Do you spend £88 a month on cycling?

Conflating a sport and a mode of transport, confusing the one for the other... surveys like this do not help.

Jo Average, riding a bike to work, does not average a spend of £88 per month; but a competitive cyclist might do.

But just wait until the media at large start reporting this as the "true cost" of utility bike riding.

And there's other ways to look at it - i play hockey which costs close to £100 club fees plus £180 in match fees, for 18 hours or so of sport. That's £15.50 per hour.

Strava informs me that i completed around 420 hours of cycling (leisure) last year on a £400 specialized bike with maybe an additional £200 worth of kit and £100 sportive entries. That's £1.66 an hour.

I haven't factored in the cost of hockey equipment or the fact that i still own the bike and kit which will drastically reduce outlay next year...

So cycling is the 3rd most expensive sport but hockey costs me around 10 times more per hour!

22 a week wonder if that takes into account coffee and cake or the beers you buy on a ride. Thankfully not skinny enough to fit in to rapha top or it would be much more than 88 a month 

My mate does diving and that is really expensive! I thought cycling + skiing was an expensive mix of hobbies, but she spends £2000 on a dry suit, and then has to pay upwards of £100 a time to fill the air tanks

If I add 100 GBP savings on bus/train on top of the 88 GBP I get an amount which covers my monthly spendings. 

I blame Prendas and their lovely retro jerseys on overspending on clothing and of course "upgraderitis" like some new shiny golden wheels blows the budget on parts.

London should get another tenner for a big, bad lock!

Just like the Experian press release, this is free advertising for Santander's new app.

You don't need a smartphone app (and the marketing crap they'll hit you with) if you're interested in monitoring your spending. Just check your bank statement.

Do these 2,007 people live in detached houses in Surrey or on a council estate in Glasgow? Pinarello or Carrera? Assos or Aldi?

Racing can be a bottomless pit if you want to have all the gear and travel. However, club TTs cost about £3 or £4 to enter and require nothing more than a roadworthy bicycle.

Our circuit races are £10 to enter and you only really need a bike, a BC license and a hat. Some guys turn up with new bikes kitted with Dura-Ace and bling wheels but not usually them at the sharp end. In one cat 3/4 race last summer the winner had to borrow a 9-speed wheel (was running 10 speed) and still won the sprint. It wasn't his only win in the series either.

A fun way I used to look at it would be the hour of work it takes to earn the money, Vs hours of fun per month. So £88 quid will take me 4 hours work to earn that £88 pounds. But...I ride for 8 hours per week/32 hours a month. E.g. 32/4 same as 8/1 .So.....one hour of work = eight hours of fun riding my bike! Still very good value!

When I was a youngster I spent a lot of my money on my pastimes, so some of us decided that any 3D sport was going to cost a lot, eg we did scuba diving, parachuting....we spent more than triathlete friends and those involved in any rackets, my how times have changed. And I'm still broke!!

And the coffee.

You forgot the cake

I would say the above is a fairly accurate breakdown.

A lot of people don't want to fess up to just how much they spend, myself included!

Competitive sport vs. leisure vs. commuting.

Example: competitive sport

- TT bike incl. cometition wheels: £4000 (5 years)

- Training bike: £2000 (5 years)

- Winter bike: £1000 (5 years)

- Turbo trainer/rollers: £300 (5 years)

- Kit (clothes, shoes, Garmin, lights): £300 / year

- maintaining those bikes (chains, tyres, service, cables, brake blocks etc. per year based on 6000mi riding): £600

- Race entries (20 races): £200

- Travelling to 20 races: average distance 100mi return, 40p per mile: £800

- Coach: £600 / year

- TrainingPeaks/TrainerRoad or similar subscription: £100

- 1 week Training camp in Mallorco: £600

Monthly cost: £388.

--------

Leisure sport cyclist:

- One nice bike: £2000 (5 years)

- Winter bike: £600 (5 years)

- Turbo trainer/rollers: £200 (5 years)

- Kit (clothes, shoes, Garmin, lights): £150 / year

- maintaining those bikes (chains, tyres, service, cables, brake blocks etc. per year based on 3000mi riding): £200

- Sportive entries (3): £150

- Travelling to 3 sportives: average distance 200mi return, 40p per mile: £240

Monthly cost: £108

--------

Commuting cyclist:

- One bike: £1000 (5 years)

- Kit (clothes, shoes, lights): £150 / year

- maintaining the bikes (chains, tyres, service, cables, brake blocks etc. per year based on 5000mi riding): £300

Monthly cost: £55

The monthly cost of this 20mi daily commute by car (40p/mile) would equate to £167 per months. So, the cost for the commuter is: - £112. 

