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BGonline.org Forums
Its time to think about major changes in tournament backgammon
Posted By: Phil Simborg In Response To: Its time to think about major changes in tournament backgammon (Bill Riles)
Date: Sunday, 19 February 2017, at 7:43 p.m.
I completely agree that many of the things recommended would not be cost effective for the individual tournament directors to do. That is why help and organization and mass-marketing needs to be done by the federations. Why should each tournament director have to reinvent the wheel and buy the necessary equipment and teach people how to set up good streaming and reporting when it can be done far cheaper and effectively is the federation provides this service to all qualified tournaments? Yes, it costs the federations money too, but that is where the federations should be spending their money to support tournaments, and even if every tournament had to contribute to the cost, it would be less expensive and of higher quality to do it with a central group.
There is NO excuse not to have almost immediate, electronic updating of brackets, for example. We have the technology and while it does take labor and expense to set up and maintain, again, it is far less expensive to set up for the entire country/world than for each TD to try and do it on his own. As for updated, just ONE VOLUNTEER at each tournament given the password to the site can do the updates once or twice a day or even more often. (I go to many tournaments and would volunteer myself, and I am sure there are many others who would be happy to help. So don't use labor costs as an issue here.)
As for seeding, we have a major disagree. I maintain that having more heroes and more exciting tournaments will not hurt attendance, it will increase interest and attendance. But remember, in conjunction with seeding I have suggested multiple side pools so that unseeded players can play at a lower cost. Those who argue, again, that this costs money, are forgetting the big picture...if you get more entrants, you will have more income from the main event and side events.
As for sponsorship and the legality of the game, excellent points. Right now about the only sponsors are people in the business, like P40 and Geoffrey Parker, and I am willing to bet you that they are NOT getting a good return on their investment...in fact I know it having represented both companies. They do it because they are good people who love the game and they are willing to show their support, even if it costs them some money, and yes, maybe they'll sell a few more boards because of it. Will we get Pepsi or Coke to sponsor a major event? Maybe not in the US because of the legal reasons, but the more people we have playing and watching worldwide the more chance there is to get some corporate sponsors and money-added for international events.
It's easy to shoot down new ideas, especially if we haven't tried them. It's easy to say that everything is great the way it is. But virtually every game and sport has made major changes in their game and marketing and organization in recent years to keep up with the new world we live in via the internet and television and social media, and Backgammon has done very little to take advantage of the media and think in terms of attracting more of the general public and "casual" players to the game.
By the way, relative to the centralization of services through the federations, I believe the same applies to marketing and supporting local clubs. Each club right now pretty much has to do it's own marketing to attract people, and most do very little in that area and as a result it is very hard to start and grow clubs except in a few of the major cities. This is another area where pooling of resources--money and personnel--can help grow the game. It's the local clubs, more than anything, that feed into the tournament scene and that also feed the membership of the federations (or at least it should!)
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