Competition Survey

General footbag-related topics that don't fit elsewhere go in here.
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acxel22
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by acxel22 » 20 Aug 2015 02:06

Jorden, how would prize money help the sport? I am confused.

Let`s say the average teen player has no job and still in school. He still needs to pay transport in advance.

And let`s be real, most of the prize money winners would more then often be the same best players, leaving little room for the average teen with no money.

It would benefit just a couple of players, but not the majority.

Let`s look at professional sports, NHL for example, kids play from age 5 till 18 before being drafted in the NHL. Until they are 16-17 they make 0 money out of it, but they spend TONS and more on equipment and transport. There is this little gap between 16 to 18 where they can be sponsored or paid for playing, and it is not much.

I have won money in the only footbag event I have won in the past, and it was not planned, neither did I have any motivation to win more after.
Mathieu Gauthier

Jorden
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by Jorden » 20 Aug 2015 18:14

Prize money is important for many reasons.

- gets the competitors excited
- covers expenses for the winners
- compensates for time and effort put into training (almost a part-time job worth!)
- allows top players to reinvest money into more footbag gear and attending more competitions
- provides incentive to participate in competition
- gives the sport legitimacy through the eyes of the general public - this is one of the big things they respect and value in sports!

ex.
Friend: "Do they have competitions or stuff like that?"
Player: "Yeah, for sure! We have a World Championships every year."
Friend: "Wow!! I had no idea it was that big. What can you win?"
Player: "Nothing. Usually a medal."
Friend: "Oh...nevermind." [*changes topic*]


Sound familiar? :lol:

- makes players train harder on average = quality of competition goes up
- general public more interested in watching the competition (due to greater stakes)/trying the sport themselves
- possible improved attendance from more/further away countries
- a good bullet point for potential sponsors (again - more legitimacy)
- a good bullet point for pitches to TV stations for coverage
- helps us keep the interest of players instead of losing them to more lucrative hobbies/activities
- would resonate with people in a higher income bracket = more potential cash flow in our niche market
- boosts the reputation and confidence of the organizers
- boosts the sport's international standing compared to other similar sports

etc. etc.

In regards to players needing to put the money up front anyway, mentioning significant prize money would help fund raising efforts to demonstrate how big a deal it is, and in terms of lenders, these people could actually expect some of the loan to be paid back in a short period. That's much more enticing for the lender.

This isn't 10 year olds playing AAA hockey. This is the World Championships.
Jorden Moir

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christisgodlike
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by christisgodlike » 20 Aug 2015 21:14

I agree with Jorden. Everyone that is in the community now is not motivated by money or else we would be doing other things. So it may be hard to imagine for some of us.

As for overall champ, it should probably be decided by an organization that runs all of the world championships.

And this is if your goal is to "mainstream" footbag. And it is ok if that is not your goal. Because with that mainstreaming of the sport you will probably change a lot of the community aspects that people hold dear. Just another aspect to think about.

Shredonsky
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by Shredonsky » 21 Aug 2015 10:44

I am immensely fueled by prize money. This is what got me extra serious about training hard. When I won $850 it changed my life forever and my family recognized the value in my obsession. I was very discouraged when Penske and I Won an event and received less in prizes than it had cost us to enter. It made me not want to compete.
I think that prize money alone could be motivation enough for players to compete in multiple formats.
I would prefer to see a much larger variety of competitions so that each player has a chance to win the format that matches their style.
Olympic runners have many competition formats and we have too few.
I'd really like to see more outdoor events where renting the site is cheapest so that more money can go towards prizes. Our sport is too small for big fancy expensive venues. Plus we need the publicity of playing/competing out in the open for all to see.

When a kid sees a large check handed to a young athlete they get excited and want to train so they can one day be the player getting the big money prize.

I like our judging and our add system. Small sports take a long time to grow up. That's okay.

jay7
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by jay7 » 21 Aug 2015 12:48

Hello Footbag.

