I think I'm with Knox, but I was never on the transponder bandwagon. It was cool, but definitely not worth the cost to the promoter, the racers, and the added time at signup. Now I think those are the future, and I still would like to work towards that, but I don't think the time is now. As far as the other fees, I think they're inline with the amount of time work, risk, stress, and everything else that comes along to make our facilities and events growing. I can tell you this, at $10 per rider, $25/15/10 for racing, and $25 for practice last year at my "local" race we had 375 riders and we made about as much as one of our better practice weekends, for 10 times the cost. 4 times the work, and about 50 times the stress. If I had to chose racing at those fees (the fees above) and not racing, hands down, my gate is for sale today. At the current fee schedule (The one from KOC and this years Battle, which is $5 different on Friday from last years Battle), I'm still not sure its worth it to me, but its one of those I wont know till I'm older and looking back. For now I keep pushing forward hoping I'm right some day.
Think about this, why is Malvern for sale? Why has it changed hands so many times in the last 20 years? Not piking on Malvern, but my point is that if promoting is such a profitable game, then why do people get out? Name one promoter that has retired early from a motocross only work life? Meaning that's all they do. Do you know that Tim Ritchie plows snow in the winters? Everything is not what it seems, just keep that in mind.
I think Chilli Town has come a long way, are they race masters? No, all of us learn something at each race. But I will tell you this, nobody out promotes Chilli Town, nobody. They are very very good at that.