Munga race postponed until Dec 2015

Press release this morning saying that owing to the key sponsor pulling out the inaugural running of The Munga will be postponed for a year.
It's a tough call for the organisers and I am not sure it is the right one. I would have preferred the race to have gone ahead albeit with a reduced entry fee and a commensurate decrease in the prize money. I believe it could have been rebranded as a Million Rand race and the entry fee reduced substantially. There is a domestic appetite for tough races and the idea of racing the first edition has appeal. They are going to get slaughtered on the social media platforms as already witnessed on The Hub. The fixation on a million dollar race is probably the downfall. It's a huge purse but a purse that is effectively shared by 3 winning teams and one lucky draw. Once you have a handful of true contenders you have to ask how much of a draw card is a lucky draw prize? Is it worth $10k entry fee to stand a chance to win $100k? Very few people will turn their noses up at $100k but to be honest, if you can afford to stump up $10k to enter, $100k is unlikely to change your life and you are certainly not going to enter the race just to have a remote chance of winning a lucky draw.
I can understand the sponsor withdrawing. I have absolutely no knowledge of the who, what or why of the deal but assume that someone was happy to underwrite the prize money after being presented with the entry forecast. After all,the press around the race indicated a cut off at 450 teams. Do the maths and you will see the prize money as well as the logistics and admin around the race would have been well covered even at only half that number of teams.
It's back to the drawing board for the organisers. Sadly for them the echoes of the naysayers will reverberate for a while yet.