High tournament entry fees

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:55 pm

Over the last two years, I've become aware of an upward trend in tournament fees. Probably this trend has always existed to some extent and I just never noticed it because I never had to monitor the transfer of money, but during my tenure as Berkeley's treasurer, it became very apparent to me. And I'm concerned about it, because I feel like a lot of tournaments are moving outside the range of affordability.

I want to provide a couple of examples of tournaments that I think get it right and those that maybe get it not so right. First, the good ones:

(1) MLK. Reasonable base fee combined with a generous discount for early packets and a travel discount.

(2) ACF Regionals. Central editors don't tell people how to set the base fee, but most fees seem to be around $100. ACF also gives generous discounts for early packets. All sites are giving buzzer discounts and discounts for the second team. There seem to be some travel discounts at various sites, but I don't know how relevant they are since all the teams are going to their local sites anyway.

Now, the not so good ones:

(1) NAQT SCT: The base fee is $120! Since there's no packet submission, there is no opportunity to get a discount for that. There are small discounts for bringing buzzers, which most teams have, and clocks, which many teams don't. This seems like a really high fee to pay for a regional tournament. I find it all the more unreasonable because, unlike with ACF, I can't just skip out on SCT and go to ICT because the SCT is a qualifying tournament. By contrast, ACF doesn't require one to play in Regionals to be eligible for Nationals. So if I want to play at ICT, I'm compelled to spend that $120 (less equipment discounts), and I find that objectionable.

(2) Penn Bowl. Now, Penn Bowl is a packet-submission tournament, but I feel like the planning of the tournament directors has been somewhat off this year. The base fee is $100, which is about average, but the tournament itself was announced right before Thanksgiving and the deadline was only a month later for a $15 discount. There were no other packet discounts available, although the travel discounts and the "never played Penn Bowl" discounts were good. For a huge event like Penn Bowl, you can pull in a lot of money just from the number of teams you get, but most teams aren't coming from 2000 miles away or from Canada, and most of them have played in the tournament before. I think that Penn Bowl should go back to its early-announcement model and offer greater discounts for teams submitting packets, rather than impose greater penalties on late packets, as the system seems to work this year.

Those are my thoughts. I'd like to hear yours.

Rothlover · Post by **Rothlover** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:55 pm

I agree that in many cases, fees are out of line, especially with what you ultimately get. In NE for example, after the mix-up that led to us mirroring HB, I ran it such that it was around our break-even point (though we get some SU funding, and I guess it is easier to be charitable when you makt de gelt...) I also think BU is generally excellent with their tournament pricing. I don't recall having to pay more than $100 for anything (and in that one case, it was for a small tournament that they had to write two packets and pay a percentage on) and they are willing to schedule as many rounds as there are people to play.

OTOH, I thought Harvard's WIT mirror price was a bit high, considering it was 10 matches, with only a 5 round RR, minimal discounts, minimal prizes and ultimately no online stats for reference. I don't think high tournament costs are bad if said team running the tournament does enough to justify the costs. My guess is Penn Bowl will not justify the cost, whereas MLK could charge $30 more and still be worth it.

cvdwightw · Post by **cvdwightw** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:18 pm

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe one of the general reasons for running a tournament, besides the well-being of the circuit, is to make a small profit that can be re-invested as tournament fees for other tournaments.

Therefore, the prices should be dictated by the expected profit and the cost of the tournament: this includes printing packets, reserving rooms, and buying food/prizes. The problem with this is that, with a few exceptions (e.g. Stanford's room prices), the general prices in those three areas have not risen enough to justify the upward trend in tournament fees. The other exception I can think of immediately is NAQT Sectionals, where hosts are supposed to give a copy of the packet set to each competing school for free. Therefore I would not be surprised to see the cost of this tournament slightly above that of other tournaments, but a $20-$30 difference between that base fee and the base fee for most other tournaments seems to be a bit high.

There is one other thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, and that is, for packet submission tournaments, there is not only an early packet discount but a late packet/no packet penalty. Therefore some teams may end up paying $120 or more for a packet submission tournament due to their own laziness. And from my experience, there are very few teams who actually get their packets in early.

