You gotta admit, it's not like the tournament organizers re-invest back into their tournaments, though. You'd think with the sponsor money and huge venue revenue and the deals for the hotel rooms (I know, in Philly at least, if you have a big enough group you get the meeting rooms for free) that the tournaments would start stockpiling TV's and systems.
The TV's, especially, if you're using CRT's..you can get one for $20-30 at Goodwill.
Where does all the money go?
Let me clarify who I am. My name is Leigh, I've been running these tournaments with Larry for over 10 years. I'm well aware of what's going on internally in our organization and it's a kind of funny that you think we aren't reinvesting back into our tournaments since you don't know what we do or how we do it. But that's alright. I'll break down some of the issues that we've run into.
A big issue, probably the biggest, has to do with the fact that a lot of places in Atlanta aren't interested in having a bunch of rowdy 15-25 year olds running around in their hotels fucking shit up. That stuff is expected in Vegas, but not in Atlanta. We also need to find a venue that won't price people out of coming to our tournament due to traveling costs. I know a lot of people are upset that Ceaser's is really expensive this year for Evo. That room price has already stopped some of my friends from being able to come to Vegas. We don't want to have that happen to our tournament, because realistically, who wants to pay 200 a night to come to Atlanta? It's a great city, but 600 for a weekend to just hang out in a hotel? That can work in Vegas because it's Vegas and there are 300 things to do that are in walking distance. Atlanta just isn't like that.
So it comes down to trying to find a good price point that's affordable, but also isn't in a shitty hotel that nobody wants to be in. AND that hotel has to be okay with the masses that come out for these tournaments. Some who don't seem like they have ANY home training.
As for the idea that we don't reinvest into our own tournament, that's ridiculous. This started with a core group of us, and was pretty much underground with no sponsorship until about 2 years ago. Everything was done out of pocket with no help but from those in the community. Now we're transitioning to having sponsors, a huge influx of new people, and trying to accomidate all of that without going broke. It's very difficult. There are a lot more costs to running a tournament besides the hotel and the ballroom.
And also, since you brought up hotels and meeting rooms, can you find me a NICE play in Philly where they can give you a ballroom that's big enough to house 1500 people, if you book some rooms, that won't break the bank? I think you're massively underestimating how different the group of people we deal with is from a group of business people.
Also, tournament players are notorious for showing up at the last minute. It's very hard to plan what you need when people don't pre-register. We were taking at the door signups for games until 4 or 5 on friday. We intended to close that at noon, but there was a GRIP of people outside. We weren't going to turn them away. Had we known all those people were coming, we would have been able to plan better. But we're not going to get supplies, rent space, and everything associated with that for 500 people we think MIGHT show up.
We are stockpiling gear, btw. We have been for a while. Our attendence this year was basically double that of last year. Which is why we have to depend on the community to help. If you have a contact with Asus or Sony that I could talk to, I'd be all ears. I'd love to have enough systems on hand that we never have to worry about anything, believe me, I would.
Our current sponsors have been incredible and really REALLY shown up for the community, but this isn't something like Starcraft. I think a lot of people falsely think that there are hundreds of companies out there willing to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at tournaments that have 1500-3000 people, and there aren't. People like Cheapy D, who help out, do it because they want to, not because they'll get something back. Companies like Toyota, who sponsored Evo one year, want a return that they simply aren't going to see with a market like the fighting game community.
You're sitting here basically making up numbers when you don't seem to understand the logistics of something this big. No offense. I understand how things work for a 40 man tournament. I've run those. I've also helped run a tournament that had over 1000 people. There's a lot more involved than just going 'Okay, how much is this, how much is this, PROFIT!" It doesn't work that way. You yourself even said "Hey, they might have broken even or lost money" and then turn around and come up with a scenario where we're rolling in dough. That's so far from the truth it's not even funny. No one at final Round is making loads of money and just keeping it. Over the course of running this tournament for 15 years, trust me, Larry is still at a HUGE loss.
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