Tournament Entry Fees and Prizes

[Demonic Attorney]

I'm offering this post as a courtesy to all Tournament Organizers, to gauge popular opinion concerning ideal entry fees and prize structures.  Over the past year or so, entry fees for local tournaments have risen steadily, and in some places, prize support has become more generous, especially with respect to the lower portions of the top 8. 

This post is intended to give everyone who participates in tournaments on a regular basis an opportunity to state their preference as to how expensive entry fees should be, and how generous prize support should become as a result.  Should Tournament Organizers revert to the $15.00 standard for entrance fees and scale back prize support somewhat?  Should they stick with the seemingly accepted $20.00 rule and take steps to ensure lower top8'ers get better prize support, perhaps by scaling back the 1st place prize?  Or should they do the opposite, and make the 1st place prize more spectacular, but only offer a 1st place prize?  What about increasing fees to $25.00 and making prize support through the top 8 truly impressive?  Or should something altogether different be done? 

Keep in mind that Tournament Organizers are not Santa Claus, and lower entry fees will mean less prizes available, particularly to 3rd-8th place finishers.  That being said, if you reply to this thread, please include the region of the country/world you are from, how frequently you participate in tournaments, and why you arrived at the answer you did.  Thanks for your anticipated cooperation.

[Godder]

As I noted in this thread, prizes should be the last item on the budget for a tournament organiser, because paying for them is usually a matter of how much is left after paying the expenses. For example, the following expenses:

• Venue - including sufficient suitable tables & chairs for the likely turnout, plus somewhere for the organiser to use as a base for the day. These things don't come cheap unless it's a game store that has a suitable layout already.
• Staff - judge(s) etc.
• Pairings - computer, printer, paper, relevant software, power supply, noticeboard or similar for the pairings and standings.
• Advertising/marketing - people can't come if they don't know it's happening.
• Miscellaneous stuff - a round timer of some sort, spare pens & paper for life totals (by all means sell them to forgetful people if you're not the generous sort), something to use to number the tables, and potentially something that can be used as tokens (whether dice, or a trip down to local pet shop for fancy aquarium stones). A small float is necessary as well, but that doesn't actually cost money as such.

If it's being held in a store, then that won't have to be separately accounted for, but can just be a cut from the entry fees.

That aside, speaking as a player from Christchurch, New Zealand who would attend tournaments more if other commitments didn't get in the way (like working weekends), the difference between $15 and $25 (for example) isn't relevant to me - whether or not I play is based purely on availability. However, I won't always win events or even make top 8, so I greatly prefer deeper prize structures, where the whole top 8 get decent prizes (packs, duals, staples, whatever), and going beyond top 8 would be nice too (such as everyone who scored the same as 8th place but missed out on tiebreakers). Incidentally, our local T.O. also prefers deep prize structures to top-heavy prize structures, so I don't have any complaints here.

Door prizes are also awesome, and should be encouraged, as well things like top unpowered player, top junior and any other cool prize you can think of (Ray has great prizes at Waterbury, and there are some great ideas that can be swiped from his tournament threads).

[freakish777]

For starters I live in the US (currently in CA, used to live in NY State and hoping to move back).  I try and attend tournaments on a bi-weekly or weekly basis (but this is hard where I'm currently living and due to looking for work, and my schedule having out of state interviews in it to work around).

I think this depends entirely on how often the organizer runs tournaments, if you run a weekly Legacy/Vintage tournament then I would expect entry fees to be closer to $5 - $10 (as over milking the cow is problematic, but having a weekly tournament keeps the customers in your store week in and week out) with lower prizes (packs or store credit).

If you run your tournaments on a monthly basis, I think $15 - $20 is acceptable with "money cards" as prize support.  I don't ever think prizes should be first place and nothing else, but I'm also not a fan of some stores/organizers policies of "every one gets a pack/prize for playing!"  Having it first place only discourages decent but not great players from showing up, while having a "no one leaves empty handed" event discourages better players from participating because the pay out for the prize cut offs becomes far less.

