Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Entry Fee Pokemon Tournaments

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I don't want to comment on the production prices of this or that, or anything that POP/PUSA/TPCI does, as I know absolutely nothing about that, but...

I wouldn't want to see Premiere events become pay-to-play, not at all. I think part of the beauty of Pokemon is that all the events are free. I'll admit that not all of the prizes are the greatest, but considering that the events are completely free, I think it's much less of a problem then a game that you pay $10.00/tournament to play in.

Since some were talking about local tournaments and such, I've ran a few, and one thing you can do is make it so everyone gets a pack right off the bat, so that everyone feels like they've won something already. A lot of games do this and I think it's the best way to go about it, especially with younger kids. Also, I've found that it's easier if you let the player base decide on how the prizes are distributed, etc.

Also, I completely believe that any money won should be store credit. It's true that not everyone has a preference or a vested interest in any certain store, but the fact that the store is opening itself up and letting everyone play there for free is a huge benefit to all players, and I think giving store credit in tournaments is one of the best ways to show appreciation.

Some good discussion going on here.
 
For Pokémon, all age divisions would have to have the same prize. So you would need 3 1st place prizes, 3 2nd place prizes, and 3 3rd place prizes.
 
yoyofsho16 said:
Winning money will kill the game. That is EXACTLY why Yugioh is known for its "underhanded" or "dirty" player base: they have money as reward. Money on the line encourages cheating, stealing, and other underhanded methods.

Back to back posts merged. The following information has been added:



Presumably they buy the winning packs from the store. So the store is probably making a LOT out of it.



...or, use that store credit for cards, and the money that you would NORMALLY spend on cards on other things.

Store credit is a much better idea for reasons stated above.
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No, you're wrong, yugioh doesn't have money prize awards. They do have good prize support though (ie. laptops, super rare cards worth hundres to thousands of dollars etc.). Magic is the only major card game that has money as part of their prize support, and maybe WoW, I dunno. And honestly, I view Magic as a pretty "clean" game. You don't hear about much cheating/stealing going on in the Magic community and it's still viewed as the "epitome" of tcgs.

Yugioh is known for its "dirty" player base because of the heavy amount of stealing and the outrageous card prices for tournament winning decks. Please don't post comments like that unless you know what you're talking about.

Not saying money prize support is the way to go because it would make the game less child-friendly, BUT maybe some better prize support and charging an entry fee would be plausible.
 
Ardoptres said:
Charging $1 for entrance at Nats.

That's should be like $1500 this year, $500 more in prizes for each division. What does it cost PUSA to produce a box? Like $10? Idk, but it would sure give some better/more prizes. And that's just 1 dollar.
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Just one simple dollar.

One simple dollar that would take away their chance to write "FREE" on all Nationals posters and website banners, and would thus completely ruin the concept and the mass appeal. Would you write ONE DOLLAR ONLY in big letters on the poster?

As a marketing move, changing 0 dollars to 1 dollars will lose you so much that it can't be worth that grand total of 1500 dollars. :p
 
Ardoptres said:
Charging $1 for entrance at Nats.

That's should be like $1500 this year, $500 more in prizes for each division. What does it cost PUSA to produce a box? Like $10? Idk, but it would sure give some better/more prizes. And that's just 1 dollar.
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And what would it cost to administrate the collection of that $1 entry fee?

How many more people would it take to collect the money and ensure that everyone has paid?
How much floor space and how much time at the event?
What extra resources would be needed to ensure the security of the cash?
Which fund would the cash needed to make change come from?
Would a cash event require a different insurance policy for the events?
Would the venue want to take a cut?
Would this complicate legal agreements between POP and the PTOs?
How many more disputes and complaints would the entry fee generate?
How much accounting support would it require at the home office?
What kind of auditing system would have to be in place to deal with any irregularities?
What are the tax implications of collecting entry fees?

And most importantly: What is the value of the goodwill generated by having all U.S. premier events be free?

The revenue generated by an entry fee has to exceed the cost of having that entry fee. And $1 per person ain't gonna cut it.
 
yoyofsho16 said:
Winning money will kill the game. That is EXACTLY why Yugioh is known for its "underhanded" or "dirty" player base: they have money as reward. Money on the line encourages cheating, stealing, and other underhanded methods.
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Yugioh dosn't give out money as prizes, the big tournies give out a promo and games consoles, money is only ever involed if the TO makes 1 that is for money, but UDE or KDE don't like it.
 
Tego said:
Just one simple dollar.

One simple dollar that would take away their chance to write "FREE" on all Nationals posters and website banners, and would thus completely ruin the concept and the mass appeal. Would you write ONE DOLLAR ONLY in big letters on the poster?

