The way I see it, and the reason I won’t do it, is that adding money into anything changes the motivation for those doing the thing, as well as the expectations for those participating in the thing. It’s easy to say that honest people will make decisions without bias but in reality, once money becomes involved, things often get sticky really quickly. Still, if the amount is small then nobody, including myself, probably gives a crap but I’d argue it isn’t worth operating for profit when the goodwill, and measure of satisfaction one would get doing it for free—or even better yet, doing it for charity—is worth much more.
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Money is already involved! The question is how that money should be distributed.
Yes obviously, but I’m referencing the difference between operating at cost, or at a loss versus operating for the profit of an individual or individuals who are not the participants.
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What’s the difference between profiting on an event and being compensated for the labor that goes into making it happen?
A lot of places local laws prevent this, as this would be considered “operating” the game and thus would be illegal without a license/tax sticker
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This is probably part of the “growing pains” of shifting from being an amateur competition like it is now to a full-on professional sport that people could potentially do full time to make a living.
NFL referees aren’t exactly volunteers, for example.
Of course, in order to make that shift, the first thing that has to happen is the money has to be there, which means someone has to decide that sponsoring professional pinball is a good use of their advertising dollar.
To me the $ isn’t an issue, as much as the transparency is the “real issue”.
That’s where in the past tournaments like TPF and RMPS fell out of favor.
When there’s a payout of $2-3K, and you’re left wondering how much a tournament takes in (knowing that a standard Herb is usually in that $7K-$15K range), there ends up being this void of “where did that money go”.
When the excuses are staff/games/space “aren’t free”, that’s not good enough IMO to explain things with enough transparency.
If the response was, we charge vendors $500 for a 200 sq foot space, and the tournament area used 1000 sq feet so we took $2500 to cover that floor usage. At least that’s transparency. We can then get into the debate about whether charging the players for that space is bullshit or not 
(I personally believe that should be part of the shows expenses towards the ‘entertainment’ factor of an event - with players having to pay extra money beyond the show entry fee to play those games)
To me there is value to the players of actually breaking down where that money is going if it’s not to the prize pool. Is it necessary? Of course not, but I don’t blame players for not supporting events that don’t offer this transparency.
I went to RMPS in 2008 and haven’t been back since.
I went to TPF in 2007 and 2008 and haven’t been back since.
The reason . . . transparency of funds.
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If money above the costs/prize pool is being distributed to anyone, then I would imagine the event is for profit and the people that are getting paid are profiting off the event, no?
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I that back in the day in the old P3 tournaments, Brian Smith had to actually pay for his tournament space at vendor booth pricing. So he would purchase 2 or 3 vendor spaces to make up the tournament area, and then the money from the tournament fees first went to cover the “rent” that the organizer had to pay to the show for the space to run the event.
I guess technically that means it’s for profit for the show organizer, but not for profit for the tournament organizer.
I would call that not for profit since the tournament itself operated at cost and was not run by the event organizer that was taking the fee for floor space, but there is some gray area there I suppose. Still, my point is essentially the same, if one is to operate an event for free or at a loss, for better or for worse, expectations from the participants are likely to be a lot different than one that’s operated for a profit. Even if it’s a small profit. And if one is making some money, the expectation of transparency, as you and others have said above, is really the most important.
Last year at pintastic the prize money was guaranteed up front hoping to bring the players in. It did. We had a lot of money on the line. The prize money was out up out of pocket by the show organizers. We took in close to enough to cover the prize money(not the trophies though). Nor did it cover our expenses. It costs The Sanctum over 300$ to transport all 27 of those games to the tournament last year plus so many countless hours.
This year we will not have a guaranteed number for prize money up front but will will pay everything back minus our expenses for running the tournament. Things should be even bigger this year!
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I think the issue may really be, set amounts of prize money versus percentage of prize pool.
With a few exceptions, if there is a set amount of prize money, I assume, barely speaking for myself, that money may be used for expenses / profit / space rental / whatever. There is rarely transparency in these events about what is done if the amount collected is over or under the prize pool amount.
If your event has set prize amounts and has transparency in how money is spent outside the prize pool, I say, good job. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be the norm, that level of transparency.
If it is percentage of the pot, generally events seem to say whether it is 100% return or whether money is taken out for trophies, etc. generally, speaking barely for myself, those events seem to have a greater amount of transparency.
When I run the goofy events we run in mid MO, we tend to utilize coin drop to pay locations for the use of machines and return all entry fees in prize money. I’ve never run a big event at a location (other than Midwest geek fest, which was also 100% return), and I have a lot of feels for those who have to rent space or are part of the event team and are using space to run the tourney versus renting it out. Those sound like tough decisions.
Short story long here, sorry. If you can, just say what you’re doing with over / under amounts if you’re doing fixed amount prizes, or just give everything to charity, or make the prizes percentage of the pot.
Happy holidays!
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Im not sure how my brain came to this number but 15% or less off the top is good with me. Do what you want with it. No accounting needed. If you want to take more than 15%, charity, trophies, whatever, then I want to know about it beforehand.
The idea of having a pinball show without a tournament is ridiculous. Playing, and especially competing, is the heart and soul of this hobby. Far too many getting into the hobby recently don’t realize this. It’s all of our jobs to remind people of this.
I think it speaks volumes that when shows have taken too much in the past, the players mostly haven’t bitched publically. They just stopped attending (and let their friends know privately). Hats off to all the guys who have bitten their tongues and just walked away. Nicely played.
The whole Herb format was conceived as a money grab. $1000 set prize package while raking in 5-6K in classics alone. At least recently most tourneys flex the prize package depending on entries sold which is the way to go. But like Josh said RMPS and Fab Fantasy was a joke and why those tournies have pretty much been abandoned except for the WPPR fanatics.
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Would it help in the HERB styles if the software folks could add some sorta tracking of entries and what the pot is? I mostly just play for fun, but it’d be kinda neat to know what the pot was too and it seems like if you are tracking the entries through software it could also show some sorta “current Pot is: ____” thing.
I know one of the few ‘guaranteed’ pot events we had in NorCal had a lot more people showing up which I kinda find amusing since I feel like 90% it’s likely that certain people have a real chance of winning but the folks that came out were all kinds of players, not just ‘top’ folks.
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I know at least one revision of Karl’s software supported that feature, as it was used at either the first or second INDISC (the one before the first I went to, incidentally).
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For the official Stern Launch parties we run in Chicago, we use a low tech version of this.
I bring a stack of post it notes, and update it every 15 minutes with a new “Current Pot = $X”
Paper4Life . . . I don’t think this paperless thing will ever take off for tournaments 
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where can i download this paper/post-it app?
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Yup, prize pool display has been in my software since the first iteration, just seemed no one cared to use it so I haven’t advertised it much. It can show payouts based on percentages input, and can even take a cut for trophies (or whatever other costs are incurred) before the calculations. Perhaps we’ll use it again at INDISC this year and also show the values removed from the prize pool, and what they’re for, on the display pages.
Speaking of paper, I still don’t get the whole use a digital system but have paper tickets thing…Or my favorite, the lets not use these digital queues available and instead force everyone to wait in 45-60 minute lines without the ability to move about. My system can calculate entry values for prize pools but paper tickets ruin the ability to do that. 
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Now if it could page your cell phone to let you know you are on deck that would truly be awesome
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