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Unread 29-04-2013, 16:50
ScottOliveira ScottOliveira is offline
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Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

Quote:
Originally Posted by MrJohnston View Post
A couple of thoughts...

1) Championship Caliber vs. Wait List:
I suspect that part of the reason we accept robots from a waitlist to fill out the fields is financial. It costs a significant amount of money to rent out a facility such as the Edwards Jones Dome for a week and those wait-listed teams really help the bottom line. I have experience running select baseball tournaments. If I were to rent and prepare a facility for a 24 team tournament, but only got 16 teams, I'd be in a mess financially. However, were I to fill the tournament with 24, I'd make a pretty profit. Thought FIRST is not a for-profit organization, the concept is the same. The last thing we want is for them to be forced to raise the price on everybody in the event that the tournament does not fill.
I'm not certain how the financials for the Championship work, but having talked with some local organizers, many of the regional competitions have a very large percent (up to 100%) of the costs for reserving space payed for by sponsors. I would imagine that the Championship works in a similar manner, where most if not all of the facility costs end up being covered by sponsor donations, not team entry fees.

Someone who has more insight, please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
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