OK, here is an attempt to show that the event fee is not only justified and reasonable, but it is actually a very good deal for those involved. I also want to try to get away from emotional responses, and stick to quantifiable values.
Let’s start with a few initial assertions:
Cost of the National Championship event: $2,500,000 (many estimates of this cost have been publicly discussed, many of which are higher. But let’s stick with the most conservative for now).
Teams attending the Nationals: 260 (from the FIRST website)
Registration cost for Nationals: $4000 per team
Now lets assume that EVERY PENNY of the registration costs are actually available to pay for just the Nationals, and some percentage is not required to support other FIRST activities and operations throughout the year. We know this is not the case, but we will take the most conservative option for this discussion. Then the income generated through team registrations for the National Championship comes to $1,040,000.
That means that there is still $1,460,000 that has to be generated through means other than registration fees to cover the costs of the event.
As has been pointed out in the discussion above, FIRSTers attending the Nationals are not normal tourists. We don’t dump as much cash into Disney as a typical park guest. Our presence at Disney, and utilizing their resources, without infusing cash into the system represents a very real lost “opportunity cost” to Disney (if you haven’t yet, you will learn about opportunity cost in undergrad Economics - take the course, there is a lot of good information in there). It is not appropriate to ask that Disney absorb both this opportunity cost and the shortfall in the required funding for the event - one of those expenses has to be passed on to us.
Now let’s make one assumption: each team has about 35 members attending the event. There are lots of teams that show up with just 10 people, but there are also many that show up with 70 (this thread started with a team that brings 100). 35 is a reasonable first-order average number, based on what has been observed for the past several years of looking at the cheering sections, crowds in the pits, groups in the stands during the awards, etc. Multiply by 260 teams, and you get 9100 team attendees. Round up to 10,000.
Based on that, teams attending the competition SHOULD be kicking in $146 per person over and above their registration costs to cover the full cost of the National Championship event. This cost is independent of where they stay, whether or not they use the Park Hopper Pass, etc. This is also a conservative estimate – the actual event cost could easily be much higher, the portion of the registration fees going to this event is certainly much lower, which results in a much higher event cost per person.
It is noted that there is not a lot of precision to these numbers, but there does not have to be. To first order, the “additional event fee” is really only paying for about half of the services provided to each team member by Disney, after subtracting the elements funded by the registration fee (including building the event venue, bringing in required services and equipment, staff payroll, supplies and materials, wrap party, etc.). Under almost any definition, paying half price for a provided service is a good deal!
None of us are anywhere near naïve enough to believe that Disney swallows this cost out of the goodness of their hearts. Take it as a given that they recover the balance through things like concessions, etc. But the reality is that the event costs money, the event registrations do not cover that cost, and the event attendees need to make up the difference somehow.
So, are there any ways out of this? I happen to believe that the event fees are a reasonable approach. But others obviously don’t, so let me suggest a few alternatives and see what people think might be “better” approaches.
1 - Change the structure of the “Disney package deal” so that it does not include the event fee that is buried within the cost. Make this cost an explicit charge to every team member attending the event, whether they take the Disney package or not.
2 - Re-calculate the registration costs to cover the full price of the event, and eliminate additional participation fees. If that happens, then registration for the Nationals should be around $9600 per team (if you include inflation, it will end up at a nice even $10,000 per team).
3 - Charge an entrance fee at the gate (step one: build a gate) to all team members, guests, visitors, and family members. Remember, you have to make up about $1.5 million, so the entry fee may be as much as $100 per person (assuming the head count goes as high as 15,000 by adding in other park visitors, etc.).
4 - Go back to the system in place last year, which means all the teams purchasing the Disney package keep subsidizing the teams that are not paying their fair share for the event. Teams not buying the Disney package basically force the other teams to pay their bills. To cover the costs, the Disney package price will probably go up even more, making the burden worse for those teams that abide by the rules. But who ever said life was fair?
5 – Spread the National event costs evenly across all registrations. There were 1079 event registrations this year (from the FIRST web site, total teams registered for all regionals and nationals). With growth, estimate 1200 event registrations next year. That would mean each team registration will cost about $1200 more per event.
Are any of these what you really want?
Rather than continuing an endless thread about “Disney is picking my pocket and I don’t think it is fair” could I make a suggestion? If you are offended by the event fee structure this year, then make a constructive, realistic suggestion for an alternative, fair and do-able mechanism by which the costs of the National Championship event can be structured. Then make sure you take responsibility to get your suggestion to the right people at FIRST to have it seriously considered. Doing anything less than that is just whining.
It is a lot more fun to find a solution to a problem than to just complain about one.
-dave
An engineer with spare time during lunch is a dangerous thing.
