Why Join the PDGA?

[SkaBob]

If an advertiser is willing to spend say $10 per 100 viewers, how many spectators are needed to justify a sponsor putting in $1000?

You're misunderstanding the fundamentals of advertising, here.

100 views isn't just spectators. It's every set of eyes that gets laid upon the advertising piece. The players, the TDs, the park staff, the spectators, everyone.

How is it that local clubs like the Motor City Chain Gang can get multi-hundred dollar sponsorships including cash to be added to the purse AND oodles of free product, appearances by Hooters Girls, Monster Girls, promotional vehicles, gift cards, shirts, hats, key chains, other merch, etc. that all add up to well over a thousand dollars (gas for the vehicles, wages for their staff, food/drink costs, etc.) for a tournament with 65 players, yet the PDGA is crying about how hard it is to get sponsors for their world championships?

You're doing it wrong. You need to admit that the people you've got trying to get sponsorships are NOT effective sales people, and look to bring someone on board who can get the job done.

As far as my ratings being wrong, my PDGA number is 36307. The tournament I've been trying to get on my ratings since May 2008 is the Thrills at the Mills from May 17, 2008. I took 2nd in Rec, but the TD spelled my name wrong, and that apparently caused you guys not to be able to figure out who he meant without my PDGA number.

The tournament link on your site is http://www.pdga.com/event?TournID=7659

NOW can you tell me why I've been calling about that since June, 2008 and have been told each of more than half a dozen times (I think with this post, I'm officially at 8 times notifying you guys of the error) that the problem would be corrected, and yet it's still on the wrong name, and still not on my PDGA record? Do you guys just shrug off when people who aren't famous pros call to say you need to fix your incorrect ratings data, or is your system so complex that you need to call in someone like me (btw- I'd be more than willing to gut your current database/ratings system and develop you one that doesn't suck) to figure out how to update the ratings?

[Chuck Kennedy]

Since this thread has turned from "Join the PDGA?" to "Bigger Worlds Payout?", can someone bring light to WHY the payout in 2000 was so much higher? Was there a major sponsor who donated money?

2000 Open 239 players 1st place $7303 paid 82 (34%) Entry fee $175
2009 Open 131 players 1st place $5500 paid 57 (44%) Entry fee $200

2000 Open: Entry fees=$41,825 plus Added=$12,761 (30%) equals Open Purse= $54,586
2009 Open: Entry fees=$26,721 plus Added= $6,680 (25%) equals Open Purse= $33,401

The field size for Open in 2000 was boosted significantly by the change in Masters age just going from 35 to 40. Fewer paid places as a percentage boosted the first place prize. The DGWN article said Discraft put $50,000 in value into the event. Michigan may have done the best merchandising job for fundraising than any worlds ever with logo merch selling more than a year in advance of event.

[Timko]

That explains a lot then. I think for worlds to go to the "Next Level" that scoot_er and other pros would like to see, either the club running Worlds needs to get on the merchandise ball earlier (one of these things I think our club could admit fault with from this year), or someone (the club or the PDGA) needs to secure some good sponsorships.

Also, 44% seems like an awfully high number. Its MPO, not MA1 after all.

[Chuck Kennedy]

How is it that local clubs like the Motor City Chain Gang can get multi-hundred dollar sponsorships including cash to be added to the purse AND oodles of free product, appearances by Hooters Girls, Monster Girls, promotional vehicles, gift cards, shirts, hats, key chains, other merch, etc. that all add up to well over a thousand dollars (gas for the vehicles, wages for their staff, food/drink costs, etc.) for a tournament with 65 players, yet the PDGA is crying about how hard it is to get sponsors for their world championships?

Because local companies will do this as community outreach/contributions not necessarily with an eye for direct return on their investment. And some may not be happy with the results versus their expectations so you see different local sponsors each year or the ones who remain may have a disc golfer working there. The local hosts also do the same thing for Worlds and get similar type sponsors which are much appreciated. But the amount contributed is still small in Worlds terms and much is merch or discounts, not cash. That does less to help Pro Worlds versus Am Worlds which is why it's easier to get hosts for Am Worlds than Pro Worlds.

[Chuck Kennedy]

Also, 44% seems like an awfully high number. Its MPO, not MA1 after all.

It would have been the usual 40% but they miscalculated when they posted the number who would play in the semis. It's been a recent policy that all those who played in the semis cashed. Rather than change the posted semis number, they decided to pay the number who played which worked out to 44%.

[JHBlader86]

Even though I agree that the PDGA does have some issues that need to be worked, I'm wondering if the organization had the exact same problems, but were somehow able to give the Worlds winner a $50,000 check, and last cash got like $500 would we even be having this conversation?

