Grappler's Quest,

[fiftysvn]

It is actually pretty difficult to do. That's why it is not more common.

Once you learn how to do it, it gets easier. But there is a steep learning curve. Most start up tournaments are total disasters. And by the time the promoters have learned enough to fix their mistakes, the brand of the tournament is usually already ruined from the previous failures.

What are some of the challenges?

I'm not experienced with tournaments (about 4 in 5 years).

I'd imagine a big challenge would be finding refs. I'm asking from the perspective of a gym that wants to start a small tournament in their own space and not as an independent person looking to build a brand.

Another challenge I'd imagine is maybe dealing with the sheer size of the pool of competitors and arranging brackets? I've had friends successfully organize basketball tournaments with 100+ people, but the teams that make up brackets are much smaller than brackets filled with individual competitors.

Anyway, sucks that GQ is going out of business. I considered them a "household" name around here.

 

[platfox]

I'm not sure this is actually true. One of my friends is pretty involved with the IBJJF, and he says that registrations are starting to go down relative to previous levels at a lot of IBJJF events. Maybe not Pans and Worlds yet, but things like American Nationals, etc.

They are running a ton of events, but they are spread a lot thinner now. Competition from other tournament circuits is really heating up. Plus you have several top level grapplers now saying they consider the World Pro more important than the Mundials. I think both Rodolfo and Keenan have said so on record now, and I've heard some other guys making the same comments offline.

IBJJF is still the biggest player out there, but I think their growth has leveled off and would not be surprised if they start shrinking considerably in the next five years or so.

Yeah, attendance at the many many many events they throw now might not be too high but I was thinking they were growing because of how many events they throw. Seems like at least 15 a year or so.

But, agreed, IBJJF events are pretty watered down. A buddy of mine came home from one of the Opens with double bronze in the purple division. I was like "wow, way to go! How many matches did you win?" He said "none".

 

[Balto]

What are some of the challenges?

I'm not experienced with tournaments (about 4 in 5 years).

I'd imagine a big challenge would be finding refs. I'm asking from the perspective of a gym that wants to start a small tournament in their own space and not as an independent person looking to build a brand.

Another challenge I'd imagine is maybe dealing with the sheer size of the pool of competitors and arranging brackets? I've had friends successfully organize basketball tournaments with 100+ people, but the teams that make up brackets are much smaller than brackets filled with individual competitors.

Anyway, sucks that GQ is going out of business. I considered them a "household" name around here.

I'm not experienced running tournaments. I have competed a decent amount and reffed once or twice a long time ago. So just from that perspective:

It seems to be extremely difficult to predict the number of competitors. It would be easier with preregistration, but apparently requiring preregistration severely hurts your draw. So basically you are just sitting there the day of seeing how many people walk through the door. Of course this makes it tough to predict how many mats you need, how many refs you need, etc. Experienced promoters have told me that they can use historical numbers and preregistration amounts to do a rough estimate, but even guys who have been running tournaments ten years get surprised at times and have disasters.

Many small promotions also cut corners out of greed. They are worried they won't get enough people to turn a profit, so they always pick the smallest/shittiest/worst case option to protect themselves. When things turn out bigger than that, the promoters make the money and the competitors take the pain. It's a short term outlook, but that is also why so many tournament promotions are short term.

There are also software issues. It's not that easy to make all those brackets the day of. Usually there is some sort of software in use. That crashes a lot in new promotions where they aren't used to it and haven't tested it under load.

Then just the usual trouble getting refs (so the ref standard ends up being ridiculously low), trouble getting table workers, etc. Ever wonder why the table workers always look like high school girls at the local tournaments? I'm pretty sure it is because the tournament is held in that high school, and they just tell the school to find some freshmen kids who want to make minimum wage under the table. No wonder why the points get awarded to the wrong person.

 

[Balto]

Yeah, attendance at the many many many events they throw now might not be too high but I was thinking they were growing because of how many events they throw. Seems like at least 15 a year or so.

But, agreed, IBJJF events are pretty watered down. A buddy of mine came home from one of the Opens with double bronze in the purple division. I was like "wow, way to go! How many matches did you win?" He said "none".

Yeah they are throwing more and more events for sure. But I get the feeling that overall attendance, even adding up across all events, is static if not starting to decline.

 

[Murdoch]

Hopefully Five fills the void, I know they stole GQs head ref awhile ago

Stole is kind of an unfair word in this case. I believe Alberto spent some time working with both promotions concurrently. Dave Karchmer as well. Brian is a unique guy and it takes a lot of understanding how he works in order to work with him.

