A Ploppy's View of what UBT needs to ponder
OK, I'm just going to ramble stupid here, drawing on experience at promoting and participating in very high levels of another sport. UBT's got a tiger by the tail, but there are a few things being done terribly wrong.
First of all, the point was made that there's not enough "side action" at UBT's big-ticket events. You betcha that's true. When I used to travel all over creation to bowling tournaments, sometimes the money available in the late-night pot games was almost as juicy as the tournament itself. Let's look at the example of The Super Hoinke, a match-play elimination tournament that happens every Thanksgiving weekend in Cincinnati. No touring professionals allowed, but it was wide-open other than that. Bring your shoes, buddy, let's get it on. The all-night pot game action was legendary. Any entry level from $20 per man per game up to $1,000 was readily available. I don't remember how many lanes that house had - about 66 - but they were ALL humming all night. If you bombed out early in the "main" there were sweepers (side tournaments) and pot games galore. And the bowlers came in droves. They were pulling in over 1,000 bowlers, good shooters and wannabe's, every turkey day weekend. UBT could certainly offer some side action, too. And I don't mean the tables in the casino, either. Remember the movie "Color of Money" - a sort-of-sequel to Paul Newman's "Hustler" pool movie?
The real money is in the back room.
Now the Super Hoinke is drawing a lot less than they used to. What happened? They got cocky and started raising the price of the main entry. It started at $300 for a shot at about $25K. Once it became a big success, the fee began rising by $50 every year until it hit $700. The fringe players and hotshot league bowlers who made up the meat of the field began thinking that they had better things to do with that money than spend a major holiday away from their families - in exciting Cincinnati, no less. By the time you added in motel, food, gas (etc) it became a $1,000+ weekend, and that was both hard to swallow for the average guys plus it was mighty hard to make that up in the pot games. Entries started falling, and now it's a mere shadow of what it used to be.
It simply got too expensive. Guys who knew they were swimming in mighty deep waters were not willing to take a potshot for that kind of scratch.
Now, how does this all relate to UBT? $2700 is too much. All you're going to get at that rate are the top pros and the sponsored players, plus the occasional wealthy individual who doesn't care about $2700. Perhaps for two or three special tournaments a year, that would be OK, as would having a strong system of win-a-seat events feeding the prize pool. I don't know the particulars, but I've got a strong suspicion that it's quite onerous for a casino to become involved with UBT. Hell, JoeBob's Casino and Feed Store can run a Hold 'Em tournament and send someone to the WSOP, but JoeBob can't run a UBT-style win-a-seat event without some kind of official approval from UBT. Right? If I'm wrong about that, feel free to fire away. Perhaps UBT can get high-handed about things if & when they really do become a huge success, but right now they can't get 100 players to show up at one of America's premier casino resorts. Let Joe-Bob run his event. Let him run any form of EBJ that he likes! Who cares? He'll send a player to a UBT big event on a paid entry no matter how the lucky chump won the spot.
With the double whammy of that large entry fee plus very little side action to give the illusion that the entry fee can be recovered "in the back room," my own two cents' worth is the entry fee needs to drop. A LOT. You'll never get the fringe players taking a potshot for that much. As an example, I was at the Palms since Deb had the Internet seat at the final table. However, I wasn't about to pony up $2700 to jump in waters that deep (for me). For a grand or less, I probably would have tried it. The entry fee has to be something that the little guy can see risking on a longshot, or you won't have the little guys pumping up the prize fund. When the Super Hoinke was charging maybe $400 to enter, they were paying $100K for 1st and $50K for 2nd. When they raised it so high, entries dropped so dramatically that they could only pay $30K to the champion. For UBT, 400 people @ $450 beats the hell out of 62 people @ 2,500. The prize money is about the same after backing out increased expenses for a field that large, but the "buzz" created cannot be bought at any price. And "buzz" brings in corporate sponsors.
Told ya I was going to be rambling a bit.
