Welcome to this year's annual report for 2025. We cover income and work done by the organising team from mid-August 2024 to mid-August 2025.
We're continually working towards greater transparency and accountability so this year we'd like to thank Stewbacca for independently auditing our account data.
This year we donated an awesome £17k split between our nominated charities MIND and the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. We made some cost savings that somewhat offset a slightly lower revenue from the main auction. Last year's donation figures were also improved by the online auction in the early part of 2024 and the ‘Road to Thrudball’ FUMBBL tournament, which didn't happen this year.
We have also invested capital in stock of the Thrudball anniversary figure, which we hope to have on general sale shortly, and this should provide additional revenue for next year’s donations.
As always, the team would like to express its utmost gratitude to Thrud’s creator Carl Critchlow for his ongoing support.
This year we donated an awesome £17k split between our nominated charities MIND and the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. We made some cost savings that somewhat offset slightly lower revenue from the main auction. In 2024 revenue was also improved by the online auction in the early part of 2024 and the ‘Road to Thrudball’ FUMBBL tournament.
We have also invested capital in stock of the Thrudball anniversary figure, which we hope to have on general sale shortly, and this should provide additional revenue for next year’s donations.
This year’s ticket sales income was £11,350 including food only and 7’s tickets which was an increase of approx £1,385 mostly due to raising the main ticket price from £65 to £75.
Food costs for the event increased from £4,201 in 2024 to £5,600, meaning that all the additional ticket revenue generated was spent on food.
Venue costs remained unchanged, however the costs for tournament dice in the player welcome pack and other expenses decreased this year by approx £800. This is due to the donation of the labour costs associated with dice production (huge thanks to Gary at ForgeT2 for this!) and the admin team finding other cost savings.
Ticket sales produced a net profit of £4,379 vs approx £3,565 in 2024 - an increase of around £800.
Note: 2025 costs for venue, auction expenses, other expenses were £1,370.58 vs £2,669.27 in 2024 including 50% of the total dice cost in both figures.
This year we were able to split out some of our costs and sales in more detail, so we can see the goodybag sales were £1,553.44, and we sold 98 compared to 101 the previous year. The sales value is higher than the actual number sold because it includes some sales subsequently cancelled - likewise the cost is higher as it includes some refunds.
Thanks to the kind donations of the miniature printing costs by Jowan Vogel of the Warhammer Alliance at Alfa-college in Groningen NL, along with the donation of labour costs from ForgeT2 for the block dice, our costs reduced this year (2025 costs were £776.91 including 50% of the dice costs compared to £1,074 in 2024)
Goodybag sales produced a net profit of approx £776 vs approx profit of approx £441 in 2024
The auction is always an amazing revenue generator and we want to offer heartfelt thanks to everybody who donated items, time and effort. We’d also never reach these totals without people willing to put their hands in their pockets and bid on the items - we salute you!
It simply can’t happen without your help and we love you all for it.
This year the auction total was £9,814 (profit of £9,080) compared to an auction total of £10,317 in 2024.
We commissioned several items to celebrate and commemorate our 20th anniversary which were sold via pre-order and during the event:
The Anniversary apparel, mugs and dice mats generated profit of £453.
The Anniversary ball tokens produced a profit of £375
The Anniversary Thrud model produced a loss of £761
While we made overall profit on the combined anniversary items, we still hold £3,315 stock of the ball tokens and Thrud models. We are working to get the Thrud models released for general sale and expect them to provide significant additional revenue for next year’s tournament as a result.
During the event, we also raised £1,772 from the raffle, the cake stand, block dice challenge and other ad-hoc activities.
We received ad-hoc donations of £579 including a donation of £249 from the NAFC Friday Night 7’s tournament, £113 from Ian Chafee and £50 for destroying some dice (don’t ask) - thank you all for your support!
Throughout the year we also made sales of previous tournament dice and figures, which produced a profit of £432
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and that will be noted here and there. However, as an admin committee, we believe that we have most to learn from the things that need improving. As such, this document will contain mostly those points that require our attention for next editions.