[SkaBob]

The local hosts also do the same thing for Worlds and get similar type sponsors which are much appreciated. But the amount contributed is still small in Worlds terms and much is merch or discounts, not cash. That does less to help Pro Worlds versus Am Worlds which is why it's easier to get hosts for Am Worlds than Pro Worlds.

Is the PDGA approaching the parent corporations of these local franchises to see if there's interest in donating cash to the events? I know the local franchises aren't granted the ability to shell out significant amounts of cash by their parent corporations, as it would impact the regional profit margins - since it would have to come from their own income. They ARE given a certain amount of merch/gift-cards to be given out each year. Any large donations have to be taken up with corporate.


Sponsors and payouts aside...I provided the info on you guys dropping the ball on my rating... When will those rounds go on my history?

[Chuck Kennedy]

As far as my ratings being wrong, my PDGA number is 36307. The tournament I've been trying to get on my ratings since May 2008 is the Thrills at the Mills from May 17, 2008. I took 2nd in Rec, but the TD spelled my name wrong, and that apparently caused you guys not to be able to figure out who he meant without my PDGA number.

The tournament link on your site is http://www.pdga.com/event?TournID=7659

NOW can you tell me why I've been calling about that since June, 2008 and have been told each of more than half a dozen times (I think with this post, I'm officially at 8 times notifying you guys of the error) that the problem would be corrected, and yet it's still on the wrong name, and still not on my PDGA record? Do you guys just shrug off when people who aren't famous pros call to say you need to fix your incorrect ratings data, or is your system so complex that you need to call in someone like me (btw- I'd be more than willing to gut your current database/ratings system and develop you one that doesn't suck) to figure out how to update the ratings?

Roger and I, the rating guys are not involved in the fix when PDGA numbers are missing in TD reports. It's PDGA staff. Not sure when you contacted them but all corrections had to be done for 2008 before Feb 2009. Second, events more than 12 months after your most recently officially rated round drop off your rating calculation. If you have played an event since May 17, 2009, then even if the database for 2008 was reopened for the correction, the event would not be part of your rating in this upcoming Sep 1 update. Have you played a sanctioned event since May 17, 2009? If not, I'll see if your record can be fixed.

[Timko]

Why doesn't the PDGA do more fund raising for Worlds? I think it falls into the similar logic that the PDGA helps get local courses in the ground because they offer legitimacy to the sport. I work for a fortune 100 company local to KC that works in health care, I attempted to make the case that disc golf is both a health activity and has a long history with Kansas City. It sure would have helped for someone with an official position in the PDGA to have given one of my executives a call. It just seems effective of generating actual prize purse (instead of merch or discounts) by having an actual promotion partnership between the PDGA and the Worlds host instead of asking them to do everything on their own and hoping for the best.

[SkaBob]

Roger and I, the rating guys are not involved in the fix when PDGA numbers are missing in TD reports. It's PDGA staff. Not sure when you contacted them but all corrections had to be done for 2008 before Feb 2009. Second, events more than 12 months after your most recently officially rated round drop off your rating calculation. If you have played an event since May 17, 2009, then even if the database for 2008 was reopened for the correction, the event would not be part of your rating in this upcoming Sep 1 update. Have you played a sanctioned event since May 17, 2009? If not, I'll see if your record can be fixed.

I first contacted the PDGA the first weekday after the scores for that tournament were posted, having asked the TD about it and having had him refer me to you.

I called every 2 weeks after that until I just accepted that you had no interest in correcting the data (which you've shown most eloquently is exactly the case).

Which, of course, means that ALL of calls to have this fixed were well before Feb 2009, and were well within the period of time in which these rounds would've affected my rating.

If you hadn't felt it wasn't worth your time to take the 30 seconds necessary to look at my ratings history, you'd have noticed that I played several sanctioned events after that tournament, with 14 rounds on my rating at the last update. These rounds include the tournament from the very next weekend.

Meanwhile, thanks to the PDGA's lack of interest in doing it's job, my rating is keeping me available to sandbag the CRAP out of the Rec fields at sanctioned events I play, leaving many of the other competitors with a bad taste in their mouth about how fair PDGA sanctioned events are. Since this sort of lack of concern about consistency and accuracy of the data are rarely isolated incidents in organizations that deal with as much data as the PDGA does, I would assume this is happening all over the place, as well.

I've done what's RIGHT, and have stepped up to Intermediate of my own accord this year, knowing that my rating SHOULD reflect that I'm NOT a Rec-level player, but you can see by the vast number of rounds I've played in sanctioned events this year, that I really haven't been motivated to play many of them - and it's all down to one simple error that would've taken all of about 2 minutes to fix if the PDGA had shown the least bit of concern for it's members.


