MissyQ said:
And Chicago, what/who suddenly made you the defender of promotors? I'm not sure I like that, it strips credibility from them. I prefer you on the other side, making ridiculous statements and providing financial figures that lack 30% (at least) of the outgoing expenditure.
Did I say it was a complete list of outgoing expendatures? No. Did I in fact SPECIFICALLY say in the post that I had neglected several items as it was an off-the-top-of-my-head list, and then also list some of the things I didn't include the first time through? Yes. It wasn't supposed to be an exhaustive list, and I said it wasn't an exhaustive list; it was supposed to give an idea of some of the things that make running events expensive.
Anyway, I'm the defender of reason. In this case, I don't think 'the players' are being reasonable. I'm not defending promoters. Madrid sucked compared to the other events and I'm not disputing that, and I'm not saying the promoters are not to be blamed for letting players have one set of expectations and providing something else. I don't need to spend post after post saying "It's the promoter's fault!" as there are plenty of other people who have that covered.
What I am trying to get you guys to see is that blaming the promoters, being mad at the promoters, demanding that the promoters promise to fix it, etc, IS NOT GOING TO MAKE THE EVENTS BETTER!
Baca brings up that NPPL raised the level of expectation. What he didn't mention is that they also raised the entry fees. NPPL entry fees are nearly DOUBLE the Millenium entry fees. To go back to the car analogy, if I go to my local Yugo dealer, and the salesman tells me that he can sell me a car with the same quality as a BMW for half the price, is the salesman a sleazeball for making such a promise? Sure. If I believe him and buy the car, am I being a bit unreasonable by expecting it to be true? If it turns out the car sucks and I come back to the dealer and he says, "Sorry about that, but I'll sell you this other car for the same price, and THIS one will be as good as a BMW", and I believe him, am I being pretty stupid? You bet.
Look, the promoters are not going to tell you that you can't have what you want. For one reason, they probably think they CAN give you what you want, and sometimes they manage to pull it off. But if the players are just going to keep going to events and keep their same level of expectations for the same amount of revenue provided, the players are going to CONTINUE to get some events like Madrid. You can BLAME the promoters, and you can be jstified in blaming the promoters, but it is not going to fix the problem.
If you want events that are consistently at the quality of NPPL events, go to the board and say this: "We want you to stop letting us believe you can provide the events we want at the current pricing. Please double our entry fees to NPPL levels and consistently provide us with NPPL quality events."
Now, maybe you don't want that. Maybe you'd rather pay half-price and get the occasional lemon; there are plenty of people who buy Yugos. But expecting to get a BMW for a Yugo price, EVEN if the Yugo dealer promises you that their car is as good as a BMW, is just plain not reasonable.
So please, stop trying to twist what I'm saying into "the promoters are saints and players are evil and you're just defending promoters". The promoters are just people and the players are just people and if the players want consistent events at the level they expect, they are going to have to lower their expectations or pay more money, as no amount of making the promoters promise is going to work. All it's going to do is give you someone to blame the next time an event falls short because the resources to make sure every event is good are just not there.
You guys are looking for someone to blame. I'm looking for a way to fix it. Getting rid of Pedro ain't, by itself, going to fix it.
