” says Short.

Planning ahead

With more mountain biking enthusiasts growing and new trail projects, big and small, happening across the country, the question is where the money comes from to run the park.

French is uniquely positioned in that he runs private and semi-private bike parks in two states and plans and delivers trail builds around the country. When they are planning these projects, they have a formula that puts a rough cost on how much it will cost to maintain that trail network.

“Once you’ve actually established that number, or you know, a range that the trail network is likely to cost to manage, then the land manager can make a decision about whether that’s a cost that they can stomach on an ongoing basis. Or, whether that cost is at a point that they don’t have the capacity to manage it in an ongoing sense, and they need to think about what how the trail network can generate some kind of revenue,” Says Simon French

French equated it to something like a public swimming pool, it’s not something anyone would expect to operate with a budget and mountain bike trails are no different. To assume that they’ll look after themselves or a community group will be there to swing shovels is short sighted.

He notes that things are changing, and land managers are, on the whole, more proactive in planning for the future. But there is still somewhat of a prevailing she’ll be right attitude.

“To be honest, part of the reason that still happens is because there are examples where it is right, or at least right for now. There are certainly examples of really proactive clubs. Narooma is a good example that we’ve been involved with where, so far, they’ve been good at maintaining their own trail network. But there’s a long-term risk in terms of people moving on and doing different things.

“Just because she’ll be right, right now, when you’re dealing with volunteers, it might not be right in six and 12 months time,” says French.

He does say there has been a culture shift, and part of the reason for that is the proliferation of 60-100km trail networks that are on the whole beyond what volunteers, or even casual part-time employees, can manage properly.

The soon-to-open trail network in Mogo is one such example of how they are planning ways to generate revenue right from the beginning.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into creating a brand that is identifiable but also has the options for merch and partnerships with other businesses,” says Mogo Trail Manager Shane Spicer.

“We would like to get some beers made and have that (to sell) as a bit of a revenue stream to feed back into trail maintenance longer term. We know that all these assets are going in everywhere and the biggest thing they struggle with is maintenance. So we’ve really been trying to set the network up in a way that it’s got some potential revenue streams moving forward that are independent of (outside) funding,” he says.

Ultimately, there is no silver bullet that will work for every trail network, as they are all different, and so are the organisations tasked with managing them. The only constant is that they do have costs, and the longer those costs are ignored, the larger that cost becomes.