How much of the income from the tournament would go toward paying for the room and how much is expected? There is also the cost of advertising if you want it to be advertised in anyway other than internet (though that doesn’t seem particularly neccesasry). Has anyone thought of possibly planning a fundraiser, asking for donations from people, business’ or organizations, or the possibility of getting a small sponsor (like a game store) who would like their name attached to part of this, or just the chance to set up a booth in the place.
I wouldn’t mind calling around to a few local business’ asking for donations or standing around at UW with a Jar and a sign. Small business’ also might be able to use donations as a tax write off since it could sort of be construed as donating money to the community.
I have been meaning to call a holiday inn, because they rent out ballrooms and ish. If they are not reasonably priced, then we have some major brainstorming to do.
As long as you don’t ask for anything to huge, most places are willing to donate things that don’t cost them much, but which people will pay for. Restaurants will donate free dinner certificates, independent game stores (the ones that still exist) have the possibility of donating games, which can then be sold for cash. Both of those things cost them less to give then we could turn around and sell or raffle them for. If you get creative with your ideas, and you ask in the right way, a lot of places will be willing to help out in small ways, that could pay off big.
For advertising, you might be able to ask the Penny Arcade guys, who live in Seattle, to mention the tournament off hand in one of their blog posts (not neccesarily the comic). They may be down for supporting hometown events, although then again, I know nothing about them whatsoeva, so that is total speculation. But it is popular and worth a shot.
I would go look for a sponsor, but it would be hard to ask someone to sponsor and event with no definite location, no fixed event time, no advertising, and basically no definite group that they could go to for questions about what we are doing with their money and livelyhood. A person won’t put their money and business reputation on the line to sponsor an event at some unspecified time, location and venue. So that would probably have to wait until things were a little more concrete.
My friend’s brother, while attending the UW, was able to start up a “club” of some sort and had a budget that was completely funded by the UW. All they did was play pool and order food at this local pool hall, and they had a budget of like $5,000 or something obscene like that. He was the pool hall’s best customer during that time. If it can be done for pool, could it not be done for “video entertainment”? Find out, report back.
I know a lot of people have been talking about this for awhile and there has been a lot of discussion about how it should happen. You guys have been working on this and I don’t just want to jump into the middle and start making plans. But if you are interested I could organize a meeting at some place where everyone who wants to come could show up, and we could start talking and making lists of exactly what we need to do to make this happen.
We could figure out when we want this to take place, what needs to get done, when it all needs to get done by, logistics of cost and income from the tournament, possible fundraising and possibility of a sponsor, advertising, designs for a logo specifically for this event, brainstorming of possible names, lists of exactly what kind of equipment we need and who can supply it, expected turnout numbers that we could shoot for, how to recruit people to work the event since we would need a lot of hands on the day of, and we could start really getting organized to make this happen. We could get together and make a comprehensive list of everything regarding the tournament that everyone can reference and can put input into, and that we can change as time goes on. There are lots of creative ways to raise money that can be cheap and effective. So the sooner we figure out what needs to get done and what it will cost, the faster and easier it will be for us to start tackling the money problem.
UW does give a crazy budget to the clubs that the students start. Hell, there’s even a super smash bros. club. If we can get a decent number together (4 is required to start a club, but we should prolly aim for 10+) then you guys might be able to get a budget together to do something.