Meanwhile, you basically say "too effing bad for you, we were lazy for so long that it doesn't matter anymore, so cry us a river and we'll all go for a ride on the failboat."

To which I'm left with only two questions:

1. Why was this allowed to happen, for so long, with so many requests to fix it?

2. Why should I feel that I'm getting ANYTHING out of the PDGA worth paying for, when all I cared about in the first place was a rating I could compare with my friends?

Beyond being a player in tournaments, I'm also a TD, and would look forward to running sanctioned events (read- throwing you guys some money in fees), if I felt the PDGA was doing their job, and thus, worth giving money to.

So, I guess that brings up a third question:

3. Why should I bother jumping through all of the necessary hoops to run a sanctioned event, if I can't count on the PDGA to be concerned about the flaws in their process? MY reputation as a TD will be affected by the angst my players would feel about these sort of inaccuracies and uncaring attitude, should there be any such malarchy with the results of my tourneys.


On the technical side, you mention that the 2008 database would have to be "reopened", and as a programmer for the last 29 years I'm compelled to point out the fallacy of that statement.

Unless your entire back-end database and codebase are a total amateur hack-job, none of the data is ever closed. It should all reside within some sort of SQL database, which doesn't care in the least how old the data is, it just holds it and lets you change it at will. If you're seriously dealing with separate databases for each year of data, you're making yourselves do ungodly amounts of extra work for no reason (not to mention the performance problems associated with using flat-files, excel spreadsheets or access databases as the back-end for a website), and I re-iterate my offer to help you gut and replace your database with something that doesn't suck.

[Disc Golf Live]

Why doesn't the PDGA do more fund raising for Worlds? I think it falls into the similar logic that the PDGA helps get local courses in the ground because they offer legitimacy to the sport. I work for a fortune 100 company local to KC that works in health care, I attempted to make the case that disc golf is both a health activity and has a long history with Kansas City. It sure would have helped for someone with an official position in the PDGA to have given one of my executives a call. It just seems effective of generating actual prize purse (instead of merch or discounts) by having an actual promotion partnership between the PDGA and the Worlds host instead of asking them to do everything on their own and hoping for the best.

One of the difficulties facing any Worlds crew is dealing with sponsorships. Unfortunately, each team sort of has to start from ground zero and work exhaustively with the various disc golf oriented businesses that are involved every year to differing degrees. And those are the easy sponsorship deals to work out. If they have any energy and initiative left over, the team can look for outside sponsorship / local sponsors. If the PDGA were to develop an over-arching relationship with the big players to handle NT/Worlds sponsorship, it would free up our local crews to focus on the nearby businesses and other locals who would benefit from a nearby tourney.

Joe

Sponsorship Coordinator, 2000 Worlds.

[Chuck Kennedy]

The hosts should be working with Duesler for situations like you described. In the case where potential national Sponsors were involved, they either do or should get turned over to Duesler to follow up.

In the long run, there's currently little incentive for TDs to acquire any more sponsorship than what they need to meet the 25% added cash payout for Worlds as contracted with the PDGA. Since the hosts are mostly not getting paid for all of the thankless work they do, it's only more work for them to raise sponsorship, and harder work with less reward than making sure courses are ready. Plus, doing courses, selling products and running events is usually more of the skill set among Worlds TDs than seeking big money versus contacting the national disc equipment manufacturers and local sponsors known to come thru every Worlds. The PDGA doesn't have much incentive to boost payouts either. A Pro Worlds success in most members eyes is making sure it is run well and hopefully breaks even with 25% added cash.

[SkaBob]

Plus, doing courses, selling products and running events is usually more of the skill set among Worlds TDs than seeking big money

This is a prime opportunity for the PDGA to be involved. These businesses are probably seeing one guy coming forth saying "hey, I'm running a tournament, can I have $5000?", and the results would be entirely different if the governing body of the sport itself were to approach them with the same request.

The PDGA doesn't have much incentive to boost payouts either

I'm sorry, but that's just bad business. More profits are ALWAYS good, especially during a recession. More happy customers = more profits.

[Chuck Kennedy]

I first contacted the PDGA the first weekday after the scores for that tournament were posted, having asked the TD about it and having had him refer me to you. I called every 2 weeks after that until I just accepted that you had no interest in correcting the data (which you've shown most eloquently is exactly the case). Which, of course, means that ALL of calls to have this fixed were well before Feb 2009, and were well within the period of time in which these rounds would've affected my rating.

