At the Buffalo Pinball Summer Open 2018, players will compete for cash prizes, trophies, points toward the annual Stern Pro Circuit standings and World Pinball Player Ranking points in this IFPA-endorsed event.
The tournaments are open to players of all skill levels, and there is no limit to the number of players for the main or classics tournaments.
The event will consist of four tournaments: A single, main tournament (qualifying Friday and Saturday, finals Sunday), two classics tournaments (one Friday, one Saturday), and a women’s tournament (Sunday).
We plan to have pinball machines available to play outside the tournament area, and are also working on additional entertainment options for those in attendance. Buffalo Pinball and Arcade Company will be supplying the pinball machines for the tournament.
The choice to keep the entire $25 registration fee along with 50% of all game entries is not one I can support. I am glad you are up front and public about these decisions, but I hope you will reconsider. This is far more of a “take” than is reasonable.
-$1: IFPA fee
= $19 that BP would be keeping
Anyone who pre-registers by 7/30 gets 5 free entries, a $10 value. This means BP’s take will be $9 for most players. (The $5 for these entries goes to the company providing the machines, which is separate from BP.)
I don’t know what the facility will cost to rent, but my guess is that’s where most of the ~$900 to ~$1900 of players’ fees will be used.
[Math changed a bit from when I posted this 5 minutes ago; thanks @pinwizj.]
Hey Bowen — thanks for bringing this up because if there’s any confusion about this I want to clarify ii up front for everyone.
Players who have been to the Summer Open in the past know there has always been two costs associated with playing a qualifying entry in the tournament: 1) The entry fee plus and 2) The cost to credit/coin up the game. The last two years, the $1 entry fee went to the prize pool and the $1 that players used to coin-up the game went to the operator of the games.
This year, to simplify the process for everyone, we’ll be setting the games on free play and rolling the price to play the game into the entry fee. No more quarters/dollars/jams, etc — just pay your $2 and off you go. So the process is a bit different but the end result in terms of cost is the same.
Our focus remains to make this a tournament where players can have a good time and play a bunch of pinball without spending a ton of money.
Steve’s math is essentially correct, thanks for providing that.
For the registration fee, we’re charging $10 more than last year. The portion that Buffalo Pinball takes, goes to the following: compensating TD’s, costs for entertainment we plan to have their, costs for equipment we may need to purchase, and other misc things that may arise in running a tournament of this size.
We’ve updated the semantics on the registration page, to hopefully cut down on any confusion. To be clear, as in the last two years, 100% of the entry money will go to prizes and trophies, that has not changed. It’s simply the method of “coining-up” the machine that has changed, for the better IMHO.
This is not accurate. Entries were $2/game last year, and players paid the additional cost of coining up, which was not $1/game for all games.
The decisions you are making will significantly reduce the prize pool, and significantly increase the percentage of player expenses going to the organizers. If BPSO has the same number of players and entries as last year, first pride in the main tournament will be under $500, while over $4,000 will be collected off the top in the fees described.
Thanks. I thought your website said 3 for $5. My mistake.
Buffalo Pinball is now providing its own games, okay. So you can now choose how much to collect.
I’ll just say there are very few tournaments where the tournament organizers collect more than 50% of entry costs as fees. A player buying 20 entries at your tournament will pay $65, and add $20 to the prize pool. Meanwhile Buffalo Pinball collects almost twice that, $39 (plus another $6 for IFPA and Circuit).
You’re welcome to run your event however you like, but this rubs me the wrong way. Other Circuit events where organizers provide their own machines do not charge a per game fee, and do not take 1/2 to 2/3 of the players’ entry costs as fees.
