I was thinking about this for a long time about if vex could create a subscription that we pay 350 a year to get the field elements,parts that are 10-20% off (depending on the product price)and access to asking more questions in the Q&A during the summer/fall time
1 Like
Why?
I think that most people that buy field elements or ask questions on the Q&A are pretty much repeating customers. This would create a massively painful program to deal with,
16 Likes
VEX already raised the price of the field elements to $550; what makes you think they will suddenly agree to give you that and more for $350? I could maybe see that if you raised the price to $800 or something, though.
1 Like
i see my mistake i meant 3500 a year that also includes game passes for tournemnets
First, no.
Second, Vex doesn’t run tournaments, RECF does.
5 Likes
Fun fact for all “Well I can be a better EP that that last event” people. If you sign up to be an EP and hold an event, you can get your field element at 1/2 price. Just think for a second. You, your field, a friends field, a cafeteria, $25 for each team for 18 teams on any evening to run some matches have lots of fun. Need to run from 9am -12pm for 8 matches of qualifications then playoffs. Easy peasey. You get a 1/2 price field, you friend gets a 1/2 price field. 6 events across the year pays for your elements, your perimeter, the tiles. 18 team events in a cafeteria dead simple. Do one a week starting the first of November.
17 Likes
Ok, so you have a field, a friend and you both have all the elements, call me in Delmarva, I’ll help you set up your event. I’ve been adult supervision for more people than I’d like to name.
Reach out to your local JROTC team, they are amazing helpers.
Lets get some events on the books for 2022-23.
7 Likes
I think a lot of this is showing a misunderstanding of where money actually goes in VEX. (I don’t fully understand it either, so some of this might be wrong)
There are effectively three different semi-independent entities.
There is VEX, who make the parts/fields/etc, which is a part of the for-profit company Innovation First International (IFI)
There is the RECF, who run the competition and are responsible for RobotEvents.
There are event partners, who run the events and receive (most) of the registration money from events.
Your team registration fee goes to the RECF to pay for their expenses.
When you buy a field/parts/etc it goes to IFI.
When you register for an event, the money goes to the RECF, who takes a $5 cut per team registration, and give the remainder to the event partner.
(Also, the GDC who run the Q&A are made up of both IFI and RECF employees)
So this system would be giving money to, say, IFI which would then need to be given via RECF to the EPs to pay their event registration fees for game passes for tournaments. And you’d also need a cap for how much the events they can use these for could cost, because otherwise I’m running 6 Extra Premium Events that cost $500 during the season, because the EP has discretion what their events cost.
And if you also want to give them… priority Q&A access? (which feels wrong to me) then you need to figure out what a fair cut for that from IFI to RECF would be.
Basically, ignoring entirely the business logic of it, it would be an accounting nightmare.
15 Likes
they need to answer Q&A’s at all first
6 Likes
In my opinion I think this is a great idea since vex seems to be commercilized. Most of there products are quite expensive so having subscrbtion system to get discounts on items seem pretty good to me. I might not be able to tell you anything about the rules but I would love to sign up to your pettion.
So for the most part this is right
First $1200 for a one time use goes to IFI for the perimeter and the floor tiles
Each year 1/2 half the cost of the field goes to IFI because you are an event partner.
There is also a discount for awards (the basic award stack is given to an event for the cost of shipping)
RECF also then charges $5 per team per event to cover credit card fees.
After that the money goes to the event partner. So the basic event fee (less $5), all of the concessions, etc go that way.
If you look at a multi event setup (for example my metal field perimeters are costing me about $20 per event. Rubber floor is about $30 per event. So the overall cost of doing events across a long period of time is pretty minimal.
So we all share in the pie, it’s a matter of the first few events are break even events, but the rest are money makers.
Someplace along the line RECF came out with this “Minimal Event Registration Fee” of between $75 and $125. I’m pretty much against it, I want to see the cost of events be as little as possible. I want that because I want to see as many events as possible. More events is better. One of the things I would like to see is a balance between teams at events. Rather than having teams go to 12 events, I’d like to see them free up slots so other teams (that may only go to one or two events get more). One way to do that is to have more events.
I’d like to challenge one of out data savy people to produce some info on:
State by state - how much is the average local event
Region by region / State by State how much is the local championship
Worlds is simple, it s $1200 for 10 matches.
6 Likes
Not sure if I’m misunderstanding, or if there was some guidance from the RECF I missed, but we run our events at $65-$70 in our region. Also, not to get too off topic, but I feel like higher registration fees would mean more events, because there’s more financial motivation to run the event (or to help cover costs of running the event).
3 Likes
Actually it’s a negative effect. We can’t afford $2200 for an event so we’ll need to skip.
If you look vex team (speaking for both IQ and VRC) there is a price point where they go “I can buy more parts for another match”. I want to always be below that price point.
It’s very subtle guidance. There is some corporate thought that we should cost what FIRST does for FTC. Happy to debate this, but as a long time EP, it seems to track. Anyway in the first meeting of the year the RECF person does NOT suggest $12 per event. There is also not a cost sheet recommendation for taking your
- site rental
- security / custodial
- decorations
- table rentals (most likely zero with cafeteria tables)
minus - team fees
- company donations for signs
- commissions on food
They normally go “We charged $75 last year, yall good with $85 this year?”
2 Likes
I am not sure about this either.
It’s not uncommon to see events in Kansas cost only $30.
4 Likes
literally what is there to debate.
2 Likes
I think our regions might have opposite problems for registration. Am I correct that in your region, events don’t fill up, so you’re kind of “leaving money on the table” by not filling events to capacity?
In Arizona, every event fills up well before the event, and the waitlist can be like 20 teams long. We just don’t run enough events to meet demand, and so if we raised prices, teams would still pay, and the events would still be full. So in our case, maybe if we charged more for events, more potential EPs would see the income from the event as worthwhile, so there would be more events for teams to go to.
8 Likes
Cool, Kansas is at the low end,
Why is it 70 and not 50 across the board?
because alec is a MEANIE FACE that makes us pay EXORBITANT RATES for robotics tournaments.