I tried to read most of this thread before chiming in, but I did skim a few sections so I apologize if I am rehashing anything.
I just wanted to quickly speak to the representation issue. Every state (or province or in my case city that should be a state) has a representative. If you live in a state with a pinball scene that has strong feelings about the new tax, be sure that you have a state rep that is willing to voice those opinions regularly and engage in a lot of back and forth about it. Before the announcement, Josh floated this to all of the state reps and asked us to go back to our scene and talk to our players so that he could answer any questions that came up and work on any new issues before enacting the plan. So in theory, every state with an active scene should have known this was coming and should have had input into the plan. In reality, that may be a different type of work than what some state reps signed up for so maybe the method for choosing reps needs to be changed if it’s going to involve actual representation and, ya know, work. Defining the state rep role better and what input players should have could actually be good for the logistics of the state finals too. For example, I know some players really want more say into which locations their state championships are held at. I think the SCS and the IFPA in general already have a good structure in place for representation, it just needs to evolve a little bit!
agreed thanks @spraynard or all the data!
As a TD who enjoys running weekly, biweekly, and monthly tournaments, obviously my numbers will be going down in $2018. Perhaps turn them into “leagues” where we have the same format anyway, but add a “finals” (see @timballs Stern Army tournaments in Middletown)
Or perhaps still run non-wppr weekly’s. Gotta ask the locals I suppose!
The WPPR system and the IFPA are really important to me, but also to new pinball players as the draw of a ranking can encourage increased tourney participation and more people in the sport.
I have no problem paying $1 for every tournament, and I have no problem spending that $1 on people’s prizes who are better than me. It seems most of the opposition is from tourney directors. The players don’t know the nuances of the submission system and don’t care. And I think a diminished prize pool is mostly a non-issue. When I was a regular bowler our league submitted results to the WBC and we had to pay part of our league dues. Where that money went? who knows. but if you wanted to bowl a 300 and it be a ‘sanctioned’ recorded perfect game your league better have submitted the WBC dues.
I strongly disagree with a tournament where some % of the players opted out of points. This makes the tourneys weaker; and if you live in a small state with a small competition pool or list of tourneys to start, it only further empowers the larger tourneys and creates confusion. I also strongly disagree with ‘pro’ points vs ‘amateur’ points. The system right now is pretty simple, everyone can be in the same system as the big names in pinball, which is part of the draw.
I really hope the TDs and the IFPA can come together on this. My chances of moving up the WPPR rankings will drop significantly if the TD for the New England Pinball League opts not to record our results with the $1. I will have to travel to NYC to find endorsed events which is 3 hours away and really tough to do with a family.
People always get excited when they’re playing their first tournament and I tell them they will be a world ranked pinball player after the night is done. Its definitely a draw.
After mulling the change over for a while, I don’t think the $1 fee will bring about huge regression in IFPA sanctioned tournaments. People see the value in the organization and enjoy being a part of it. If @pinwizj and others ran the IFPA sloppily I would be much more afraid.
Also, In New England, I feel we are used to paying to play. Every tournament or league I run or am a part of has a fee to play already (except for a barcade selfie league I ran for a few months last year, but the bar gave prizes).
It will also be difficult to move up if you keep not winning our RI tournaments.
For those not following the Big Buck Hunter trajectory, we were approached by Twitch who actually produced a mini-documentary highlighting BBH and one of the best players in the world at it:
Media impressions, spreading awareness, garnering sponsorship . . . all the things we’ve done in BBH that I’m looking to bring to the competitive pinball world. I’ve seen what we’ve been able to do in the last 8 years for BBH (really the last 5 since we dialed in our process), and think the game of pinball shares many parallels with it.
It looks like an interesting idea. How much money do you guesstimate this will generate for the SCS, Josh?
And if only 20 people in a 100 tournament opt in, how is the point value for the tournament determined, is it based on the 100 players or the 20? If the latter, this is a big blow to the tournament and unfair on someone who battles 100 people only to win points as if they were playing against 20.
Personally I would be happy to pay an annual admin fee, too, however as a TD who is trying to bring new people into competitive pinball WPPR points and a world ranking is a big drawcard for boobs, and a big upfront fee before they have had the experience is a huge turn off.
