Starcraft 2 open tournament in Riga

[Tomas SCLT]

Smb please post this tournament on TeamLiquid, coz I dont have an account there...

I guess it is the right time to open one you will have to answer a LOT of questions over there anyway...

And you missed the prize for 7th place 

But there will be an issue that we will have to make 3rd stage 2 times longer -) it means not 1-2 days of casting, but 3-4 and the cost for renting equipment will skyrocket

It is up to you, but I guaranty, that if you will start the event on Saturday, by the Sunday evening 90% of participants will leave back to home... people have studies, families, girlfriends left over there 3-4 days with StarCraft II only is madness  :rroulette: 

So do 2 days LAN and another 2 days of internet live casts, so players could sit at home with friends and beer, comment on the videos and enjoy the whole thing once again. And you will save good amount of money... you don't want to rent the whole hall just for 5 guys, do you?

Just don't forget to buy subscription based accounts for live streaming, because free ones don't allow more than 50 spectators (at least that's the case with livestream.com).

sleeping on the floor in winter is madness -))))

THIS IS SPARTA ... just kidding 

[Novalogic]

The idea is to start the tournament on winter holidays (just before new year, or after) when people don't need to go to work/university.

There will be 7 prizes for the tournament -)

Accomodation - 6EUR/person/night in old city + free wifi + tour of the city + specially organised latvian community tours (I guess they will think of smth.)

1st stage Bo3
2nd stage Bo5
finals Bo7
for 3-4 place Bo5

Entry fee 25 EUR (if my univ will give me money to arrange the tournament - price will go down significantely)
Spectation fee - 35 EUR (incl free soft drinks and pica/cookies + ability to have wifi and lan access to internet, and play Original SC and BroodWar)
Price of food in Riga: Bottle of cola 2L = 1.5 EUR
Price at fastfood (McDonalds) = 3.5 EUR per 2 cheesburgers, medium soft drink and frenchfries.
Price at the "peļmeņi" restaurant = 3.7 EUR for soop + peļmeņi.
Rimi supermarket situated 100 meters from the hostel, playing hall @ Elik - 350 m; playing hall @ RISEBA - 1.7km

[mansnicks]

So, perhaps this tournament wont be only between our 3 baltic nations, but there will also participate other players from EU?
Then I personally think that 200 player seats won't be enough..
Such a tournament like this one needs so good organisation and planning.. I really hope there won't be any problems.

[cranx]

Well, if you plan to make it international then probably yes, there won't be enough place for all the participants. Would be enough if it's gonna stay between the Baltics for now and open some kind of early registration to see how many people are actually willing to come which let's you make further decisions about the organization.

Also why the spectators ticket is THAT high? Kinda nonsense

[Novalogic]

First I planned to make it a Baltic States tournament, but now I understand, that there are many other people willing to pay Riga a visit -)

Spectating price incluedes a lot of food + soft drinks + using toilets + equipment rent (like professional videocameras and trycaster) =) beleave me it's not high =)

[Tomas SCLT]

Spectation fee - 35 EUR (incl free soft drinks and pica/cookies + ability to have wifi and lan access to internet, and play Original SC and BroodWar)

I agree with cranx, it is very small chance that someone would pay this high $$$. I would say tournament participants, who already paid 25 Euro would have to get free pass for sure, and you could ask potential spectators from your university how much they would realistically agree to pay.

Or perhaps you could do a special pricing for participants, like 25 + 10 for spectating.

Talking about holidays, some universities have their midterm exams starting December 20th to January 20th... as we know, many players are students.

[Novalogic]

Here are my calculations, please think, where could we optimize the cost and boost income, as for the time being there is a total result of minus 120 eur -)

Here is the dnl link http://rapidshare.com/files/429271866/business_plan_RISEBA.xls

[Nbs]

Hello, i got some thoughts of my own to share with you guys regarding this topic:

Main goal - Make it as cheap as possible and fit it in 2 days.

VERY IMPORTANT - Bus should arrive to Riga the evening (18:00-23:00) before the first day of the tour, because players have to get a good night sleep before any kind of LAN tournament. (Avoiding traveling on night and playing in the morning is a must). I think first games should start at arround 09:00-10:00 in the morning or so.

1) SPECTATING - Spectating fee is just ridiculous. Nobody is gonna pay 35 EUR just to watch it. Remove all the food/drinks/cookies/free internet and lan access (leave the toilets ofc.) for spectators. You said it yourself, restaurants and fast food is not so far away from the tour place, so everyone can buy what they want by themselves. Players should absolutely get a free pass on spectating. As for other people - I think 10 EUR would be fair.

2) ACCOMODATION - I think the price of 6 EUR~ is very fair. But you could remove all the "free wifi + tour of the city + specially organised latvian community tours". We are going to a LAN tournament, not to a tour of Riga so we would like to keep it as cheap as possible money AND time wise.

3) ENTRY FEE - 20-30 EUR is a bit high, but i think we could handle it IF it includes a bus ride from Vilnius/Tallin and back. (Remove all the "incl special card + 10 hours of internet access @ Elikcafe"). Back in 2010 April i did attend to RESF (Riga e-sports festival). Although it was a counter-strike tournament, but it took place in elik internet cafe as well (2 days) and the entry fee was ONLY 5 LVL per person (25 LVL per team) INCLUDING the bus trip from Vilnius/Tallin and back.