After collecting the submissions, I am happy to present the results of this competition survey to you all. As some of these results are up to a matter of opinion, in terms of how you judge them, I will try to obviously be as unbiased as possible, but also try to draw realistic conclusions. I am very aware that this survey does not represent the entire Freestyle Community, however, in this document I will refer to these voters as "The Community".

Topic One: Overall Champion.

Image

Count of people who voted only for Circle: 6/59. ~10%
Count of people who voted only for Routines: 3/59. ~5%
Count of people who thought the overall champion was represented by a single event: 9. ~15%.

This means, that, 85% of the community believes that a single event does not dictate what the overall freestyle footbag champion is. That being said, if there had to be a single champion, Circle Contest is the most voted for competition.

The other notable feature of this graph, is that the results were IMO clearly lumped together. The community definitely has a similar view on how representative Routines and Circle are, versus Shred 30 Request and Sick 3. I would say that Doubles and Sick 1 definitely got the least representation, and, fall into the lowest category.

That being said, should anyone desire the actual numbers, the overall champion 'weights' are as follows.
Image

Conclusion: 95% of the community believes that Routines is not the single and most defining event at the World Championships. Given the on going debate over whether or not Routines is the most definitive freestyle world championships event, I believe the community has spoken otherwise, as demonstrated with these numbers.

Topic Two: Drops

I admit, that this question could have perhaps been broken into three segments. Because of this, I divided this question into three graphs.

Image
The overwhelming majority of the community believes that some drops are worse than others.

Image
The community is quite literally torn in half, that a mistake (i.e. obviously bailing, barely toe stalling the bag after a leap, etc), or a drop (arguably a tiny drop where the player almost immediately continues playing) could be of equal value, or if the drop is definitively more hurtful to a performance on principle.

Image
Somewhat similar, the community is definitely in favour as a whole, that the judges can gauge how much impact a drop or mistake has, versus having a strict point system decide.

I think this is relatively low impact, and does not necessarily change how the system is today. However, it is nice to see a statistical representation of the community. Feel free to discuss.

Topic Three: Happiness with Routine Judging Criteria

Image

The clear points I think in this result, is that the majority of people are either happy with routines, or, think they should have more of a focus on artistic. Given that the criteria for Routines was developed when there was no other event to fully satisfy the technical element of freestyle, (i.e. circle), I think it is an interesting poll result that so many people feel that routines should be given more emphasis on artistic. Overall I don't conclude there is a huge majority on this one, however, if you sum up "More artistic+more tech", it does indeed outweigh "Yes I am happy". I do think it says something that ~half of the community is unsatisfied, and, the majority of those unsatisfied wants more artistic.

That being said, there was a noticeable trend in comments, which I believe could be summed up in this sentence:

1.) There should be more focus on specific-to-routines judging. Be that either more clear judging criteria, mandatory artistic elements, or proper and universal routine judging training.

Topic Four: People's Champion

Image

I tried to lump together purple and blue, so visually it was quite easy to identify that ~75% of people wanted a People's Champion. This 75% made up of 30% that want to have a people's champ but do not want to take the time to vote, and ~42% actually want to participate in voting.

This one is indeed one of the most controversial topics within this survey. If I am to interpret this as "The overwhelming majority does indeed want their voice heard, lets do the people's champ", I know that ~25% of the community could be literally offended. I personally think it would be extremely interesting, but, I am not so eager that I want to deal with the backlash of this. Trying to use this information proactively, I tried to look at this information from a less controversial standpoint:

1.) ~75% of the community is unsatisfied with routine results to the point that they would like to have a second judgement. If everyone were extremely confident that the judging was accurate, I don't think anyone would be this excited to re-vote the same opinion.

If I think of why people are unsatisfied with the routine results, I suspect it boils down to a few points.

a.) The judging standards are not clear to either the judges, or players, or both.
b.) The current judging system does not accurately reflect the opinion of the community.
c.) The judges themselves were in some unidentified way inadequate for the task at hand.