I’m hoping to generate $20k the first year, but don’t have too many actual expectations. More interested in just finding out how its going to play out.
The hypothetical examples of a TD allowing an opt out option, and 80% of those players taking that option isn’t something I see happening too often. I think a community of that breakdown will result in that event simply being non-endorsed. Again we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.
I agree, but seeing how they don’t “add to the tournament value” until they’ve played 5 tournaments- maybe that fee could be deferred until then. By then they should either be hooked anyway, or have lost interest.
Anything “that’s a big draw for noobs” has got to be a win
After reading this thread I wanted to chime in. I’m a TD in Grand Rapids, MI. I run a quarterly league (4 times a year) and a monthly tournament. Our league averages around 60 players each season. To make the league accessible to everyone and to help encourage people to participate, we don’t charge a fee to play. The venue graciously pays for the trophies (previously I was paying for them out of my own pocket). The venue doesn’t care about WPPR points and I can’t see them paying the $240/year for the league to be eligible for them.
A couple years after running the league, I decided to start up a monthly tournament. Our monthly tournaments have a $5 buy in which gets paid out to the top 4 players. Our average turnout for those is around 8 players. Even tho it’s only $5, a majority of the players in the league have no interest in playing in the monthly tournament as they feel they are just giving their money to the better players.
“The objective of the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) is to elevate the awareness and visibility of pinball across the globe and generate media coverage and corporate backing to bring the sport of competitive pinball back into the spotlight.” Why not put more effort on getting corporate backing to put more $$ in SCS? It seems to me this would be the logical way to do it instead of charging thousands of players, who will never make it to SCS, $1 for each event they play in. Stern Pinball or Jersey Jack Pinball would be the logical partners. It’s in these companies best interest to get more people playing pinball.
I feel putting this fee on players is going to make it harder for me (and other TD’s) to get new people playing competitive pinball. I’m also really not looking forward to collecting $1 bills from every player. Sure, I could take it out of the prize pot for the monthly tournaments, but that is a VERY small portion of the people that play in events that I run.
I could also just run events that are not IFPA sponsored or have players opt-in/opt out, but that just makes a mess of things. Telling new players that they will be ranked against other players throughout the world is a great selling point to get people to start playing competitive pinball. I really like how things are now with WPPR points and I feel all these pro/amateur, opt-in/opt-out changes are just going to muddy that.
Did a small survey of new players at our free event this past Friday. The 3-4 new people that showed up said they didn’t mind having to pay an extra dollar, and the main reason why they didn’t come to our $10 buy in Sunday tournaments was because it was on Sunday, not so much that they didn’t have a chance to win any money.
So I think our tournaments here in Cincinnati might be okay. We are also thinking of doing a Friday tournament every other week that is free entry just coin drop. Then when the changes hit, everyone will pay the extra dollar. Can really only see the effects once it actually hits, but it appears it might work. I think the dollar is an amount small enough that most wont care where it goes. We shall see.
Trying to figure out how to put more effort than the MAXIMUM effort we’re already putting in …
Stern and JJP are both already Premiere level sponsors. What kind of support financially would you expect from them? $50k? $100k?
If your league players are interested in the rankings, see how many of them would think those IFPA perks are worth $4 per year to them. IMO thats not too expensive for the services being provided.
I was not aware of their sponsorship. What exactly does a premier level sponsorship get them? What kind of $$ are we talking and where does that money go?
Premiere level sponsors pretty much get Zach and myself as slaves to help with any sort of campaigns the sponsor is interested in. (launch parties, Stern army, rewards program, custom global tournaments like King of the Ring, etc). They also get unlimited access to posts on our site, banner ads, access to our e-mail list.
Premiere level sponsorship starts at $500 per year and goes up from there. Most of the sponsorship dollars go towards IFPA administrative costs. Other funds go back to the players (Stern for example sponsors Nationals and Worlds with a NIB Pro game as top prize allowing us to pay back over 100% in those prize pools).
You can see a list of all of our sponsors on the front of the IFPA page (right side under the top 25 list).
Just a point of clarification – what do you mean by services being provided? Earlier you said this doesn’t go into admin costs but rather to prize payouts.
I’m not trying to be a stickler. I just think that there are people who would feel better if it were an admin fee and not a prize pool multiplier (and vice versa). This statement muddies the waters.
