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BGonline.org Forums
Tournament Attendance 1998-2010
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Tournament Attendance 1998-2010 (Tom Keith)
Date: Wednesday, 29 September 2010, at 8:58 p.m.
It's hard to blame 9/11 for lower attendance at backgammon tournaments in Pittsburgh PA, Las Vegas NV and Venice, Italy.
(1) Monte Carlo enjoyed its highest attendance in the Championship flight in 2002, and in overall attendance in 2004. Both years are, of course, post-2001.
(2) The tournament in Venice is longstanding but -- and this is off the top of my head -- has had problems with scheduling and competition and sponsorship/direction/venue changes. Anecdotally, some years it seemed to be a tournament that "everyone" fit into a grand tour of Cannes, Monte Carlo and, say, Prague, and other years "everyone" skipped it.
(3) With regard to Pittsburg, Nevada State and the Las Vegas Open:
Tournament 2000 2001 2002 2003 ... 2010 Pittsburgh 69 92 84 64 ... 63 Nevada State 111 93 74 92 ... 54 Las Vegas Open 164 117 119 121 ... 74 (2009) But several other ABT tournaments have maintained attendance or grown significantly from 2000/2001 to 2009/2010. And note that attendance in Pittsburgh dropped by 20 in 2003, but attendance in Las Vegas rose by 18 in 2003. Why would Pittsburgh and Las Vegas be particularly affected by 9/11?
As I see it, Pittsburgh has enjoyed consistently good attendance, always filling or nearly filling a 64-player field, with especially good attendance in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007. It's also possible that there was unreported overflow in 2003 and 2004. On the other hand, attendance at the two Las Vegas tournament has clearly dropped drastically from 275 open flight players in the two tournaments in 2000, to 144 in 2009.
Although 9/11 affect air travel for a couple of years, international air arrivals were 15% higher in 2009 than in 2001. And traffic at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas is significantly higher now than in 2001. That includes residents and business travellers, but still, it's hard to believe that a significant drop in attendance at these tournaments from 2000/2001 to 2009/2010 can be attributed to 9/11.
I can think of several other possible explanations: the economy; poker; less interest among backgammon players in spending a long weekend in Las Vegas; less interest among backgammon players in playing in these two tournaments in Las Vegas, for who knows what reason.
I suspect that although many ABT tournaments have maintained attendance and even grown in the last decade, U.S. backgammon has lost a large number of casual "open" players who previously attended one or two tournaments a year -- and chose Las Vegas -- and now attend none. And there may be another group of players who still attend a couple of tournaments a year, but have, perhaps temporarily, crossed Las Vegas off their bucket lists.
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