I was expecting to get more my self .

Same here. I cashed in 3 events didn't get my entry fee back.

Ditto. And in my case, it will be even less after Milo deducts his management fees. 

I am not surprised at all honestly. I dont know the numbers exactly but i feel the team entries are down and with all the expenses they have there was no way to not have a lower payout.

We bowled April 5/6 and based on 3 things that happen I can see how expense money is almost being wasted. First the thursday before we bowled I was told by a number of people, some who work in the booths and some who work for usbc, that one of the singles/doubles squad had 1 pair going. Yes i said 1 pair. I usually wouldnt believe it but being told from as many different sources makes it hard to not believe. Now the 2nd was our singles and doubles squad was supposed to be Sunday at 1030 (or when ever the late squad starts) but we got moved to 7 pm because there was not one team to bowl that squad. Finally when we bowled our squads were not even close to being full.

My point for bringing this up is to ask the question of how many other times did this happen this year? How many times were the late squads moved to 7 pm due to now teams for team event at 7? How many other squads were not even close to full. I dont think I talked to anyone that had a close to full squad. So why with the decrease in teams and participants are we still running from start of feb to first week or 2 in july. Why not drop a few weeks or even a month and fill the squads. It would decrease the amount of money they spend on paying people. It includes pay, food stipends, room and board, and all other expenses. Not to mention think of how much potential bracket money they can potentially. The more brackets the more for bowlers to make and more for USBC to make and maybe even be able to give a little more back to the bowlers.

Even if there is a contract with Reno for a specific time that could be changed because they are making the same money regardless. For example if 10k teams go out there it doesn't matter if it takes 4 months or 6 the same number of people are going out there regardless. They possibly benefit more from having full squads. More brackets means more money coming back and potentially more money spend in the city and in the casinos.

The following I copied from the 2014 rules page on bowl.com.  Nearly half of every entry goes to the expense fee unfortunately

11. FEES
Entry fee is $55 per event/per bowler: (Breakdown per event: $29 for prizes and $26
for expenses); All-Events - optional $15. ($13 for prizes, $1 for expenses and $1 to
Team USA) Total is $180 PER BOWLER for team, doubles, singles and all-events.
A $10 processing fee per team and $5 per doubles and signles set applies to all online
payments. A $20 processing fee per team and $10 per doubles and singles set applies
to all payments not made online.

Jorge,

Thank you for the response. I do completely agree with you that the entire situation is more complex than what I said. I meant it as an idea or starting point to get people thinking about and taking notice when they are out there or improvements, suggestions etc that could be made.

I do know most people plan and can only go at certain times, but I also think that if they decided to try something along the lines of shortening the event (mostly when in reno) they would have plenty of time to make arrangements. If usbc made an announcement during an off year of reno (such as 2015 being in El Paso) arrangements could be made in enough time to not loose as many teams as you think.

I completely agree with you on moving off of the 1030 s/d squad. I think that will save money for sure in the upcoming years. That is a great idea for bowlers and workers in my opinion.

As far as the full squads point I should have been a little more specific about that. When I mean full I don't mean 80 teams pursue (which you cant have now anyway because the BJ takes up the high end now) but something more than 20 or 30 teams a squad. By potentially shortening the event you don't leave so many holes and make them more full which is what I should of said. Lets look at the math there was an estimated 9000 total teams with Regular and Classified and a total of 270 total team squad times to bowl (2 a day times 135 total days) that comes out to around 34 teams a squad if it was even. Out of a total of 60+ lanes available for each team squad. Why not drop a month or so and by doing that you get the squads up to approximately 44. It saves money and makes squads a little more effective. It may not seem like a lot but it is all the way around. Which ties into the bracket situation. You are right there is a max number you can get in and if there are more than that max then that is a good thing in my opinion but what about the countless times that this isn't the situation? For the past 2 years at least both events our team bowled came no where close to having more than the max you can get it. We went as far as looking how many there were right before we walked out to decide how many to get in (we do a team chop so there is no point of getting in the max and getting a refund and having us all in every bracket together). We played a total of 375 for singles and doubles combined and even that put us in basically all of them. I think there is as much chance of people not getting in with more bowlers (even potentially better bowlers) as more people available to  get in in. Because say you go up to pay for brackets and you know there are a few really good bowlers there and you find out there are only 50 or 60 total brackets I feel they would be less likely to get in because those better bowlers will be in every one as opposed to there being 200+ and those good bowlers only being able to get in 80.

I would like to see this tournament grow back to the times with 13000+ teams again and by talking about things like this may get people talking and you never know what might happen.

These numbers might be slightly off, but last year ultimate mulligan paid 2k for first.  This year 1700 with the same number of entries.  Maybe they upped the payout ratio, I don't know.  Also the optional senior singles and all events paid terrible, despite, again having as many entries as last year.  I got $26 for a 1929 senior all events. 

Quote from: avabob on August 25, 2014, 10:19:44 AM

These numbers might be slightly off, but last year ultimate mulligan paid 2k for first.  This year 1700 with the same number of entries.  Maybe they upped the payout ratio, I don't know.  Also the optional senior singles and all events paid terrible, despite, again having as many entries as last year.  I got $26 for a 1929 senior all events. 

I've never understood why any tournament has this kind of "winnings' check. The lowest payout amount should be at least the cost of entry. I had a few bowlers with our group get checks for $32 and change. What's the point of sending hundreds of checks out for essentially nothing?


The worst one I have seen is a bowler with my State tournament group last year got a check of $2.19 for scratch all-events.

I would return $2.19 to the sender.