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Of course, when a tournament is large enough to require a playing hall to be rented, the money for the rental fee must ultimately come from entry fees.
Roughly, what percentage of the total entry fees collected must go to rent a playing hall?
Thanks.
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That’s an extremely difficult question to answer.
There are so many different ways of negotiating a contract for space the site cost could be zero or could be several thousand.
Generally true, unless you have a sponsor or other way to offset the cost of the playing hall (for example, if the playing hall is in a hotel and you expect players to book sleeping rooms there).
I believe there’s no fixed answer to this. Generally speaking, the first question I ask myself when setting up a tournament is what the event’s financial goals are, if any. That answer would certainly influence everything else about the tournament’s design.
I believe the financial goal must always be a surplus (or a profit). If you plan to break even, the tournament will lose money.
I am out of the business of subsidizing chess players.
If you are paying over $5 per player or over 25% of your entry fees in room rental per day, it may not be worth it to run the tournament. You will have, after other expenses are figured in, an unattractive prize fund for the players. If you are guaranteeing the prize fund, you might get killed financially. If it is a based on prize fund, the players are pretty savvy in figuring out how much the prizes will likely be cut; that will inhibit entries. Players tend to expect 70%+ of the entry fees to be in the prize fund.
We can only offer low cost tournaments to the players because we get the tournament and skittles room for free; volunteers clean up and put the chairs and tables away. If we had to pay for a room we would be forced to at least triple the entry fee with a good chance that few would show up.
Neither of these sentences is universally true, especially if you get the site for free or very low cost. Since the site is often the biggest expense, when you can get it for free, you can plan much more precisely.
I never got in that business, personally. 
I always assumed that I would draw 50% of the based-on when setting up my calculations, and always returned an appropriate percentage if I drew over 100% of the based-on. Kept me out of the red, and kept players satisfied.
Type of facility plays a huge part in this, of course. Quite often the cost for the ballroom could
be several thousand (or more dollars), or zero, depending on room nights sold to the chess block.
I do remember sweating it out with the organizer for some large events in the past, and making
phone call after last minute phone call to get every soul possible to participate, and book a room
night, or two. I do believe we need to give major organizers, such as Sevan and others credit here.
It can be very risky to organize and run major events. I mention this simply because there is such
clamor sometimes on the profit windfall then this occurs, yet, usually few tears when the organizer
loses their shirt.
Rob Jones
Does USCF not have some clout nationwide to those Hotel chains to make them more available to local organizers? or to bookstores or fast food chains to seek promotional support from them?
And how would you know that before hand?
Alex Relyea
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Rob wrote: “depending on room nights sold to the chess block”.
Yet I cannot recall ever seeing a player’s entry fee be partly based on whether he rents a room at the hotel where the playing hall is.
Is there a sensible logic to making the entry fee lower for the player who rents a room - and who thereby reduces the amount that the hotel must charge for the playing hall?
(Hmm, there could be extra hassles logistically to verify who has vs has not rented a room.)
Overall there is a lot of negotiating experience and expertise among the T.O.'s and T.D.'s on these USCF forums, but no visible sharing and comparing of specific experiences. A relatively inexperienced T.O. might benefit a lot from the sharing of experiences, when he begins his first ever negotiation with a hotel.
I learned some things from the following reply:
I wonder what type of facility you found that is willing to provide the hall for free?
I remember a couple years ago an excellent article in Chess Life in which a T.O. described a cooperative win-win arrangement made with a local fast food restaurant which allows the chess club to hold modest tournaments for free - with the understanding that the players all buy something at the restaurant. (Something close to that.)
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At all of my tournament I offer an entrance fee discount to players staying at the hotel. The size of the discount depends on the room rate and the length of the tournament.
Mike
There are events that offer discounts on that basis. It isn’t common, I don’t believe, but it’s certainly not new.
You could even incentivize players to stay at a hotel that isn’t tied directly to the playing site in that way. I had a Grand Prix event years ago where the tournament was in a rec center with a Travelodge across the street. I got the hotel to give me a kickback for selling room nights, and then advertised a discount on the EF for staying at the Travelodge. The leftover kickback money paid all but $20 of the site rental fee for two days, which included janitorial and security details.
This could be helpful in a couple of ways: players are much more likely to actively tell you that they’re staying at the hotel if there’s a reward (discount) involved, so that helps with not having to track them down; also, of course, incentivizing players to stay onsite can’t hurt. I would be careful to advertise this as a discount for staying at the hotel, rather than as a surcharge for not staying at the hotel.