Perhaps you don't know that Roger is in IL and I'm in MN. We do not work at PDGA HQ nor are employees. I've asked about your situation.

If you hadn't felt it wasn't worth your time to take the 30 seconds necessary to look at my ratings history, you'd have noticed that I played several sanctioned events after that tournament, with 14 rounds on my rating at the last update. These rounds include the tournament from the very next weekend.

I did look and simply asked if you had played since then.

Meanwhile, thanks to the PDGA's lack of interest in doing it's job, my rating is keeping me available to sandbag the CRAP out of the Rec fields at sanctioned events I play, leaving many of the other competitors with a bad taste in their mouth about how fair PDGA sanctioned events are. Since this sort of lack of concern about consistency and accuracy of the data are rarely isolated incidents in organizations that deal with as much data as the PDGA does, I would assume this is happening all over the place, as well.

I've done what's RIGHT, and have stepped up to Intermediate of my own accord this year, knowing that my rating SHOULD reflect that I'm NOT a Rec-level player, but you can see by the vast number of rounds I've played in sanctioned events this year, that I really haven't been motivated to play many of them - and it's all down to one simple error that would've taken all of about 2 minutes to fix if the PDGA had shown the least bit of concern for it's members.

You're the only one in quite a while that hasn't had your issue fixed at the next update. Not sure why. I checked what your rating would have been at the end of 2008 and currently if those rounds were in there and both are lower than your current rating. I'm sure players have appreciated your efforts playing up in Intermediate but your rating has been in Rec since last year even including those rounds.

Meanwhile, you basically say "too effing bad for you, we were lazy for so long that it doesn't matter anymore, so cry us a river and we'll all go for a ride on the failboat."

To which I'm left with only two questions:
1. Why was this allowed to happen, for so long, with so many requests to fix it?
2. Why should I feel that I'm getting ANYTHING out of the PDGA worth paying for, when all I cared about in the first place was a rating I could compare with my friends?

1. Don't know since Roger and I can only fix what corrections come from the PDGA office
2. It's one event with two rounds whose ratings averaged close to your current rating. Your rating has still been regularly updated since then. But I realize the process should not have left you hanging so I'm checking into it.

Beyond being a player in tournaments, I'm also a TD, and would look forward to running sanctioned events (read- throwing you guys some money in fees), if I felt the PDGA was doing their job, and thus, worth giving money to. So, I guess that brings up a third question:
3. Why should I bother jumping through all of the necessary hoops to run a sanctioned event, if I can't count on the PDGA to be concerned about the flaws in their process? MY reputation as a TD will be affected by the angst my players would feel about these sort of inaccuracies and uncaring attitude, should there be any such malarchy with the results of my tourneys.

Have you actually had this problem not getting ratings for your players when running an event? This has not been an ongoing problem. Every sanctioned event that could have ratings assigned has been processed every year for the past four years now. Like I said, considering there are 1000 events with 25,000 participants annually, yours is the only issue I've heard of not being resolved.

On the technical side, you mention that the 2008 database would have to be "reopened", and as a programmer for the last 29 years I'm compelled to point out the fallacy of that statement.

Unless your entire back-end database and codebase are a total amateur hack-job, none of the data is ever closed. It should all reside within some sort of SQL database, which doesn't care in the least how old the data is, it just holds it and lets you change it at will. If you're seriously dealing with separate databases for each year of data, you're making yourselves do ungodly amounts of extra work for no reason (not to mention the performance problems associated with using flat-files, excel spreadsheets or access databases as the back-end for a website), and I re-iterate my offer to help you gut and replace your database with something that doesn't suck.

The database of course is available. But the policy has been to "close" it for changes after a certain time when corrections can be done. Since changes have to be brought forward and all ratings updates along the way recalculated from the date of the change, it's no small deal to do that for multiple update periods and do it properly.

[SkaBob]

Have you actually had this problem not getting ratings for your players when running an event?

No, I've avoided running sanctioned events because of the hassle I've had trying to get corrections done on my own ratings, and due to the amount of stress and aggrivation I've heard other TDs express about dealing with the PDGA.

Since changes have to be brought forward and all ratings updates along the way recalculated from the date of the change, it's no small deal to do that for multiple update periods and do it properly.

I'd agree, if you're using humans to do all the math. I can speak confidently from experience that for a computer provided with the right algorithm, if it somehow takes more than 30 minutes to update the entire database (which wouldn't be necessary in the case of individual corrections), it'd be nothing that a nightly job couldn't fix in the course of an hour or two. It's certainly less complex than some of the calculations I've written programs to do for companies that do millions in sales on a slow wednesday, and need all of their internal reports and figures to be updated in realtime.