When I say that promoters who run good events are able to do so because they are lucky, I mean things like... what happens if a reffing crew quits? What happens if the air system goes down? What happens if scoreboards fail? There wasn't a scoreboard for CPL in Madrid, why was that? Is it because of some special mistake this event, or just because this was the event where the scoreboard HAPPENED to break? Should the league be investing in better locations or backup equipment?
Major events like this need to be run with money spent on covering contingencies that don't usually happen. Players will go to an event with great grass and no backup air system and think that event is better than an event with poor grass and a backup air system. And it is - unless the air system goes down. Similarly, and I don't know how often this is a problem in Europe, but both US leagues seem to have trouble with Sunday afternoon rolling around and refs starting to disappear as they need to leave to catch flights etc.
I just don't think most paintball players have any concept of just how much money and time is involved in running major events, and if they did, they may not be so quick to condemn those people responsible for putting on the events they get to play when one event doesn't run at the same level as the others. There seems to be some feedback that the Millenium board didn't have the proper oversight on this event to realize it was going to be sub-par before there wasn't a chance to do something about it. What were they supposed to do? It's hard to know the quality of your location without actually visiting it yourself. Are we expecting the whole board to take days off whatever else it is they do to travel to the location, and pay the expenses to do so? That's why I make such a big distinction between events hosted locally to a promoter and events hosted elsewhere - there is a LOT of money that needs to be spent when the event isn't local. That goes from having to have your head honcho guys travel (and the time and money associated with that) to not having a group of people you are familiar with to work the event and needing to spend time and money finding them or time and money arranging and paying for staff you are familiar with to fly in.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to correct this misconception about the cost and effort required to run major events other than getting these people to try and run national-level events themselves. Why people who have never done it seem so convinced they know more about it than the people who do do it is beyond me.
I think Millenium should create some positions to be in charge of certain aspects of the tournaments and open them up to volunteers and see how many players are willing to take days off of work and incur the travel expenses of fullfilling those responsibilities.
For starters, lets get a group of 5 players to start working now on going to find locations for all of the Millenium tournaments next year. Make sure each location has the facilities the player wants and then get a contract specifying that those services will be provided and provided at a price within the event facility rental budget. I'm sure there must be 5 players who have nothing better to do with their time than do this, right?
If the players are not willing to do it, why should the promoters be?
I'm going to bet not one person is going to volunteer to travel around Europe surveying event locations at their own expense for no money.
So, how much money would YOU want to take YOUR time to get ALL of the event locations? Consider what you'd want to be paid for your time plus all the money you're going to spend fllying around, staying in hotels, eating on the road, etc. Think you can find, evaluate, and secure an event location for less than $10,000 in wages and other expenses? Maybe if you only look at locations in your backyard, but that only gets you one location per year.
Major events like this need to be run with money spent on covering contingencies that don't usually happen. Players will go to an event with great grass and no backup air system and think that event is better than an event with poor grass and a backup air system. And it is - unless the air system goes down. Similarly, and I don't know how often this is a problem in Europe, but both US leagues seem to have trouble with Sunday afternoon rolling around and refs starting to disappear as they need to leave to catch flights etc.
I just don't think most paintball players have any concept of just how much money and time is involved in running major events, and if they did, they may not be so quick to condemn those people responsible for putting on the events they get to play when one event doesn't run at the same level as the others. There seems to be some feedback that the Millenium board didn't have the proper oversight on this event to realize it was going to be sub-par before there wasn't a chance to do something about it. What were they supposed to do? It's hard to know the quality of your location without actually visiting it yourself. Are we expecting the whole board to take days off whatever else it is they do to travel to the location, and pay the expenses to do so? That's why I make such a big distinction between events hosted locally to a promoter and events hosted elsewhere - there is a LOT of money that needs to be spent when the event isn't local. That goes from having to have your head honcho guys travel (and the time and money associated with that) to not having a group of people you are familiar with to work the event and needing to spend time and money finding them or time and money arranging and paying for staff you are familiar with to fly in.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to correct this misconception about the cost and effort required to run major events other than getting these people to try and run national-level events themselves. Why people who have never done it seem so convinced they know more about it than the people who do do it is beyond me.
I think Millenium should create some positions to be in charge of certain aspects of the tournaments and open them up to volunteers and see how many players are willing to take days off of work and incur the travel expenses of fullfilling those responsibilities.
For starters, lets get a group of 5 players to start working now on going to find locations for all of the Millenium tournaments next year. Make sure each location has the facilities the player wants and then get a contract specifying that those services will be provided and provided at a price within the event facility rental budget. I'm sure there must be 5 players who have nothing better to do with their time than do this, right?
If the players are not willing to do it, why should the promoters be?
I'm going to bet not one person is going to volunteer to travel around Europe surveying event locations at their own expense for no money.
So, how much money would YOU want to take YOUR time to get ALL of the event locations? Consider what you'd want to be paid for your time plus all the money you're going to spend fllying around, staying in hotels, eating on the road, etc. Think you can find, evaluate, and secure an event location for less than $10,000 in wages and other expenses? Maybe if you only look at locations in your backyard, but that only gets you one location per year.
