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What it costs to time a meet

Hiring a timer, buying a system, or using the phones already in your pocket, with the actual numbers.

There are three ways to get times at a meet, and they are separated by about two orders of magnitude.

Hire a timing company

Between roughly $1,000 and $2,500 for a day, depending on the size of the meet and how far anybody has to drive. You get certified equipment, an operator who has done it a hundred times, and results you do not have to think about. For a championship, that is money well spent.

For a Tuesday dual meet, it is more than most programmes spend on anything else that week.

Buy a system

A full FAT setup (camera, start sensor, software, laptop) runs into five figures, plus somebody who knows how to run it. Schools that own one usually inherited it, and a surprising number of those sit in a cupboard because the person who understood it left.

Use the phones you already have

StatLap runs on two phones: one at the start listening for the gun, one at the finish watching the line. That part is free, permanently, and it is not a trial.

• Timing, the Film Room and the speed gates: free forever.
• Publishing results to your own public page: $59 a month, or $299 for a six-month season.
• Film Room Cloud, for sharing clips with notes: $12 a month.
• Both together: $71 a month, or $349 a season.

The reason the timing itself is free is that it is the part we think should be. A stopwatch is worse than a phone and every team already owns phones; charging for the clock would be charging for arithmetic. What costs money is everything after the race: the results page a parent can find, the history that follows an athlete, the clips with your notes on them.

The comparison nobody makes

A season of StatLap for a club that publishes results costs about what one hired meet does. If you run more than one meet a year, the arithmetic is not subtle.

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