The topic on league secretary/treasurer fees made me think of this.

Last year, at the annual league meeting, the house raised the weekly lineage amount from $9.50 to $10.00.  At the time, we were paying $15 per week, with $0.60 going to me for secretary/treasurer fees, $3.20 going to our prize fund, and $1.70 going into our year-end party fund (we like to party ).

I asked if the members wanted to offset the lineage increase by raising the weekly fee by a dollar, from $15 to $16.  Several people said they would quit the league, rather than pay $16 per week.  Too much money, they said.  So we kept the fee at $15, and lowered the prize fund contribution to $2.70.

A few weeks into the season, someone got the idea to run a 50/50 raffle to recoup some of the lost prize fund money.  Since the members had been so adamant about not raising the weekly fee by a dollar, I really didn't think it would go over.

Well, I was wrong.  The same people who said they couldn't afford an extra dollar suddenly found an extra 5 bucks to throw into the 50/50 bucket.  All they needed was the chance to win more than they paid in.

Why are people so cheap, until you give them a chance to win something?
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seadrive
Cogito ergo bowl

I've noticed the same phenomenon.  The grousing if the weekly fee goes up by $1.00 is overwhelming, yet 50/50 jackpots sell like crazy.  There are three leagues going at the same time on Friday, and they all have 50/50s, and guys are buying tickets to all of them!  The one that sells the best (predictably)  is the one that has two pretty young ladies going around selling the tickets--and that's not even our league!  In spite of the competition among the three 50/50 jackpots, ours did well enough to add $5000 to the league prize fund last year.  Since half the money gets paid out nightly and the other half goes into the prize fund, the same guys who wouldn't pay $1.00 more per week to bowl were averaging $3.68 per night spent on 50/50 tickets--not even including what they contributed to the two other leagues.

Shiv
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Listening to the monotonous staccato of rain on my desk top