Venue costs a TON of money. Evo staff does not pocket any profit. Any profit is reinvested into next year’s Evo. Evo staff is dedicating a ton of time and effort for no monetary rewards to themselves, just out of passion for fighting games.
The payout for players is just like any other Major tourney, except that you add a 20k pot bonus from sponsors.
So for example, AE payout would look like this:
1500 players * 10$ = 15 000
15k + 20k sponsor bonus = 35k
35k split between top 8, it’s a lot of money
They pay out as much as they can. Remember that it’s a community run event, they’re not out there to maximize profits at all costs. Yet Evo is a MUCH more competitive and hype tourney than the Blizzard hosted tourneys, or MLG tourneys.
The way some of you guys are complaining about prize money and such reminds me of Smash players choosing to go to a shit tourney with more prize money, instead of a hype and much bigger one like CEO.
Then you have one Smash player who won 4000$ stay at someone’s house instead of renting a hotel room then jizzing all over his host’s bed and leaving without saying anything.
400 is a pretty cheap plane ticket from NJ to Vegas (it’s a cross country trip). Hell, 400 wouldn’t get me to Canton, OH around here.
Now figure you’re staying a week in a hotel. That’s $700 a person.
Then you have 50% (give or take) in taxes. Then including food and entertainment. So you have say, $1,500 in expenses not including taxes.
And figure 3rd place makes by the above thread what, $1500? 3rd place makes his trip back and doesn’t even get to take anything home.
And there’s no given you’re going to do well at this.
That’s a lot of money to justify going, especially from this end of the country. It’s probably why I’ve only been to one B5/Evo event (which someone else paid for mind you). It doesn’t make life easy for people who may want to go but have no chance.
Also, kinda sad, but I think Evo should charge an event tag for those wanting to do casuals. Maybe that could increase the money paid out as well (sucks for people, but there’s no way the top player should bring home only $5K for AE).
My numbers could be off, so please don’t sue me if I am.
I know someone that flew from MO and back for around $250 but I was referring to the Marvel 3 winner who lives in Cali right? That can’t cost that much to fly from Cali not to mention everyone crashes in other players’ rooms. You could do that whole trip if you are frugal for around 600 if you plan early enough. Probably closer to 500. Why stay a week if the even is only 3 days? Of course it would cost 100’s more in expense if you add 4 days in Vegas. I wasn’t including that.
No doubt, players should be getting much more. Poonkgo got 3rd for what a grand? I’ve run small tourneys where less than 70 people show up and the payout for 1st was near half a grand. They got over a thousand players that entered? 3rd should be getting over 2000 at least.
Companies like Madcatz are helping out a lot by sponsoring players so much respect to them.
For this to be more major though, serious money should be involved. Right now you still got players doing this all the time because they love it but anyone who is at their level in any other sport should be well compensated for it. Capcom has to be making a fortune in these game and we are a part of that. So what kind of money are they putting on the table for these majors? We support them. Do they support us? CPL can afford to pay out large sums.
This is dangerous conversation, adding more money is going to be great…at first. I just think that if a sf pot was 100k there would be some nasty things happening after hours to the top 8.
Not everyone lives in Cali and it’s quite a major expense for people from like the East Coast or International players to come, ESPECIALLY when sponsorships are frugal in the video game world and only the top 5 players or so have them (it’s not like golf or tennis where even the 100th player might have a small sponsor). You’re talking about $1000 to $1500 out of pocket for the general EC player who does not have a sponsorship, and if they’re spending that much, do you think they’re just going to fly out for the tournament and not want to do anything else? Let’s be real here.
Also, not everyone can handle sleeping with people they don’t like. It’s a nice thought someone would offer rooms, but really, it shouldn’t be the case where people HAVE to stay in overcrowded 10 person rooms. That would just ruin the experience for me honestly. I’m not a heavily social person, and something like that could totally traumatize me. Keep that in mind.
Also, if you’re talking 800+ people and 100 make the cut, why can’t you give them something small like refunding their Evo payment or something? Even in the lesser sports like tennis and golf the people that qualify get a little bit of money, why can’t players be helped out in the same way? Evo has a $50 to $80 up front fee (which I think should be more of a tag for events than just for the tournament), why can’t that be refunded if players qualify? It’s a large enough tournament for it.
Also, who’s going to want to enter a tournament from a casual/semipro standpoint and put that outside money in if they can’t get something back and their chances of winning are smaller than say some pro’s chances of beating Serena Williams in a tennis match (to use an analogy). Pokemon has a bigger problem with that in their tournament, but it doesn’t cost anything to enter. Even the more expensive tournaments I’ve been to like FunSpot at least give you enough tokens to cover any games played for an entire weekend if you enter their tournament, why can’t Evo do the same?
The free casuals is a nice touch, but really, it is kinda wrong to throw everything on the people who are entering to pay for the fee. Spectators and especially casual players should probably be charged a tag fee for space rental (maybe not $80, but still, most general cons cost $40/$45 for the weekend to cover costs), even though I personally don’t like it from a players’ standpoint.
