I don’t disagree with that logic to a point, but geographically Houston only made sense with 2 champs. I’m in favor of returning to 2 champs, but if they don’t do that, Houston is a multi day drive for everyone from Michigan, Ontario, New England, and most of the rest of the mid west. Houston champs is convenient for Texas’ 30 teams, Detroit (or another mid western city) is convenient for Fim’s 82, Fin’s 10, NE’s 32, etc.
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This was proposed by republicans back in March of this year:
The bill is a rehash of a strategy used against abortion in the state. When Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8 in 2021, effectively banning abortion in the state, they introduced a novel legislative approach for running roughshod over constitutional protections: sanctioned vigilantism.
The abortion law deputized private citizens to sue anyone suspected of helping a person obtain an abortion, with the promise of a $10,000 reward for successful cases. Since its passing, copycat laws have abounded
So if that passes then Houston being friendly doesn’t mean anything when someone from a different city or someone unfriendly decides they like $10,000 more than they respect your human rights. That’s what worries us, that what makes us not want to be in a State where Vigilantee Trans Bounty Hunters are on the prowl. No thanks.
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But then not convenient for plenty of the rest of the country, including my own NC district. That’s the problem with anywhere that we have one Championship, but going back to two may not solve the problem either for that very reason. Many, probably most teams are going to have to travel long distances to get to Championships no matter where it is held.
Then there’s the problem I mentioned above…where can Championships actually be held? Where do the facilities exist to make this possible? The Detroit convention center is just big enough (though not quite as big or as well laid-out as Houston) but very few others are and none of these present a more central location. Then there’s the question of accommodations for all those teams, as difficult a problem as the facilities themselves. This is the basic problem and what people always forget when this topic comes up.
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Glad someone said it, these long trips take a toll on the whole team. (We are from Michigan)
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As others have said, there are a lot of variables that factor in to this decision. Venues like this are often booked up to five years in advance or more, and we have a very specific set of requirements that preclude most of the potential venues. This includes size of exhibit space, playing field space and bleachers (either space in the exhibit hall or an attached stadium), time of year (we have about a two week window to work with), availability of hotel rooms, and many more factors I’m probably not thinking of.
A lot of people are mentioning St. Louis, but that facility is currently undergoing a major renovation and expansion, and may not be available for such a large event until the project is done. Of the remaining few venues that could host us, they may be booked for 2025. We’ve only really “proven” that we can hold a modern-day championship in three venues (St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit). Detroit is likely not large enough for the expanded eight fields and as I said above, St. Louis is under construction.
There are also potential contractual obligations in Houston that we don’t know about.
Bottom line, we can’t really make any assumptions here because there are a thousand different moving parts that go into planning an event with almost 1,000 teams and 50,000 people. It is entirely plausible that the only real option for holding championships at all in 2025 is to go back to Houston.
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This is true. I think the objections are mostly that HQ won’t even acknowledge the issue enough to discuss that, rather than the fact of the location itself. Just saying “while there was no plausible way to relocate for 2025, we share these concerns for the safety of our participants and are investigating alternative accomodations for 2026” is better than silence and slipping another year into a manual. It definitely feels like a ‘silence favors the oppressor’ moment.
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Yes, teams are more concentrated in the East than in the West, but does that mean that Western teams should ALWAYS have to travel more than Eastern teams, or that a certain – but lower – proportion of Championships should be held in the West??
It seems the latter would be a more representative option and that Eastern teams would be happy to share a bit of the travel burden – averaged out over the course of many decades – with their Western colleagues.
Given the size of the event, however, the suitability of the venue and surrounding accommodations will likely play at least as much of a factor as geography. I know that simply finding a suitable location to host a regional event can be a significant challenge. Wherever FIRST is able to find a venue there will be someone saying that they put it in the wrong place.
Personally I think there would be a fabulous growth opportunity for many American based teams to learn about acquiring passports on short notice, convincing school boards to allow international travel on short notice, and shipping robots through customs by hosting the event outside the United States. I’m sure teams outside the USA (and the many American teams that have chosen to travel and compete internationally) would be happy to share decades of accumulated experience on how it is done and would be delighted to experience the simplicity of having Championships in their home country. Not likely to happen, of course, but if it does it would be a fabulous learning opportunity for so many teams!! 
Jason
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I (probably) represent all of Ontario when I say the trip to Houston would be awesome but it’s just not feasible for so many of us.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of teams can still go - but when the reality for a significant number of teams is that you have no option but to decline a potential worlds invite - it feels really, really bad
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Is this a cost issue or a crossing international border issue?
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Cost, crossing the border isn’t a major issue
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Cost, through and through.
3739 declined our invite this year, and had it been in Detroit or St Louis again, theres a much more likely chance we’d have gone.
Having done the trip to both St Louis and Detroit in previous years, it’s substantially more feasible for teams in Ontario to make that trip than it is to travel across the continent to Houston.
Detroit or St Louis you can realistically drive to (in 1 day), which we’ve always been able to do for far less than flying. Houston isn’t a realistic drive, and for those that do decide to make the trek, it’s an extremely draining journey on students and mentors alike.
I also have zero issues saying that the political climate in Texas played a roll in our decision, and will continue to do so moving forward.
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Picking locations just so some teams can drive, is honestly a terrible reason for a WORLD championship(s), as there will be teams that could have driven the the last location or location X but can’t when location Y is pick. Also there are lots of us that will never have a chance of a world championship location being in driving distance, so other factors like having a cheaper airport with good transport/cheap hotels/non hostile government/etc… is far more important than distance.