The feedback has been organised in themes, in which they have been summarised.
Overall respondents were overwhelmingly positive. Food and internet were improved, suggestions for communication and lowering the admin burden have been supplied, and improvements to the venue were suggested.
In general, communication by the admin team was considered good; however, the roster deadline and associated tiebreaker could do with clearer communication, as well as communicating the extra events on Friday night and the Orction. For next year, we are therefore looking to supply every attendant with a road map with times and dates towards and during Thrudball.
With the overwhelming majority of last year’s negative feedback items having been directed towards the food, we made it a top priority for improvement. As such, we were pleased to see far fewer negative comments. The ratio of negative versus positive comments on food quality and/or quantity is a solid 1:4. The amount of comments on food in total is dwarfed by that of the ‘24 event.
Related to that, but given a separate count, the addition of the coffee van during the weekend and the chippie van on the Friday were clearly appreciated. We will take to heart what one respondent commented under Keep doing: ‘And keep aiming to improve the food - this year was so much better than last year!’
In the gaming side of things, several points were mentioned. First, a repeat issue (one we noticed during game one already) was the cramped conditions between tables. We recognise many teams bring Big Guys, and will take this into account next time.
Second, the roster and game data entry being overcomplicated by the use of a combination of Score and Google Docs was commented on quite frequently. We have already started up the process of exploring alternatives.
Interestingly, where last year we’ve received negative comments on including Dymarip, we now found people asking for it to be returned. Similarly to last year’s lack of love for Dymarip, this year Dockbowl got some flak, mainly due to the boring gameplay. We are already discussing this.
Finally, we received a handful of comments on the roster deadline cutoff: it was not clear to everyone when this was and whether they made the deadline or not. We are taking this into our workflow for next year’s Thrudball.
The state of the facilities was remarked as not having improved since last year - which means lacking with regards to the bathroom stalls and showers. We were suggested to take this up with the venue. Of course, sadly, there’s no way of keeping everything tidy if one or more attendees decide to redecorate the place using orifice pigment (any) without notifying staff or admin team. We are again asking attendees to alert the admin team or site staff to issues.
Another point that was frequently mentioned was the state of the overflowing wheelie bins with the associated wasps. We shall take this up with the venue too.
A third point raised was the noise levels after 23:00, as some attendees did not respect the cutoff time for noise, causing light sleepers in both the general camp site section and the quiet zone to miss out on valuable sleep.
Another issue was the haphazard placement of tents and ensuing tripping hazard of guy ropes. Given the relative ease of marking off a corridor for the catering vans, creating a corridor towards the quiet zone should be relatively easy in the future.
A major improvement compared to last year was the accessibility and speed of the venue’s WiFi network. This year everything ran a lot smoother than last year and we thank the supermarine spitfire club for attending to this.
The quiet zone was appreciated by quite a few respondents, though. However, the lack of consideration towards quiet time after 23:00 by some attendees was not. (See also ‘venue’ with regards to that.)
Similarly, wasps were not appreciated - as one respondent put it, ‘ask the wasps to go away’. We will. We shall work with the venue to mitigate this.
The main issue raised here was the gate being closed at night and people not being aware of who all had the access code. This will be better communicated in the future.
On a positive note, we received quite a few comments on attendees feeling safe due to decisions, words or actions on the admin team’s part.
The majority of comments in this category dealt with the welcoming, supportive and inclusive atmosphere of the event. As Thrudball can feel a bit intimidating to newcomers with cliques of people returning annually, we have also received some great suggestions and offers to help with welcoming newcomers and getting them kickstarted into the weekend’s community. Please continue being the welcoming and friendly people that we know you are and have been for years!
The rest of the comments were individual issues. Summarising them would be impossible, but every single one will be addressed for future events! Thank you for your feedback!
It fills us with so much joy and pride to be able to share all this with you! Thank you all again for your amazing support which made the 20th Thrudball the success it was. We’d also like to welcome Bob (Heff), Alan (Oddgood) and Adam (Hargrim) to the admin team for the following year, and look forward with excitement to kicking off proceedings for Thrudball 2026.