Golf has to be expensive ping clubs, bag joining fee + membership, pringle sweater, expensive car for parking in club car park.

Cycling £1k bike, tyres, gels, lycra kit. Easily spend £88 per month for a least a year. Year 2 new bike the expense rolls on

Principal principle principal principle principal principle.  Principal.

Most people living near me spend £200/month on a hobby of riding on Tube trains.

I used to play cricket and that was expensive, especially during the 4 months or so of the season.

Kit was costly, but the main expense was beer as we seemed to spend every other weekend in the club bar waiting for the rain to stop.

Swimming? Unless they are buying Rapha swimming trunks every week.

This is nonsense news.  Figures can say ANYTHING you want them too.  Daily Mail article on behalf of a bank.

These would appear to be on par with the ones used that tell us eating bacon gives you cancer.

I would have thought if you're doing cycling as a sport that is probably an underestimate. If you do, say, 20 TTs or races a year around the country I bet it costs a lot more than that, even if you spread the cost of the bike over 5 years, travel and other costs mount up. When my daughter played football for a Centre of Excellence and travelled around the region and a few other places it cost about £1500 a year, nearly all travel costs. With that all kit was provided and there were few other material costs as there would be for an amateur cyclist.

If you commute and do cycling as a leisure activity it's probably a bit less but I probably manage £150 in general expenses (tyres, chain, cassette, new tools and other stuff) plus I had new waterproof panniers for work, about a hundred, and some new kit, a couple of hundred. Admitedly, the panniers and kit should last a few years as they're good quality. Plus BC, Strava premium and club, which I'm dropping in favour of Audaxuk, a huge saving of £1, which is another hundred. Then there was the Tour of Cambridgeshire and Cambridge Evening News, 'The Big Ride', another hundred. So it mounts up. And my bikes are pretty cheap, £600 for the first which is still going well with normal maintenance costs and my second was a second-hand early Cervelo for £400 on eBay, which I expect will last a few years, say add in another hundred for purchase costs plus a bit extra for insurance. 

Luckily, I work partly in cycling as an instructor so some of this expense can go against tax and I even get paid for cycling to work if it's over 10 miles. But if you compete, which is what they mean I suppose, then it's a different matter.

Clearly, as others have said "Cycling has been ranked the third most expensive sport" is an inaccurate headline and statement of the true economics but if you do spend £88 per month then I'm still confident it's money well spent compared to other sports.

Depends, I save £7 in petrol every time I ride to work. Also depends how many bikes you are maintaining. If you had one cyclocross bike you used for everything, it would be a very cheap sport. Also by cycling as your main exercise, you may save money by not needing such things as a Gym membership

I suspect the principle objective of this research is to gain a few column inches in copy-hungry publications. On that basis, the more nonsensical the results, the better.

£84 per your for club membership seems a little bit odd.

It does seem to me that the report is really just saying that cycling is the third most expensive sport... if you ignore all of the really expensive ones. Saling, Motor sport, Equestrain, rowing, possibly climbing too.

I also think that if you are going to do a report on the relative costs for different sports, you should also take into account possible savings the participation can provide. For example, if cycling allows you to save on commuting costs, that should be factored in too.

The Experian figure of £917/year (or £77/month) included the cost of a new bike.

How Santander came up with monthly cost even higher is beyond me (other than a random number generator). 

Dunno much about football but it seems they get a lot of punctures!

£88 per month? That'd work out to PhP6,043 per month in my neck of the woods.

I have to wonder what sort of data went into this figure. Is it based on the purchase price of a new bike? Upkeep of existing bikes and the cost of consumables? Spending on apparel, tools and accessories?

I certainly don't spend that much money on just the upkeep of my two bikes. I've got a roadgoing cross bike for most of my riding, and a 20" folding bike for errands around town. I've gradually built up a small workshop's worth of tools for DIY maintenance though.

I would have thought sailing was the most expensive sport with anything with a horse attached being expensive too... and motor racing - where are all these things?

£22 a month seems like a good deal to me. My weekly bill if I took the train to work? About £30.