The District System

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Francis-134

I will admit that I just walked into this discussion, but I feel you (all) should know that the money for a regional does NOT come from registration fees. All of the registration fees go to FIRST HQ. Any money needed for a regional is raised by the regional itself.

That is correct.

In thinking about MSC and the costs, I'm no longer quite upset at FIRST as I was before. Consider that the Michigan District system supplanted something on the order of 7 regional events.

*Warning - Guesstimates Below*
In the standard regional event there was somewhere around 60 teams. 60 * 7 (old Michigan regionals) = 420 "teams" that played during those events.

At the time, Michigan had approximately 150 teams. Those teams still pay to play in Michigan. It's likely that many of the rest of those 420 teams were playing their second regional in Michigan. (420-150) * 5,000 = $1.35 million dollars.

I'm sure their loss due to the FiM system is much less than that in reality. Some of those 270 'teams' that used to play in Michigan play else where instead, so FIRST doesn't really lose that all that money. If someone would like to quantify this in a better manner, please do.

I'm guessing that it was the loss of revenue that caused FIRST to make Michigan teams pay for entry into State Championships. That's around $320,000. If I haven't overlooked something major, it appears that FIRST may have lost a very substantial amount of money letting Michigan go to a district system. Have I missed something major in my guesstimates?