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Can be both. I don’t want to overshare so I’ll keep this pretty general:
- Cost is obviously huge. It wouldn’t have been in our budget and we’d likely have to crowdfund, like some Ontario teams have/do, or give an ultimatum to the school board - “if you don’t pay for worlds we can’t go” - just a hypothetical, but the publicity in local newspapers (for example) is not something school boards want to miss.
- Crossing the border can be difficult. Canada to USA isn’t bad at all, especially for teams closer to the border where students/mentors will more likely have passports, but there’s some exceptions. Some students might be on visas or might not have passports at all, and that’s not something you can fix within the 2 week turnaround after provincials.
A few years ago we had no issues making it to Detroit, and the latter point generally isn’t going to change for any teams up here in Houston. But the cost is significantly higher, and especially after the past few years, a lot of teams are already starting to get choked out of resources.
Makes me wonder if FIRST should start giving discounts for teams that are very far from champs. Travel costs are one thing, but I imagine that lowering the entry fee for these teams would ease that burden a bit.
It wouldnt entirely fix the problem- but it might make it easier until a real solution can be found
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Why are we paying the registration fees at all? It’s like congrats on being the best, here’s a $5,000 bill plus travel requirements for your team. If you don’t pay you’ll feel guilty for depriving your team of the chance to go so last minute hotels, flights, etc are booked at whatever the cost may be and FIRST gets an additional $3,095,000 (619 teams x $5,000) to host the one time event in Houston and pay for staff, fields, blah blah… Except the fields are the ones from the previous events. So how much does renting the space actually cost, and how much is salaries and transportation for existing equipment?
For context a team in the regional system who makes it to worlds spends at least $6,000 on initial registration plus $5,000 for worlds. In the district system were looking at $6,000 + $4,000 (District Champs), + $5,000 for worlds. So somewhere between $5,000-$9,000 just to advance on to the next level in some cases. That’s our entire season budget on a good year. Most years aren’t good years and that leaves no room for hotel costs, robot parts, spares, food, etc. So cash is tight for teams sometimes and this extra registration above and beyond the initial is hard
considering the size of the venue and the cost of most engineer’s salary, a decent chunk goes to those areas. other than that, theres likely a good chunk invested in next year’s game pieces and teams. For the most (I hope), FIRST reinvests the money it makes into expanding their influence and improving games and reaching out to sponsors.
If the money really does go to some hidden, illicit pocket, then no amounts of digging will turn up the missing money without some sort of whistleblower. In the meantime, lets try to trust the organization we put so much time into.
tl;dr if the fees aren’t used properly as a nonprofit for-education organization should, we probably won’t find out, and somehow the fees are (probably) used for good, not for lining Dean’s pockets. Though I do agree it is an absurd price tag.
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I’m confident the Championship is not a money maker for HQ. The cost of this thing has got to be astronomical.
Take the rest of my post with a grain of salt… everything is a best guess.
Take the cost of food alone. Obviously these things are negotiated at this scale, but let’s say very conservatively that we’re looking at $20/meal (I’d bet it’s more in many cases). Some very napkiny math estimates about 9,000 meals (could be severely misestimating) meaning we’re looking at $180,000 in food costs for volunteers/staff alone.
napkin math
1,300 volunteers
A few hundred (?) staff/contractors
Most volunteers eat 1-2 meals per day
Most volunteers are there for ~3 days
Also think about security, which at a minimum was on site from 5:30am to 8:00pm each day (later on some days). At peak times, there were something like 6-8 external entrances that each had multiple security guards. There were also staff entrances and other areas guarded at all times, plus people roaming. Again, napkin math, maybe 15 guards at open and 40 at peak?? Don’t know what security costs per hour in Houston, but clearly this isn’t cheap.
HQ employees and FTAs have their travel expenses covered by FIRST. That’s ~30 FTAs + a ton of staff that need flights (varies) and hotels (at ~$1,000/person for the week).
The venue has professional expo services on site to do things like move the crates, handle shipping, and provide general labor. They had dozens of people at peak times and also had equipment rented like forklifts.
The A/V is professionally produced by folks that built out way too much stuff and had too many staff to be cheap.
All the fields have to be shipped from their last event to Houston and from Houston to their forward deployment (which for many fields is New Hampshire).
These are just SOME of the expenses. There’s no way this thing is a revenue generator.
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Not to mention the rental of the convention center itself. Prices aren’t published for GRB, but this old (2016-2017) guide for the Anaheim Convention Center gives a price of around ~$130K/day just for the exhibit halls and arena, not including the meeting rooms. I’m not sure what the square footage was at the time, since it was expanded in 2017, but assuming it was a bit smaller than GRB in 2016, and accounting for 7 years of inflation and adding meeting rooms, let’s guesstimate $200K/day for renting out GRB. I think they rent it out Tuesday-Saturday due to setup, so that’s $1M just to rent GRB itself in addition to all of the pay-by-the-drink fees.
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And I’m sure things like electricity and internet are added fees! I noted a while ago on the GRB website that to even access utility boxes on the floor, you must use their in house vendor. The carpet was laid by labor rather than volunteers, too. The costs just keep adding.
Setup starts the Sunday prior, so even more! It’s basically a week long rental.
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Oh absolutely, I just don’t know any of the event costs, just what it costs the teams to sign up to go. I wish some of this info was public so we wouldn’t have to just make guesses. If the initial season registration was higher say maybe $9,000 for every team and there were 0 tack on fees it might be easier for teams to go and not have the have a nest egg for travel ready.
My complaint is when a team does well they have to come up with $5,000-$9,000 in a matter of weeks. Asking sponsors or schools at the last minute is tough. So if we all had to pay more up front to not have to pay again later that’s better in my book. I’d rather go to sponsors saying at most we need $X,XXX once not $X,XXX, then $Y,YYY and then if we are awesome $Z,ZZZ too