How big will FIRST ever get?

[Bduggan04]

Originally posted by GregTheGreat
Well Here is my logic behind it....
I think that the more teams that compete, the cheaper the fees will start to be for the team. For example: Schools that buy books for there classroom (every school in the world) pay companies that manufacture the books. If you buy 100 books it is a set price per book, lets say fifty dollars. Lets say the school id large and they buy a thousand books, the school will pay a cheaper price, somewhere around forty dollars a book. Now lets say they want to buy five books, they would probably pay seventy, eighty, or ninety dollars a book. So basically the more books that are bought the cheaper they are.

I agree that this is the case with something you buy, but kit pieces are largely donated or already at an extreme discount. Other costs a team accumulates (metal, misc. parts, t-shirts) are not bought from a common sponsor and therefore it is impossible to buy in bulk. The major costs come from events and the cost of running the organization. Unfortunately both of these costs rise with more teams. There is no discount based on how many stadiums you rent and the model you describe is really not applicable to FIRST because of these compounding variables.

As far a TV broadcasts go, I have a hard time seeing big bucks coming from it. High school football is not popular on TV as a nation and FIRST shares a common inherent obstacle. People watch games where they can identify with a team. They follow that team and cheer for it. It is hard to have that kind of loyalty when the teams are 800 strong let alone 10000. Coupled with the fact that teams only play for 2 minutes every hour it becomes even harder. The best bet for a television show as I see it is to concentrate on the season as a whole, not just the matches. Shows like "Monster Garage" and "Junkyard Wars" are only %10-%25 competition because people are interested in the process. The game not only needs to be entertaining, you need variety in design, creativity and it has to blow people away. A flashy interface and presentation is also necessary. The problem with becoming a Discovery channel type show is that the money could be good or it could be nothing. Remember, the network has to make money for you to do well on a TV show.