Electronic Pig Racing - Fun Fund raising in York, Leeds, Harrogate, Scarborough, Whitby, Pocklington, Catterick, Hull, Yorkshire and Humberside
A more hands approach to a race night which is piggin’ fantastic! Select the highly trained battery-operated pigs from our tub of pigs (sty) and we then number them up 1-8 ready for racing. First pig past the finish line wins. As per the normal big screen horse racing, we normally do 8 races with 8 pigs per race. The numbered race jackets for the pigs are velcroed on to the pigs and removed after each race. There are also more than pigs than are needed meaning there is no way of knowing which pig is going to win.
This is a brilliant fund raiser as well as being fantastic fun. Pig racing also works well for team building. So, what is the best way of running this? Well......
For most organisations such as schools, football clubs, Scouts, Guides, Sports Clubs etc There is very likely to be a number of members /parents who run their own business or work for business that may well want to sponsor a race. Many local businesses are often keen to lend support as well either for sponsorship of a race or for raffle / auction prizes.
Firstly, get sponsorship for your races. Say £50 per race x 8 = £400. That is our fee covered! We recommend that the sponsor gets to choose the name of the race and the names of the 8 pigs. This can be great fun. Say for instance race 1 was sponsored by Pete the Plumber the race can be called Pete the Plumber Race. Each of the 8 pigs for this race can be named after plumbing things such as U bend, pump etc. Race 2 could be sponsored by your local butcher so the pigs could be named hamlet, sizzler, etc! Normally I recommend an A5 booklet with the sponsors advert on one side, and the pig names on the other side. You may well be able to get this produced free if a local printer is happy to sponsor the event or a race!
An entry fee could also be charged or better still sell the race programmes (suggest £1 / £2 each) Obviously if you are offering food such as a hog roast, pie n peas etc you can charge accordingly to cover the food.
Ownership: You can sell ownership of the pigs for each race say at £2 each and offer a prize if the owners pig wins. Bottle of prosecco or box of chocolates or donated prizes from local businesses. 8 pigs per race and 8 race means this can add a nice extra lump of money to the fund-raising pot. Obviously, the price charged for ownership needs to reflect the prize. You are going to struggle to sell ownerships at £10 if the prize is only a £6 bottle of prosecco or £2 box of chocolates. But a meal for 2 at a restaurant worth £50 etc then you should not have a problem!
Half time: Normally we will run 4 races followed by a break before running the final 4 races. This break is a great opportunity for serving food if that is something you want to do. This break is also an ideal time to do a raffle or even an auction if you have had some great prizes donated. Again, this is a great way of adding more money to the fund-raising pot. We are more than happy to call out raffle tickets and/ or do the auctioning.
Auction race. Another way of adding more fund-raising opportunity If you have a great prize that has been donated you hold an extra 9th race with the ownership of the pigs been auctioned off. If you do not you can offer half the money raised from the auctioning of the pig ownership for this last race. Again, we are happy to do the auctioning.
Bets are normally £1 and multiples of a £1. Basically £1 = £1 betting ticket. if someone wants to bet £5 on one pig for that race, they will get 5 tickets etc. This keeps things simple!
So, what can you expect to raise?
For example, a race night with 50 people:
Sell race night admission tickets. 50 X £1.00 =£50.00
Find race night sponsors for each race. 8 X £50 = £400.00
Sell ownership of the pig’s night 8 pigs per race and 8 races at £2 = 64 x £2 = £128.00 (less cost of prizes if needed)
Race night betting on each race. 50 x 8 x £1 = £400 (less pay out of 50%) = £200 (assuming that everyone bets £1 per race! normally people bet a lot more!)
Total Race Night Income from 50 guests = £778 less £200 for our fee, Plus whatever you raise from the raffle and/or an auction
TOTAL RAISED £578
As you can see, there's great potential for fundraising with an exciting race night. The figures used are conservative so hopefully you should be able to raise much more. It all depends on how many people attend, sponsorship and donated prizes. Like everything else the more, you put in, the more you get out.
WHAT DO YOU GET?
Basically, everything you need!
- Racing pigs
- Racing board which sits on 2 trestle tables (we provide these if needed) The board has guide rails for the pigs, otherwise they get distracted and trott off in every direction.
- PA system for announcements, commentary of the races, background music etc
- Betting tickets (Tote)
- Compare who will do all the announcements, play background music, calculate the tote, run the races, provide the commentary, make jokes and pig puns (usually bad!), Call out raffle tickets and do any auctions.
- Provide float
- Take bets
- Work out the tote
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO?
- Book venue
- Decide if you want to provide food at half time
- Get sponsorship and prizes
- Produce race programmes
- Advertise the event
If you want to take the bests yourself that is completely fine, and we can still work the tote out (we have a programmed spreadsheet for this to make life easy!)
CAN I HAVE PIG RACING JUST FOR FUN?
Of course, you can. We have held numerous pig racing events where they are just for entertainment, both for private parties and corporate events, we have even supplied pig racing as a promotion event at a supermarket head office to promote a bacon brand!
There are 2 ways of doing this. We can either supply fun money and run the event as normal but using the fun money or we can set the tote to pay out 100% so basically everything that is bet is paid out. This is the easiest way as it makes our life easier and saves you having to provide a prize for whoever wins the most fun money. We can supply personalised fun money if required.
If you do not fancy pig racing, we also offer big screen horse racing. This runs the same as the pig racing, but with horse races shown on a big projector or TV.
Struggling to name the pigs? Our top 10 favourites are:
- Ham Solo
- Hamlet
- Pigmalion
- Babe
- Kevin Bacon
- Frank Furter
- Hamm
- Wilbur
- Sir Oinksalot
- Spider Pig