Rowing’s Boston Super Bowl Runs on 6 Staffers and Scant Prize Money
This weekend 12,000 athletes and some 400,000 spectators flooded riverside Boston to catch one of the city’s great sporting events, the Head of the Charles Regatta.
Started in 1965 on the suggestion of a Harvard sculling instructor who missed the rowing events of his native England, the Head of the Charles has evolved into rowing’s premier annual event, the self-described Super Bowl of rowing.
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“The regatta holds this mystique as the one event on the rowing calendar in the year that you want to go to, that you would do anything to be a part of,” said chief commercial officer Mason Cox, in a phone call during the set-up ahead of the regatta, which began Friday and completes Sunday.
The event draws teams from about 800 organizations, from local institutions with boathouses on the Charles like Harvard University and boarding school Noble and Greenough, to the more far-flung, like Australia’s Sunshine Coast Rowing Club and Uganda’s Kampala Rowing Club. Elite rowers—including members of the U.S. national team, some four dozen Olympians and 75 racers from the world championship circuit—are also on hand to compete.
The sheer size of the regatta makes it Boston’s third largest outdoor event, trailing only Independence Day and the Boston Marathon. But even though it is one of the rowing world’s preeminent events, generating some $88 million in economic impact for Massachusetts and collecting some 86 million traditional media and social media impressions, Head of the Charles gets pulled off on a relative shoestring. Cox, for instance, is one of just six employees of the regatta. Staffing is thin enough that he and most of the other professional staff pitch in to help prep the racecourse, which takes place on and alongside three miles of the Charles River separating the cities of Boston and Cambridge.
The key to pulling off the regatta is a mass of volunteers. A volunteer committee of 12 meets monthly through the year to coordinate another 30 committees of about 100 people, who in turn coordinate some 2,400 other enthusiasts who donate their time over four days around the event.
“It’s a national community that has embraced the event,” Cox said. “The volunteer aspect is absolutely incredible.”
The extent of the volunteering not only demonstrates the love of the rowing community for the festival, but also means the budget is small for its size. Direct regatta expenses come in at about $1.6 million, with the total budget for the year, including salaries, rent and grants to promote rowing, hitting $3.2 million, according to Head of the Charles’ latest tax return, which is public because the organization is a nonprofit.
According to Cox, the regatta is careful to balance its commercial needs with respecting the communal nature of Head of the Charles. If it gets too commercialized, people may be less likely to volunteer.
“It’s a constant challenge in a sense, to find [appropriate] corporate sponsorships,” Cox said.
The regatta covers its budget by using a combination of top-line sponsors who appeal to spectators, like money manager BNY Mellon and Vineyard Vines, purveyor of Martha’s Vineyard inspired casual clothes, as well as smaller outfits that want to reach the athletes, like specialized rowing boat maker Hudson and high school athlete prep service RowRecruit.
While not much has changed about the regatta in recent decades, a new addition this year is offering prize money for some racers. Head of the Charles will distribute a total of $35,000 in awards to participants in a couple of races, with $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 prizes going to first to third winners in both men’s and women’s singles.
“There’s not a lot of rowing events with prize money, and there’s not a lot of money in participating in rowing,” Cox said. “It’s a way we can support the athletes who are training and competing.”
Primarily, though, racing through Boston’s autumnal splendor with a throng of fellow enthusiasts is the main attraction. Sunday afternoon, the regatta will run the last of its 75 races that cover groups including para rowing for those with physical or intellectual impairments, parent-child teams, and elite racers in invite-only men’s and women’s pairs.
“For a lot of the crews—the high schools, colleges and the elite [racers]—this is the one time a year they are all getting to row together,” Cox said. “It’s just this magical fall weekend in New England. The leaves are turning, it’s starting to get a little colder, and it really becomes a reunion.”
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