I think we've (Americans) come to expect that if its a Power 9 tournament or there's a Lotus for first place that the entry fee will be $30.  If it's a Mox Tournament, I think we've come to expect $20 as an entry fee, or if its say a Mox for first, and Workshop for second, Grim for 3rd, and Drain for 4th to have something like a $25 entry fee, or a $20 entry fee with a larger field (at a large store with a great facility knowing that they can get the numbers to show up).

I'd rather see the prize support for the top 8 be closer to say a 25% for first, 17% for second, 12.5% each 3rd and 4th (you get half of what first gets), 8.25% each for 4th - 8th (First here is getting essentially the same percentage as they would at a SCG P9 tournaments).

Comparing this to the recent Eudemonia Lotus tournament, First was a lotus, 2nd was a Library, 3rd and 4th were Drains, 4th - 8th was choice of 2 Scrublands, Badlands, Savannahs, Plateaus (with each player afterwards picking what's left over).  $600 first place prize as compared to the rest of the top 8 for a $30 entry fee is a huge disparity.  This roughly breaks down to 1st getting 60%, 2nd getting 12.5%, 3rd and 4th with 9% each, and 4th - 8th getting a mere 3% each (I'm using rough eBay prices for determining the value of the card).  

I think this thread might benefit from some more conversation about percentages to address the 1st vs. 8th prize support.  I realize many organizers can't put up what the entire prize support is up front before they know how many people are physically at the tournament, but I don't think that's an excuse for making the prize support essentially be break even for 4th - 8th when you have 50ish players paying $30 each.

Again, the price of entry is going to be roughly dependant on how frequently you hold tournaments, and then your prize support dependant on how much revenue you bring in.  I prefer seeing TO's be either completely upfront with guarenteed prizes, or be upfrount and say if W people show up, the prizes are X, and if Y people show up, the prizes are Z.



EDIT:

Door prizes are also awesome, and should be encouraged, as well things like top unpowered player, top junior and any other cool prize you can think of (Ray has great prizes at Waterbury, and there are some great ideas that can be swiped from his tournament threads).

I completely agree with this, however, the largest door prize shouldn't overshadow 3rd - 8th place (as it did at the Eudemonia Lotus Tournament).  I picked up a Juzam Djinn for winning the 6th round door prize... hm, looks like I made out better than 6th, 7th, and 8th combined...

[Dominik]

I'd prefer that prizes are good for all of the top eight. Single elimination is not a very good way to determine who should get the top prize, etc- a lot of the time people just have a bad matchup against the deck they are paired up against, or have terrible luck. It's not fair for someone who goes undefeated in the swiss to lose in the first round of top 8 purely due to a bad matchup, bad luck, or a combination of both. The tournaments in my area are usually run as so:

20 dollars base entry, 5 proxies included, +$1 for each additional proxy up to 10.
5 dollars late entry fee (to make sure everyone's there on time).
~6 rounds of swiss (based on attendance).
Cut to top 8, single elimination from then on.

1st Mox or $300-$350
2nd $100-$150
3-4th $50
5-8th $20

This was last month's Mox tournament's actual payout:

1st - Beta Mox Pearl / $350 (choice of)
2nd - $150
3rd and 4th - $50
5th to 8th - $20

That's acceptible, but I'd really prefer that 5th-8th get the option of something like a dual land. My major concern is the fact that 5th-8th basically only get their entry fee back (meaning that they would have the same amount if they did not choose to attend at all).

My ideal prize structure would be as so:

Total amount of money (I used the same amount as was given out last tournament): 680 - round down to 650

1st $200 (or choice of [a] card)
2nd $100
3rd-4th $75 each
5th-8th $50 each

I realize that this might be more awkward to organize than a mox tournament (200 dollars is under the cost of a mox)- but the organizer can still use something else, like 2x Mana Drain, etc.

Any opinions on this?

EDIT: I am from the Toronto area (Mississauga), and participate in most of the monthly mox tournaments here (store name is Untouchables).