As a marketing move, changing 0 dollars to 1 dollars will lose you so much that it can't be worth that grand total of 1500 dollars. :p
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You dont necaserrily need to write "ONE DOLLAR ONLY", why not just write "FREE*" and in small letters on the bottom of the poster: * "Almost FREE", only 1 dollar.
 
my old store had a tournament $20 per person and the winner would win $300 which was cool they had it twice.. it ran well but..too bad that the store is gone =[
 
In chess, there is a major tournament every year called the World Open. Entry fees are about $150 - $200 for a 10 round swiss over 5 days. Over 1500 people show up and take over the Philadelphia Sheraton. Why can't this model work in pokemon?

If I organized an open Worlds, charged $75 to enter, if 1000 people showed up like at Nationals, you'd bring in $75,000. The hotels generally give ballrooms away for free or nearly so, as the out of town players stay in the hotel, filling it up. Expenses might run $5000 for the staff, who should be paid regardless of what PUI does, $10,000 for advertising, prizes like:
1- $5000
2- $2000
3- $1000
4 - $500
5-16 A box, worth $90
17-32 10 packs
totalling less than $10K/division or $30,000 in prizes, leaving me with about $30,000 in profit. Now if only 500 people showed, the prize pool could be prorated per number of entries (or $15K), but the advertising and staff would still cost $15,000 making close to break even or so. So the TO gets paid for taking a risk with his own capital.
How many of you would travel to go to this event, knowing that it would surely not be sanctioned or rated? I suspect not too many, despite the complaining about better prize support. The reason I think we do not have these sort of profit driven tournaments in pokemon, is it is too difficult to compete with an organization that does it for free and writes it off as a marketing expense.
 
FunnyBear said:
In chess, there is a major tournament every year called the World Open. Entry fees are about $150 - $200 for a 10 round swiss over 5 days. Over 1500 people show up and take over the Philadelphia Sheraton. Why can't this model work in pokemon?

If I organized an open Worlds, charged $75 to enter, if 1000 people showed up like at Nationals, you'd bring in $75,000. The hotels generally give ballrooms away for free or nearly so, as the out of town players stay in the hotel, filling it up. Expenses might run $5000 for the staff, who should be paid regardless of what PUI does, $10,000 for advertising, prizes like:
1- $5000
2- $2000
3- $1000
4 - $500
5-16 A box, worth $90
17-32 10 packs
totalling less than $10K/division or $30,000 in prizes, leaving me with about $30,000 in profit. Now if only 500 people showed, the prize pool could be prorated per number of entries (or $15K), but the advertising and staff would still cost $15,000 making close to break even or so. So the TO gets paid for taking a risk with his own capital.
How many of you would travel to go to this event, knowing that it would surely not be sanctioned or rated? I suspect not too many, despite the complaining about better prize support. The reason I think we do not have these sort of profit driven tournaments in pokemon, is it is too difficult to compete with an organization that does it for free and writes it off as a marketing expense.
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OK, this is a kids based game.
$75 is ridiculous, even for masters. Do u really expect to bring in over 1000 people with that kind of entry fee.
It just doesn't work in this game.
 
Professor Elm said:
OK, this is a kids based game.
$75 is ridiculous, even for masters. Do u really expect to bring in over 1000 people with that kind of entry fee.
It just doesn't work in this game.
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Only because there is a company out there willing to lose money to run these things as a marketing expense. There are hundreds of juniors at the World Open in chess at $150 - $200. Realize that most people travel to a major event and stay in a hotel. $75 is nothing in the context of the overall trip expense.
 
Chess has a lot more prestige and is a lot more recognised than Pokemon.

It also has a much larger player base. (The United States Chess Federation has 80,000 members).
 
Personally, I don't see any point in charging for premiere events. I run a league, and a huge part of why so many Juniors and Seniors show up is because it's absolutely free. Then, after a bit of playing they go to a Battle Roads or a Cities, again because it's free. I think or the welfare of the game, all premiere tournaments need to remain free of charge. Rarely does it ever work when something is changed from free to not free, especially in a game such as this one, highly populated by young people.

I do, however, encourage people to set-up local tournaments that charge an entry fee in exchange for store credit and the like. I think that's a great way to help out your store, and maybe expose the game to other games who wouldn't have given it a chance before. I'm going to start putting together a series of tournaments at my league, using interesting formats and deck-building rules, and sometimes they'll be pay-to-play (although not too often), and I'm hoping that it will work to bring more interest to the game in general.
 
the problem with yugioh is there are 2 deck types that win all the matches and theres every other deck thta loses to the 2 decks mentioned earlier. i have friends that are big into yugioh and they complain about this scenario all the time. oe of my friends played a full light-sworn deck with 2 judgement dragon and the whole crew to go with it ive played this deck more times then ive then ive seen the sun, with about 20 differnt decks. ive only beaten it 4 times. but while my friend was at nationals for YGO last year she only made it through like 6 matches before losing. ive been to some of the regionals for YGO and had an ok time, but ive played people who would be more inclined to kill you if you win then shake your hand and say "nice game".
 
