From: "j_rushton" <j_rushton@kingsbrook.northants.sch.uk> Subject: Re: Students & the Tour (was Tour Dates etc.) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:18:27 -0000 yup fair enough you host a social tourny and everyone knows where the money is going and people can vote with their feet (i did) if they don't want to go, good luck to you Big difference between that and hosting a tour tourny which everyone has to go to if they want to qualify for anything (we'd have missed nationals and world clubs if we hadn't gone) and then going round the world on the profits, and it was a pious skint student who did it. I never dissed sheffield 1999, I accept how hard the whole tourny thing is, the whole team hosting (well Ben mainly) the Nationals in 1999 was hard enough. facilities and showers are all part of the gamble and fun of it. But COME ON, I'm allowed to be a little narked and worried in the current climate of price hikes and profit making. I'll pay the money, with a big fat smile on my face, and enjoy the humour of cold showers and no toilet paper, if it buys disks and pitches for orphan frisbee players or even if it funds a trip to hawaii or prague for the druids but not if it pays for someones year off ----- Original Message ----- From: Wayne Retter <wretter@postmaster.co.uk> To: <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 1:28 PM Subject: Re: Students & the Tour (was Tour Dates etc.) > are we all aware that there is an ex-student is now > holidaying round the world on profits made from the > sheffield tour of 1999 If you're right, we are now... ...and my congratulations go to that person. Mostly for bothering to run the event in the first place, but with a healthy dose of "for getting away with it"! Ok, we could all probably niggle about something at Sheffield, and there were definitely a few _comments_ about a couple of the pitches, but there was no noticable _outburst_ at the time (was there?) and it's way too late now... But does anyone wonder why we haven't been back there ? Does anyone wonder if the powers that be learned lessons from experience and have effectively now designated that particular Sheffield setup as "realistically too small" for that no. of pitches? Here are some other definite financial facts, that I have a personal involvement in: and a large chunk of the Ultimate participation that the Layout Dreams duo do is funded by the profits we make from the tournaments we run... the Fluid Druids aim to (at least!) fully fund their entries to Indoor and Outdoor Nationals from the profits they make at Newport and RossOnWye tournaments, respectively. For a couple of years, all UK tournaments we entered were covered by the profits made by the tournaments we ran. In 1997, the Ross entry was jacked up (near doubled!) to provide us with some funding for WUCC - and we were still oversubscribed. It seems to me that the current debate isn't so much "tournaments shouldn't make a profit" as "tournaments should appear to provide value for money" What is "an acceptable level of profit", or, from the alternative perspective, what is "apparent value for money" It's complicated by the "supply and demand" factor (my RossOnWye example earlier) and the "vicious circle" it generates... If people really want to play, they WILL pay whatever is necessary. Therefore, TDs charge more... teams pay more... TDs charge more... But, as Paul Meaney is rightly concerned but poorly expressing, are the facilities provided actually any better??? Why should teams pay this much? Answer: because, if they want to play, they either have to pay that much, or organise a more economical alternative. However: If a team CAN go out and run a tournament in profit for £60 per team, WHY BOTHER when they can charge £80 and cover a whole host of other expenses? For that matter, why aren't more teams doing this??? Hopefully, somewhere in my ramblings, there's some food for thought... Wayne Retter Fluid Druids Layout Dreams and fifth sub-level assistant to anybody that's asked questions on how to set up/run a tournament. -- Wayne Retter w.retter@bigfoot.com mobile: +44/0-7970-903420 office: +44/0-1737-273655