So I’m not sure how this has translated to areas that do not have district events, but as far as I am aware, every district in North America has pivoted to single-day events for covid reasons. Now this on it’s own isn’t really a massive deal, however what stands out to me quite glaringly is that:
Registration costs exactly the same amount for half as much event per team
Furthermore, this announcement went up recently in Ontario:
which essentially drops the price for additional events, to encourage teams to sign up for 3rd and 4th events. I know this was always an option but it seems to take advantage of the fact that many teams feel like they aren’t getting the full “experience” this year and giving them an avenue to do so (but obviously after they fork over more cash)
I wanted to know if anyone knew about why exactly the comps cost exactly the same amount for half as much competition, and if there is any reason behind this other than a cash grab because I can’t help but feel like FIRST is taking advantage of the pandemic to get more money per team while giving each team less event time, and running fewer events total.
Have a read through this thread Yamaan for a lot of the first reactions regarding this when the announcement was made.
You’ll see in that thread that I echoed the same concerns you’re mentioning now. While many in that thread tried to show reasons why it makes sense that FIRST is still charging full price, or why that really doesn’t matter, I’m still of the opinion that prices could have been reduced somewhere along the line
Note - additional play pricing for districts is not set by FIRST HQ (or at least not alone). The cost of additional plays is the one competition registration cost that varies from district to district.
New England has not switched to one day district events, though it is a backup plan. The thing is teams are going to be getting a similar # of matches even though it’s only a day, because it’s half the # of teams. This means more teams move on to elims, and more frequent matches. Also they’re still squeezing the same amount of teams as before into one weekend, just not not the same number every day. So costs aren’t really decreasing on FIRSTs end, and teams technically are saving money on travel and whatnot, so I don’t see it as being too unreasonable even if they could have maybe tried to cut down costs somewhere. Does it suck? Yes. Is it favorable to losing ANOTHER season? 50000%
Of course, the standard disclaimer here: ChiefDelphi is not an official FIRST forum, and so you will not get an official answer from FIRST by posting here.
