Liam Kelly wrote:
>    I think its about time we have clashing dates for tournaments, leagues
>    and events. Competition may even drive tournament prices down and
>    increase the quality of tournaments. As ultimate expands its
>    inevitable this is going to happen more and more.
>   
I agree, but there are certain things to take into account. The onus is 
on whoever creates the competing event not to step on the toes of the 
existing event. It doesn't matter whether the 2nd event is bigger and 
better or not - whoever gets there first (within reason) gets the 
weekend. This is because whoever set up the first event has most 
probably booked pitches and invested some time and money already.

For example, imagine that the UKU slapped Tour 3, at late notice, on top 
of an already-planned Copa tournament. Would that be fair? Obviously 
they'd be competing for players, but not in a fair way - Tour is an 
ongoing competition, and there is an incentive to attend all events, so 
the choice for some people might be a) attend one Copa weekend, or b) 
attend three tours and Nationals. The same thing can happen with WLs - 
one of them was planning this year to force teams to attend all 5 events 
or none, which is nothing like fair competition if they clash with 
existing events.

On certain weekends 'clashes' are to be expected. The WL weekends will 
obviously have more than one tournament going on in different parts of 
the country. Few people can complain if Open Nats clashes with Women's 
Nats. The beginner tournaments all seem to clash, but again they're 
fairly local these days.

But if you're planning to clash a tournament, ask yourself: will I be 
stealing players/teams from an existing tournament? If you will, then 
you're behaving rather poorly.

Obviously clashes will become more common as more and more people play 
the game - e.g. it's hard to imagine all those local winter leagues 15 
years ago; had there been one it would most likely have been a national 
event. In a few years we might get a regionalised tour. There might be 
lots of tournaments every weekend all over the country, though even then 
the UKU will no doubt wish to reserve certain weekends for national 
competitions.

And for now, if there aren't enough paying customers to go round yet, 
then you'd better get your dates in early.

B


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