2018-19 State Championship Series – Endorsement Fee and Prize Pool adjustment

The IFPA has set a goal to increase the prestige of the State and National level Championships.

To serve that purpose, starting on 1/1/18, the IFPA is implementing an endorsement fee that will be required for any event that wishes to be counted as part of the IFPA World Pinball Player Rankings. Please note this is for North American events ONLY.

The fees collected will be used to exclusively create individually self funding prize pools for the State Championship Series in the US and Provincial Championship Series in Canada for the 2018-19 season.

Below is how the endorsement fee will work:
  • Endorsement fees are required for each an every event submitted to the IFPA that wishes to receive WPPR points. 
  • The fee is $1 per player per event for endorsement. (For example, 35 participants in an event would mean a $35 endorsement fee)
  • TDs are responsible for submitting payment to IFPA after results are approved. WPPR points will not be posted until payment has been received by the IFPA. A dedicated page on the IFPA site will be available for TDs to make these payments.
  • Fees are 100% payback –> 75% contributes towards the relevant individual State/Province Championship prize pool, 25% contributes towards the National Championship prize pool.
  • Fees will only be collected based on when results are submitted. For example, a 20 player event that meets monthly is welcome to submit results monthly, and pay $240 for the year. However, that event is also welcome to run their own series of events every month and then report those final results to the IFPA annually instead. This would result in an endorsement fee of $20 for the year. We leave that flexibility up to the organizers and players within each individual community.
This program enables organizers to proportionally contribute to their own State and the National prize pool. With the activity of each state varying so greatly, as well as organizers and sizes of events, each event will only be required to subsidize a proportional amount. As a historical example, the money that would have been collected for all endorsed events in Illinois during the 2016 year was $1217. These fees would then generate $913 for the Illinois State Championship prize pool along with $304 being generated for the National Championship prize pool.

A preliminary prize structure would payout all 16 participants of every State Championship, along with all of the finalists of the National Championship.

We anticipate questions regarding the implementation of this program, the biggest being how the $1 will be funded for tournaments. We understand that different communities have different priorities in terms of recruiting and retaining new players, so we are not proscribing where the fee comes from. We have purposely made it flexible so that everyone can implement it as they see fit for their needs:

Option 1 –> Location and/or operator funds this $1 fee for the event. For those events in public locations a TD may request this of the location. For example if 20 players show up for a monthly tournament, the location may commit to sponsoring the $20 IFPA endorsement fee knowing that the earnings of the games played that tournament night will easily cover that fee.

Option 2 –> TD’s can take the endorsement fee out of the prize pool. For example, if 20 players show up for a monthly, with an entry fee of $5 per player, and prizes of 50%/30%/20% to the top 3 finishers, instead of the prize pool being $50/$30/$20 for the top 3 finishers, it would be $40/$24/$16 for the top 3 finishers.

Option 3 –> TD’s can increase their entry fee by $1 to cover the endorsement fee. For example, if 20 players show up for a monthly with an entry fee of $5 per player, the TD would charge $6 per player. The prize pool would then continue to be made up of the $100 in entry fees.

Option 4 –> Find your own plan. Kickstarter? Patreon? GoFundMe? Outside sponsorship? TDs can come up with other funding options if they choose, we just wanted to list some examples.


April 2nd update: 

While we have had our share of April 1st fun over the past few years, this announcement is 100% real and will be implemented for the 2018 season. Looking forward to a spirited discussion over the next 9 months before it launches.

 

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