ValenciaQBowl · Post by **ValenciaQBowl** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:18 pm

Though I understand that money is often tight for teams/programs, is $20 more (the difference between the ACF base mentioned and the cost of SCT) really that burdensome? I understand that the ACF tournament also offers discounts, but you're still probably talking maybe a savings of $50 at most. I'd be surprised if that's too much for most teams.

On the CC circuit in Florida, it's pretty common to see a base fee of $125 or so, with only small discounts (like $10) for bringing buzzers, as we have no packet submission tournaments. And many schools here bring 2-3 teams to a tournament. Still, it's possible that our budgets are usually bigger than those of four-year teams. (That might be an interesting separate thread--how big are university team budgets these days? The CCs down here probably range from $4000 to well into the five figures).

Hosts want to make some money for their own budgets, so I don't see even a $150 fee as that far out of line, especially if significant packet-submission or long-distance travel discounts are offered.

The usual pinch comes from hotels or flights, not entry fees, I'd think. Maybe more tournaments should try to go for one day of play, even if it's a long day.

Chris Frankel · Post by **Chris Frankel** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:55 pm

No intention of stirring up a hornet's nest, but if one of the purposes of tournament fees is to provide an incentive for teams to host tournaments and encourage the flow of cash from one team to another in the name of increased circuit participation, what is the general opinion on programs that have had a historical reputation of hosting tournaments and racking up entry fees, but never reinvesting them back into the circuit by attending tournaments with the same vigor?

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:01 pm

Chris, I don't want to offend, but a $125 base fee strikes me as outrageous. When you're counting every penny, as I have been both this year and last year as Berkeley's treasurer, you're very sensitive to any fluctuation in fees. Especially considering Brown's current situation, where we have no funding and will either have to pay for everything ourselves or hope we recoup enough money from our planned tournament (plug: come to BUTT, everybody!), every dollar matters.

I agree with Dwight's point that the fees-to-product ratio has gone up. I should have made that point myself; the rising fees coupled with a shrinking number of rounds per tournament is distressing to me (I think no event should ever have fewer than 12 rounds, but that's material for another thread). And again, I'm obviously sympathetic to the wish to make enough money to cover the costs of going to tournaments. Last year, when I ran BLaST, I knew that to break even, the club had to make something like $500 on BLaST. I structured the tournament fees accordingly, and you can see it here. I think that fee structure was very generous, and it made us exactly the amount of money we needed (we broke even to within 50 cents after subsidizing everyone's airfare to ACF Nationals and ICT).

At Berkeley, we could reasonably expect to hold 3 events per year. WIT, one of ACF Regionals or NAQT SCT, and a late spring event. On the other hand, we traveled to probably 7 or 8 tournaments in a season, of which two were national-level events. Penn Bowl, if every team pays the $100 base fee (and that's not going to happen because many will be late with packets), will gross $3200. That's more cash than most clubs can expect to see in a year. With that in mind, what I would like to have seen was more time to earn a substantial packet discount. I am not trying to pick on them, nor do I think that their base fee was unreasonable; the fact that in past years Penn Bowl has offered substantial packet discounts leads me to believe that this wasn't done on purpose but was the result of postponing the announcement for so long.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:04 pm

Chris Frankel wrote:No intention of stirring up a hornet's nest, but if one of the purposes of tournament fees is to provide an incentive for teams to host tournaments and encourage the flow of cash from one team to another in the name of increased circuit participation, what is the general opinion on programs that have had a historical reputation of hosting tournaments and racking up entry fees, but never reinvesting them back into the circuit by attending tournaments with the same vigor?

I don't like it, but what can you do? Most people have no shame. If you point the finger at someone, it's more likely that they'll stop going to events altogether than it is that they will attend more. Plus, the truly lazy will always just claim that event X is too hard for them. I experienced this problem at Berkeley; I don't know if it's as widespread one the East Coast as it was there, but I hope not.