4) PRIZES - It isn't fair that a 1st place prize is 600 EUR if 2nd prize is 500 EUR, the gap is too small. In my opinion it should look somewhat like this:
          1. 750 EUR
          2. 500 EUR
          3. 250 EUR
          4. 100 EUR
          5-8. 50 EUR
          9-16. 25 EUR
That's a total of 2000 EUR.


P.S. Had so much to say, I hope I didn't forget anything

[Novalogic]

Hello every1!

Some new news about the tournament:

1. There will be a lot of sponsors for the event =) it's good
Laptopshop, RISEBA, Cili Pica and still negotiations to come with Razor and Elkor.
2. I need to register a foundation, for you to make payments to it.
As Blizard restricts any payments for participating and watching the tournaments (They can't be serious =)) ESL had a stream, where you should have payed before watching)
So we need to mark this payments as a payment to enter the fondation. It will incluede participation fees, spectating fees, eating @ RISEBA, transfer and much-much more -)
3. If you know some other sponsors, that may help - please send me contacts =)
4. Repply to Nbs

StarCraft2 is not CS -) matches tend to last in average 30min.
Multiply 30mins on 3 games we get 90 mins - that's how much 3 round lasts -)))
If we will have 100 players and 50 pc's that means that only the first stage will last for 2 days (Of we will play for  hours per day)
Note that final stages are the best of 5 and 7 -)

Spectating price WILL incluede food, that's a must, because near RISEBA there are no fast food restaurants, and many of them are closed during the half-year break. Pica is not expensive, around 5 EUR, but you will be stuffed till the end of the day -)

I can find accomodation for 2 EUR per day -) but there will be additional costs for public transport -) and this doesn't come cheap -) 1 EUR per trip -)
I think it's better to live in the centre, where you can see the old town and walk to the main playing halls by foot.

I dought that CS tournament had a 2000 EUR prize pool. -)) That's why the entry fees are high -) If you want to win money, please risk -))

Prize distibution is the last thing I want to think about now -) I only aprox know how much money there will be in the pool -) 2100 EUR -))
 

[Tomas SCLT]

As Blizard restricts any payments for participating and watching the tournaments (They can't be serious =)) ESL had a stream,

I think it's not true. When you're requesting a license for your tournament, there are two options, one of them is for a paid event. Then you would get rules that apply for the paid event. So I don't think you need to register anything:

http://us.battle.net/en/tournament/

DO NOT be discouraged if you will not get final license from Blizzard. That's what happened to us. I submitted about 10 requests for numerous tournaments and just couple of times got some automated email responses and never got final license. Personally I think Blizzard is ignoring small communities, or perhaps that particular department that processes requests is heavily understaffed...

Anyway, they say that they will process request in 2 weeks and if they cannot do this, I feel that I did my part and they failed, so I assume having license for the tournament.

StarCraft2 is not CS -) matches tend to last in average 30min.

Especially in the first stage, where weaker players will be eliminated, average duration of match would be closer to 15 min. in my opinion.

Spectating price WILL incluede food, that's a must, because near RISEBA there are no fast food restaurants, and many of them are closed during the half-year break...

I would say do spectating wherever you want, just try to fit tournament in 2 days, otherwise you will be left with mountains of cold pizza, that nobody will be able to consume

Try to do main tournament and spectating at the same time. At least that's what we did at our LAN. You will save a lot of money and players that lost in the first round will have what to do.

[Novalogic]

So I need people, who will be making the stream -) Who wants to contribute? -)

[BearGoesWild]

StarCraft2 is not CS -) matches tend to last in average 30min.
Multiply 30mins on 3 games we get 90 mins - that's how much 3 round lasts -)))
If we will have 100 players and 50 pc's that means that only the first stage will last for 2 days (Of we will play for  hours per day)
Note that final stages are the best of 5 and 7 -)

I hope you're not thinking about doing only one series at the same time. That would be madness. First stage should have at least 3-5 series going on at the same time with 1 getting streamed and commentated.

[Novalogic]

@ the 1st stage, there will be 50 matches played simultaneously -)
@ the 2nd and 3rd stages 1 match at a time

[BearGoesWild]

So I need people, who will be making the stream -) Who wants to contribute? -)

I guess i could be a caster but I'm not sure i could keep up the stream

[cranx]

You also need some estimation about players who are gonna participate as it gives you overview of the playing times and structure you can work on with this information. It's kinda hard to predict that say 100 players are gonna show up (which I hardly doubt). Anything below 100 players can be done exactly in 2 days I'd say.

We haven't seen over 100 players participating in current and previous Baltic Cups which shows some kind of estimation about how many players are actually ready to play competitive Starcraft and even less likely there will be suddenly more people showing up on LAN and pay entry fee that big which is fine by me of course. Even if 100 players show up then as mentioned above, large percent of them will be eliminated kinda fast and only few percent of them games actually make it to the very late game that are gonna last more then 30minutes. Most of them will be played in between 15-20 minutes as usually and that gives you enough time to complete tournament in 2 days.

Tournament must be double elimination else there isn't even worth to take a risk imo, especially for lower tier players.