I dunno, I don't think the focus of this conversation should be comparing ourselves to, or downtalking, other CCGs. I'm sure that a lot of what's been said about YGO and Magic here (and in this forum in general) is being said about Pokemon by the opposite party. I'd like to think that we have a pretty friendly, respectful player base and I think we can maintain that image by not badmouthing other games. :D
 
Qwachansey said:
But aren't the prizes worth more than $5000 for 1st place or $2000 for 2nd place?
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I don't know, I just came up with examples to make the point. Other games have better prize support and better playing conditions because tournament organizing is a profit-making venture. It costs more to play for everyone, but everyone benefits from the better venues, better prizes, better events. Right now, only PUI benefits from increased card sales. Running free tournaments to sell cards is similar to Microsoft giving away Explorer in Windows to kill for-profit browser makers. Its anti-competitive and leads to lower quality and choices for all. When people pay $300 to build a tournament competitive deck and travel to Missouri for two days and stay in a hotel, $50-$75 really isn't that much. If you got $75 per player in the Nationals, you could hold it in the convention center of a major city, and run a real first class event. I've been to tournaments held in first class hotels with free coffee and donuts in the morning and buffet lunches. The money to do this sort of thing has to come from somewhere. You get what you pay for.
 
@Funnybear: Although I don't disagree with all of your points, I think some crucial things aren't being considered...

- A $75.00 event wouldn't drive everyone away from Nationals, sure. There'd still be a lot of players, although I maintain there wouldn't be as many as past years. What it would do, though, is stunt the growth of the game. I think that what a lot of people are missing in this conversation is that, although the hardcore players that we all know would probably continue playing even if a tournament fee was implemented, I think that the amount of youth that picked up the game would diminish. I know that, when I started playing way back in '98, if league was pay-to-play, I probably wouldn't have ever picked up a deck. I realize that Nationals is a bigger event than a league or almost any other tournament, but I think the point stands. The game has to be as inclusive as possible, and charging for these types of tournaments isn't the way to go about that, in my mind.

- A big problem here is that it's infinitely harder to switch from "Free" to "Cost: $xx.xx" then it is to simply start with a cost. If POP suddenly added fees to all/some/most of their tournaments, there would be a huge backlash, even with all of the players in this thread and elsewhere supporting the idea. I'd wager that if you look at almost any other form of entertainment, be it a CCG, video game, table top game, movie, T.V. show, website, etc. that offered a feature, event, etc. for free and then started charging for it, you would find very few that were successful.

Those are just my thoughts, though. I'd love to hear feedback, there's a lot of good discussion going on in this thread right now.
 
Prizes for 1st Place:

"•A Pokémon TCG World Champion Trophy
•An invitation to the 2010 World Championships
•A Travel Awards for the winner (and parent or legal guardian for players considered a minor) to the 2010 World Championships
•A scholarship award worth $7,500 (Click here for scholarship details and restrictions)
•One box of each of the most current Pokémon TCG expansions for a year
•Cool Pokémon World Championships commemorative items
•A customized Pokémon Nintendo DSi™!"

That's $9000+

2nd Place Prize:

"•A Pokémon TCG World Championships Second-Place Trophy
•An invitation to the 2010 World Championships
•A Travel Awards for the winner (and parent or legal guardian for players considered a minor) to the 2010 World Championships
•A scholarship award worth $5,000 (Click here for scholarship details and restrictions)
•One box of each of the most current Pokémon TCG expansions for a year
•Cool Pokémon World Championships commemorative items
•A customized Pokémon Nintendo DSi™!"

That's $6500+

3rd and 4th Place Prizes:

"•A Pokémon TCG World Championships Third-Place Trophy
•An invitation to the 2010 World Championships
•A Travel Awards for the winner (and parent or legal guardian for players considered a minor) to the 2010 World Championships
•A scholarship award worth $3,500 (Click here for scholarship details and restrictions)
•One box of the next upcoming Pokémon TCG expansion
•Cool Pokémon World Championships commemorative items
•A customized Pokémon Nintendo DSi™!"

That's $5000+

The Prize Support seems pretty impressive to mean, especially since with 3 1st Place Winners, that's $27,000+ worth of prizes already...
 
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