Part of the reason I would like the people's champion, would be to see what the differences were, and why. Hearing the thoughts of these judges, would more easily depict the specific trends in why their results were different than the decision made by the judges. While I think this type of experiment could benefit the sport in the long term, I wouldn't want to jeopardize any progress due to the negativity surrounding the activity. Suggestions (especially on behalf of those who said no) welcome.

Image

Interestingly enough, all of those who wanted to vote in Routines did not necessarily want to vote in circle. Circle had a small, but surprising amount of less interest in voting. The conclusions drawn from circle, are otherwise similar or the same as those from routines.

Topic Five: Side Events

Image

I think these results are generally clear, in that the existing events have an opinion popular enough that they should indeed stay, and Sick Link as an example new event, is not universally desirable.

Also interesting, 5 votes included the desire to change the name from "Sick" to (for example) "Big". While I wasn't concerned about titles, interesting none the less.

Topic Six: Doubles
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I suspect that this isn't going to change anything, nor are any strong or change-worthy conclusions going to be drawn for this. Honourable mention though, were 2 votes to bring back triples.

Topic Seven: Circle

Image

Starting with the number of rounds: It was tough to draw any clear conclusion for the average number of rounds for Circle Finals, as, the result was so close to 3.5 (rather than 3, or 4..) However, the other two were much easier, showing that pre-finals the community definitely wants 3 rounds. A possible conclusion I drew from this however, was, that there was definitely a noticeable increase in more rounds for finals. Pre-finals the results converged relatively closely to 3, however, for finals it was much more of an increase.

Judging happiness: As you can see in the picture, I only included the number of voters happy with judging. This is because the overwhelming majority was in two categories.
1.) Yes (majority) - 42 votes.
2.) Yes, the criteria is good but, it needs to be clearer. Common complaints were that the judges aren't well trained enough and are too subjective, or the players/voters themselves don't understand the judging enough. - 10 votes.
3.) A nearly negligible amount of voters wanted something different, or had no opinion. However, there was no convergence.

Average number of finalists: Pretty clear cut, at, virtually 4 exactly.
Tie Resolution: Sudden death had the majority vote here. Lots of no opinion votes, and three votes which did not converge on one topic.

Last Chance; This was quite interesting. The concept that circle should have the ability to give the top semifinalists a chance to battle, such that their winner proceeds to finals. An astonishing majority is in favour of this. I personally think that it would add an extra element of suspense to tournaments, but, I'd love to hear your thoughts on why this would be awesome.

Personal Conclusion:
Something I learned from this survey, is that there is a surprising lack of education on what the judging requirements are for many, many events. Primarily I saw evidence, or direct comments saying that the judging criteria of Routines and Circle were unknown, but also some comments about the side events as well. As I want/need a project after this, I may pursue the activity of speaking with the IFPA about what they have currently, and see how to leverage it such that the community is better informed. Having spent time with Steve, and participated in the Judging Workshops at previous worlds, I can say that some of the opinions found in this survey are directly the opposite of what is in the rulebook today. Hearing people discuss things as if it is an unknown, when, it is in the rules, is telling of how well communicated those rules are. Possible ideas in my head at the moment, would include making a video and supporting documentation available to all.

Thank everyone for participating! I think as a result of these numbers, a more educated approach to discussing these topics should be possible. Please feel free to discuss, although I do suggest for continuity that rather than joining all discussion in this thread, perhaps begin new threads per topic.
Jay Boychuk

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Tjuggles
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Re: Competition Survey

Post by Tjuggles » 22 Aug 2015 01:28

great work Jay! Good to see some results. I would love to help out with this somehow, but it will have to wait until I finish my PhD next year.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this.
TJ Boutorwick

"You can do anything" -Greg Nelson

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