There will certainly be extra challenges. What I frequently have to do, when I run CCA events, is get people playing the event to sign a list if they’re staying in the hotel. Then, I get a printout from the hotel of which rooms they have credited to the tournament, and compare the two lists. The hotel has never, in my experience, gotten the list 100% correct.
There haven’t been too many threads that talk about this particular subject, but it’s not like yours has lacked for responses. Also, you can contact most organizers directly to ask them for information. In this thread alone, you’ve gotten responses from Sevan Muradian and Mike Regan, both of whom currently organize larger cash events on a regular basis and would likely be happy to share what they’ve learned. And I’ve seen both Tim Just and Bill Goichberg freely give advice to other organizers on many occasions, in person and online.
There are lots of them available. You have to do some legwork, though.
Off the top of my head, in the Pittsburgh area alone there are clubs that meet in numerous libraries, two community rec centers, and two churches. All of these get the space for free, except for one of the rec centers that pays a very small amount per session. Some schools (particularly those with existing chess clubs) might be willing to let you use cafeteria space - the first tournament I organized on my own, in fact, was held in such a place. You might have to negotiate reduced or free EFs for their club’s members in exchange for the space, or perhaps allow a fundraising bake sale or such to take place at the tournament.
This is not uncommon at all - in fact, I’d say it seems pretty straightforward and logical. Mutually beneficial partnerships are a big help for organizers of all sizes.
When Borders’ B&M operations were still going, there was a long-running chess club in Rockford, IL that met in the cafe at a Borders for years on Monday nights. Also, the Monroeville ¶ Chess Club did the same at a local Borders until it closed. I attended both clubs regularly (Rockford in the early 2000s). The unwritten rule for both was that you should patronize the establishment as a “thank you” for the space. Players and parents generally had no problem with this, and the partnership was quite good for both the club and the bookstore.
Many Panera Bread locations have a community room, which they will let people use for free as long as they sign up in advance. And they may not even mind chess players taking up tables where there isn’t a community room. On New Year’s Day, a local Panera that did not have a community room hosted an unrated $5 blitz tournament that lasted about 2.5 hours. The tournament drew about 20 players. My son and I went and played, had some fun, and got some good competition out of it. . In fact, I played nothing but experts and masters for the last seven rounds of the eight-round event. It was way better than sitting around playing Call of Duty with him all day.
Talk to local places that you might want to use for tournaments. Be prepared with specific materials (preferably past tournaments, if you can) that will illustrate the increased traffic you’ll bring in. If you get the site, implore your players to patronize your hosts in both pre-tournament publicity and opening announcements.
I found it helpful to ask players to give me their receipts for anything they purchased at the site, and to do a headcount of all people who came in because of the tournament (so that would include non-playing parents, spouses, kids, etc.). Then, meet with the GM/owner/manager and show them the tangible proof of what your event contributed.
(BTW, I’ve seen discussions on almost all these topics on the forums before, too.)
If you are not working a deal where the rental is reduced (or $0) based on room nights at a hotel, then depending on the hotel chain, location, & dates room rental for 100 players will likely run anywhere from $500 to $2000 per day; usually over $1000. Depending on the planned size of the event and the planned prize fund the room rental can be from 10% to 50% of the total expense of the tournament.
These are rough figures and as I said will vary based on size and number of rooms required. It is simpler to just make a budget including the cost of the room rentals as well as all the other expected and unexpected [misc.] expense, and then to plan your event and entry fees based on those figures.
Let me give you an example of how bad these expenses can be. Back in the 80’s I checked out how much it would cost to rent the ballroom at the Westin Hotel nearby O’Hare airport. I was told at the time that the ballroom [40,000 square feet if I remember correctly] rented for $10,000 a day. It did not matter when it was rented, week day or weekend day, the cost was the same. As I recall I was told they had a lot of corporate meetings that paid that rental fee.
You should check with the local convention bureau(s) for space and cost. A RFP [Request For Proposal] will be distributed by the bureau to hotels in their area. Also, you can try the site cvent.com for places to hold events and the associated costs. Hope this helps with whatever you are working on at the moment.
Best “Chess” Regards,
Larry S. Cohen
I have been involved in that type of situation many times. Usually lasts until the manager who made the deal leaves for whatever reason; usually the first act of the new manager is to toss the chess club out.
Sometimes the total entry fees do not cover the rent. One of the risks organizers take.
Rob Jones