Post by **Susan** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:05 pm

Not to get too far off topic, but were the changes to the SCT host requirement announced somewhere? I found some of the changes silly (like the announcement of late-dropout penalties--has anyone ever successfully collected such a fee?) and some of them really annoying (like the change from a "suggested" entry fee of $90 to an apparently mandatory fee of $120).

ValenciaQBowl · Post by **ValenciaQBowl** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:27 am

Certainly no offense taken, Jerry. I sympathize with your lack of budget at Brown, but I wonder if that doesn't make it even more necessary for y'all to make an entry fee a tad higher. Asking each school to kick in, say, $10-$15 more per team entered doesn't put too much of a burden on them, but it might mean $200-300 more for your team, which pays for perhaps a whole trip to a nearby tournament (if not overnight).

As long as y'all offer quality questions (as I'm sure you will) and a good tournament experience, I don't think it's too much to ask. Having said that, I do agree that the market should take into account what teams can pay. Sensitive TDs can sometimes make arrangements with teams that have less cash to lower their entry fees by asking for some other form of payment (writing packets for other tournaments at that host school or whatever). Charlie Steinhice has practiced this successfully for many years here in the South.

Dan Greenstein · Post by **Dan Greenstein** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:18 am

myamphigory wrote:Not to get too far off topic, but were the changes to the SCT host requirement announced somewhere? I found some of the changes silly (like the announcement of late-dropout penalties--has anyone ever successfully collected such a fee?) and some of them really annoying (like the change from a "suggested" entry fee of $90 to an apparently mandatory fee of $120).

I too would like to know how these cancellation fees work and if they are even being collected. It would please me to find out they are having a positive effect, but I doubt that is the case. They are probably frustrating tournament directors and driving people away, especially if the penalty for non-payment is banishment from future tournaments at the venue until they pay up. Given the difficulty of holding unwilling people accountable for tournament fees, I am surprised we have not resorted to collecting credit card numbers and charging the cancellation fees to more powerful creditors. If fancy restaurants can do it, why not us? Why not us?

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:05 pm

Dan Greenstein wrote:Given the difficulty of holding unwilling people accountable for tournament fees, I am surprised we have not resorted to collecting credit card numbers and charging the cancellation fees to more powerful creditors. If fancy restaurants can do it, why not us? Why not us?

Well, because cancelling for an NAQT tournament or any other non-packet-submission event really doesn't put any special burden on the host and the idea of trying to charge for it is a dumb money grab.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:28 pm

Did NAQT seriously announce they are going to try and impose cancellation fees?

Post by **Susan** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:32 pm

NAQT wrote:Hosts may charge teams that withdraw within 72 hours of the beginning of the tournament a cancellation fee of up to $40. Hosts may charge teams that withdraw within 24 hours of the beginning of the event, or which do not show up at all, a cancellation fee of up to $80.

Original text here.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:48 pm

Matt Weiner wrote: Well, because cancelling for an NAQT tournament or any other non-packet-submission event really doesn't put any special burden on the host and the idea of trying to charge for it is a dumb money grab.

Even in the cases when it does put a burden on the tournament host, such a charge is absurd and noncollectable. If you cancel the day before because you're lazy (as opposed to because you grandmother died), then you're a jerk, but the notoriety itself should be punishment enough.

Also, if a host tried to charge me a cancellation fee, not only would they not get that money, but I would boycott all of their future tournaments and tell everyone else to do the same.

ezubaric · Post by **ezubaric** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:56 pm

I don't think that NAQT is trying to encourage people to charge these fees ... they're just putting in a policy to constrain teams from doing things that are too unreasonable. (One can look back at the Yahoo board to see what inspired this.)

UFeng · Post by **UFeng** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 1:22 am

The only way I can see cancellations being a huge issue is if people just don't show. Even emailing the night before or calling the day of (if its afternoon registration) isnt bad, because it only really takes 10 minutes or so to adjust those schedules. But if 5 teams decided just not to show, then as a TD I would consider cancellation fees.

As for it not being a burden, well when people aren't showing and you're trying to do the other 50 things that need done pre-tournament, it can be problematic.

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Disclaimer:
Speaking only for myself