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Judging by the numbers of the last few IFP events it seems that the IFP State events run by Mary have had a minimal turnout. Michigian Open Doubles had 25 teams, Illinois had 25 teams, South Dakota just had 21 teams. This is very low for IFP tournaments is it not? Especially when the payouts have ranged from $5,000-$12,000.
*I realize tournament participation cannot be measured purely by the Open events but they are a relatively fair indicator
For some of you who have played for a while (lets say 10 years), can this just be chalked up to the eb and flow of competitive foosball or is there something else going on?
Non IFP events like BartO seem to have fine participation numbers.
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If you judge by the grumbling on the foosballborad,net, it looks like Mary has upset her player base and people are voicing their frustration with their wallets. Here are some of the problems of late that people are frustrated with:
- tournaments running late: starting, finishing, conflicts...
- 10 minute rule - enforced for everyone except Ryan
- Double standard - Pro Masters vs. Everyone else.
- too many events causing things to run late/conflicts
- expensive
- low payouts.
- promoter manipulating the point/rank system
Here is how I have seen the situation. 10 years ago Mary was very good at running Kentucky. It was how the Bart-O is now, popular, well run, good payouts... She got so good at running tournaments people started asking her to run tournaments for them. So she started the IFP tour. The problem is, she needs to make a living and running a TRAVELING tour is expensive. So payouts started to suffer a little. People didn't mind because the tournaments were still well run. Her software really made a big difference. It was a huge step up from the DOS program that VIFA was running. There we were for a couple of years of the IFP tour, so-so payouts but good tournaments.
Then the economy tanked and people started to evaluate the value of tournaments. So Mary started to added more events to give more people bang for their buck. This is backfiring in that IFP events run way too long now.
Given all the other mishaps this year people are pissed.
This is why independent tournaments - NY State, Bart-O and Maryland are doing so well. The directors only focus their efforts on one tournament a year and strive to make it the best.
"Man's way to God is with beer in hand." - some Belgium monk
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I hope Maryland doesn't suffer this year because it became an IFP event. After looking at the tournament flyer it looks the same as last year except its now part of the IFP.
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IMO, it's not exactly that fair to be comparing michigan/maryland/etc to something like Worlds/Nationals/HOFC. That's like comparing a dyp in one of our great canadian cities to WCS in another country. From my experience the last 2 years or so, there are many players that don't tour anymore (either money or time) and not enough new ones making the transition from beginner to amateur to expert and so on.
Economy can have a sort of fear factor in terms of whether people choose to go to a tournament but for many, foosball is something people are willing to make a sacrifice for good times, good people and a well deserved vacation.
Sure maybe Mary has lost trust with some people with all the controversy this year, but who has really left? Maybe hardcore crybabies but for foosball, some just ignore the fact and continue to play. Mary is still generally doing a very good job at running the tournaments and promoting foosball, but as the human beings we are, we tend to pick at all the negatives and de-value all the positive ones. It's only been 10 years, sure it may sound like a long time but along these 10 years there is always time to learn and correct mistakes for the future.
I would guess that Maryland since becoming an IFP event, it will go quite well the first year or two. After that, it'll all slowly diminish just like World/HOFC are starting to have a SLIGHT decrease in numbers.
