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Another take on Backgammon is in trouble posts

Posted By: Jason Lee
Date: Saturday, 9 June 2012, at 8:56 p.m.

In Response To: Another take on Backgammon is in trouble posts (neilkaz)

neilkaz: There have been a couple of ABT events added recently. Does anyone think that we might have a few too many ABT events and that causes poor turnouts at some since players only have so much time and disposable income?

No, quite the opposite. Daniel Murphy has been posting some illuminating statistics about the nature of attendance at ABT events. One of his numbers indicates that over 80% of the entries in ABT tournaments come from players who play in only ONE event in a year. I think the implication is clear: more tournaments will mean more overall attendance, with only a small decrease in average attendance.

I think there are a few classes of people:

(1) One-off players -- they'll only play in local ABT tournaments. There seem to be a lot more of these than we think. One reason is that the people who think about these things are more likely than not to be Open level players, who often forget about the Intermediate and Beginner's divisions.

(2) People who will enter multiple tournaments, but that number is generally fixed.

(3) People who will enter multiple tournaments, but the number is influence most heavily by how close those tournaments are.

I think of myself as #3. From where I live, there aren't many tournaments within 4-5 hours driving distance, which is about as far as I'm willing to go in my own car. If there were 12 ABT tournaments within 30 miles of my house, I'd play in all 12.

When we look at the ENTIRE population of players who participate in ABT events, I think there are vastly more players in #1 than in #2 or #3. This might not be as true in the Open division.

I understand that tournament organizers are going to make more money off of open division players and need a certain number of people to stay at the hotel, but you just can't ignore those locals. They are of enormous value to your tournament.

JLee

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