[Mr V]

Originally Posted by DonShaw

So some interesting facts

77 teams were listed in GA for 2015 season and only 60 teams competed in 2015. Why did 22.5% (17) not compete last year.

If you look at the FIRST site for locating teams they show teams that have not competed for up to 3 or more years which is why there is the discrepancy. FIRST keeps them in the system in case they return and because of their rules for determining rookie status. Why that is in the publicly available team listings I'm not sure. So the reality is that only 60 teams registered for the 2015 season. Why those 17 teams dropped of over the last 3-4 years I do not know.

Originally Posted by ttldomination

Don, that's a good post of concerns. Primarily because we can take quite a few of those concerns, and analyze them with numbers.



So, I did some quick analysis on this on a number of different scenarios.

Now, please understand that there are quite a few variables at play, and I'm sure that there is a particular combination of team size, matches, performance, travel budget, etc. that'll disagree with what I have here.

Using the figures in OP's attached document, and assuming some basic information, here is the CPP breakdown.

Hotel Room: $100
Rooms: 10/night (28 students and 6 mentors)
Food: $10/meal
Travel: $500
Misc: $500

Team attends GSCR (No Travel, No Eliminations): $547
Team attends P'Tree and GSCR (1 Travel, No Eliminations): $792
Team attends P'Tree and GSCR (1 Travel, All Eliminations): $485

Team attends 2 Districts (2 Travel, No Eliminations): $485
Team attends 2 Districts (2 Travel, All Eliminations): $363
Team attends 2 Districts and State (3 Travel, No Elims at State): $395
Team attends 2 Districts and State (3 Travel, All Elims): $383

The bolded ones above represent the dynamic that your team (a large, successful team) is likely to fall into. As you can see, this move represents a 20% drop in cost per match. For a team that can only afford the registration fee and must travel to both events, there is still a significant improvement in CPM.

However, the number of matches does mask the reality that teams must dedicate more money. Including travel, 1261 would have to bring almost $5,000 more to the table in districts. A 1-regional team would have to bring $5,000 more to the table (assuming that they travel to both events).

The CPM numbers favor districts. The total cost numbers favor regionals.



So, this point is valid. Your minimum cost in order to get to worlds is higher in the district model.

However, I can't help but feel like this is an obvious point. Like, of course, you're paying for two more events, why wouldn't you pay more? But let's take a look at how many teams this actually effects.

There were 11 teams at worlds from GA. Of those 11, 3 went to one regional. Of those 3, 2 were on the waitlist. That means that hypothetically speaking, 1 team would have faced this cost barrier.

I don't think the numbers diminish what you're saying; they just put your point in perspective

Just looking at the facts,
- Sunny G.

Why the assumption that in the District system teams will have to travel for both of their district events but attending one Regional would require no travel? Fact is that district events are typically spread geographically so that hopefully the vast majority of teams will not have to travel to one of their district events.

Also how did you determine the number matches in your calculations? One of the requirements of the District System is that there are 12 qualifying events at each event. I don't know about the events in GA but around here 9 qualifying matches was what we typically got at a Regional. You also have to factor in the fact that a team is more likely to make it to the finals in the District System. I don't know how big the GA events will be and what the Regional events were but in the PNW we typically have ~32 teams at a district event and our Regionals were up to 64 teams. So a 75% chance of playing at least 2 more matches vs the Regional where the probability can be as little as 1/2 of that.

When I ran the rough numbers when the PNW District was started I found that the number of teams that had traditionally attended 2 Regionals was almost as large as the number of teams at our DCMP. In the end those teams did make up a large percentage of those who actually attended the DCMP. When you factor that in most of the teams that made it to DCMP did not have their registration fees go up while seeing their number of matches increase about 50%. The travel costs for a lot of them did go up but since a district event is only 2 days and are typically held in areas where hotels are cheaper than where the Regionals were held their travel costs did not double.

As I've pointed out in previous discussions of the District System FIRST does sell it as lower cost but in the real world it does lower the cost for some teams, keeps it about the same for others and increases the costs for the rest of the teams. On the other hand in my experience the teams that see their costs increase are those that benefit the most from participating in the District system.