Evo really ought to be more clear on the prize money. They could have done a lot better than some weak ass glass trophy they picked up at some Bowling Alley Trophy Shop too.
I honestly don’t know how those Japanese/Koreans afford to come out here. It’s got to cost them at least $3,000 for the week. Some of them bring interpreters/managers - I don’t even want to imagine what that has to cost.
The main hall is pretty expensive I imagine but I’m sure Evo gets a good deal because they basically give the Rio a packed casino and sell out their hotel. There is probably a lot of money made on the back-end as well selling venue space, merchandise, and stream adverts. I hope all the commentators got paid well for their time considering the massive amount of ads and plugs they did.
I guess my point is, Evo does well. I don’t think it’s outrageous to throw a little bit more money into the pot and stretch the money all the way down to at least top 16. Also the video game companies probably ought to throw in a LOT more money as well. They shouldn’t see it as a loss, but as a marketing expense that’s probably a lot better than anything else they could throw their money at.
It’s the first link under the Player Guide on their site dude, it’s not that hard to find. And maybe it’s because almost every SF tournament I’ve personally ever been to has exactly the same pricing structure, and the ones which didn’t people complained about, but I find it really easy to understand.
1)There’s a venue fee which 90% goes into paying for the venue, and the rest goes into paying for equipment for the next tournament, such as monitors or projectors or streaming equipment, although a lot of that is donated by/borrowed from the community. There is no profit, and nobody gets a wage. Hell, many tournaments run at a loss.
2)Then there’s the game fees, which go directly into the prize pot, and usually comprise the totality of the prize.
I don’t see how that needs more “open”. It seems pretty fucking clear to me, in fact dicking around and making some of the venue fee go into pots would make it much less clear.
Now, since evo is a not-for-profit organisation (to my understanding) the only way for the prize money to go up is to raise the game fee, or to get sponsorship. If you want there to be more sponsorship, how about you go out and organise that, instead of having a cry on the internet and insulting the people who’ve volunteered their time and money to provide us with awesome tournaments for tenish years, hrrm?
The way I see it, since it is not at all clear where all the money goes, is that the players should be paid out more. I also agree with the vast majority of the sentiment here that payouts down the line to Top 16 would be nice as well since top 32 might be pushing it.
It seems that no one exactly knows how much it costs to run an event like Evo but if my calculations are in the ball park $220,000 left over just seems like a lot, also considering I now know that only the game fee ($10) goes into the pool for a particular game. Just seems like it’s not really that much and I don’t think that answer is to ask the players to fork over more money for the chance to participate.
If the event costs should ever become more clear that would really help this conversation out but I just see that figure of 220,000 and it gets my mind going. Also, as others have mentioned these game companies should be pouring some money into the pot as well. Capcom, Namco (they did 5k this year) as well as advertising money that is pulled in by the event… how much money is that even?
I’d personally like to see 1st place at $50,000 next year and that shit needs to be advertised to get people’s attention.
Also, why not have bonus’s like the UFC does for best K.O., best submition, ect… that would be bad ass. Bonus 2k to the best match of the night or best come back. who knows. The sky is the fucking limit.
That number of $220,000 is something you invented based entirely on incredibly uninformed guesses.** If you really want to know how the financial side of EVO works, do something useful for the community and go volunteer at EVO, instead of whinging on the internet about how made-up numbers would indicate that prize pools for a fighting game tournament should be increased to an arbitrary sum that sounded good in your head.
We do this shit at my locals (much less money mind you haha) and its fuckin fun.
The first 5 perfects of the night get two dollars each perfect.
Then theres like 5 “bounties”- these players are picked at random and if you knock them out of losers then you get two bucks.
Sometimes theres also other achievements that I cant really remember at the moment (things like most clutch match/biggest comeback, best use of meter, most hype match)
anyway, its fun shit.
People playing Street Fighter IRL… cept Daigo isnt godlike anymore…
Tokido is even better tho. You seen that nigga’s Demon Kick? Perfect form. Dont matter if you come up to Murderface with a gang of dudes w/ shanks, he’ll take um down.
I don’t think people go to EVO with the intention to make money, when only 3 out of potentially thousands of people get something out of the pot. They go to EVO to have fun and enjoy the games they love.
If people are unhappy with spending money in this event why does it become bigger and bigger every year?
No fighting game can match the popularity of DOTA. Not now, not ever.
I don’t know about you, but EVO is so well run and has entertained me so much that I don’t have a problem with the organisers making money. It’s not like they are some kind of charity organization that have the moral obligation to be non-profitable.
I suspect most of the top players make more money from money matches than they do from tourneys. The amount of people willing to pay $100 to look free in after hour streams is shocking.
I agree that Evo is the shit and the most hype tournament there is. I love it. but to all the haters I am just wondering how it works and if the prize pool could be bigger. It’s like you mother fuckers are getting offended by a question.