PS Did I hear you took gold at Gracie Intergalactics or whatever it was in town? Congrats! I couldn't make it. How'd it go?

 

[dalexan242]

There are also software issues. It's not that easy to make all those brackets the day of. Usually there is some sort of software in use. That crashes a lot in new promotions where they aren't used to it and haven't tested it under load.

Do you know why more tournaments don't use trackwrestling? My son has done several wrestling and BJJ tournaments that use trackwrestling and it seems like a pretty cheap and easy way to do registration/bracketing/results. Sometimes (if not always) the competitors can even check their brackets from a mobile device. It's awesome and the wrestling tournament entry fees are usually 25-50% of most BJJ tournaments. At least one of the tournaments just had a trackwrestling license fee of $2-3 tacked onto the registration fee as a pass-through. Given that BJJ tournaments are usually about $100 for 2 divisions, you'd think most competitors wouldn't bat an eye at paying a couple of bucks extra in order for the tournament to run more quickly/smoothly.

 

[ganssle]

Sure would be nice if they told their referees.

 

[ganssle]

Stole is kind of an unfair word in this case. I believe Alberto spent some time working with both promotions concurrently. Dave Karchmer as well. Brian is a unique guy and it takes a lot of understanding how he works in order to work with him.

PS Did I hear you took gold at Gracie Intergalactics or whatever it was in town? Congrats! I couldn't make it. How'd it go?

I know Alberto well and he wasn't stolen.

 

[platfox]

Slightly off topic, but I have always wondered this. Is it difficult to set up small local tournaments? Why don't gyms host tournaments in their own schools and encourage their own students to sign up as well as local students in the area.

Is there a reason why this is not common? I figure it would save on rental costs of a venue.

One reason why schools hosting tournaments doesn't always work well is other schools in the area won't attend because they don't want to support you. Also, since you're hosting a lot of people worry about referee bias. The hosting school usually has their best guys compete and usually take most of the medals, but it's easy to confuse that with bad refereeing.

That's why a neutral party coming to town and hosting usually works out better. One exception I can think of is Claudio Franca and the US Open. They run a great tournament and have a big turn out.

 

[Ice 9 Cobra]

Stole is kind of an unfair word in this case. I believe Alberto spent some time working with both promotions concurrently. Dave Karchmer as well. Brian is a unique guy and it takes a lot of understanding how he works in order to work with him.

PS Did I hear you took gold at Gracie Intergalactics or whatever it was in town? Congrats! I couldn't make it. How'd it go?

Yeah, I've worked for Brian, so I definitely know what you're referring to lol. By stole I meant that Alberto chose to work full time for them rather than continue to deal with GQs antics.

Yeah I did man, thanks. It was pretty fun, but brown was super thin. I ended up having only two matches after my first guy no showed. There was major drama between Bravo and Drysdale though, I was waiting for Vegas to get another tournament riot

 

[Balto]

Do you know why more tournaments don't use trackwrestling? My son has done several wrestling and BJJ tournaments that use trackwrestling and it seems like a pretty cheap and easy way to do registration/bracketing/results. Sometimes (if not always) the competitors can even check their brackets from a mobile device. It's awesome and the wrestling tournament entry fees are usually 25-50% of most BJJ tournaments. At least one of the tournaments just had a trackwrestling license fee of $2-3 tacked onto the registration fee as a pass-through. Given that BJJ tournaments are usually about $100 for 2 divisions, you'd think most competitors wouldn't bat an eye at paying a couple of bucks extra in order for the tournament to run more quickly/smoothly.

I'm not sure why. It could be that they just don't know about it. It could be that the average BJJ tournament promoter wants to pocket that extra $2-3 per competitor rather than run a smooth tournament.

 

[Brian McLaughlin]

I know Alberto well and he wasn't stolen.

Same for Karchmer, the guy has a near religious devotion to the cause of officiating. If God and Satan were going to battle for the fate of mankind David Karchmer would be the ref to ensure fair scoring

 

[Murdoch]

Yeah, I've worked for Brian, so I definitely know what you're referring to lol. By stole I meant that Alberto chose to work full time for them rather than continue to deal with GQs antics.

Yeah I did man, thanks. It was pretty fun, but brown was super thin. I ended up having only two matches after my first guy no showed. There was major drama between Bravo and Drysdale though, I was waiting for Vegas to get another tournament riot

Yea I understood but the way the internets are I wanted to make sure people that don't know the cast of characters involved understood that Five didn't steal them from GQ.

Do tell about the dust up? Were you there when it took like 10 people to hold Fredson back. Brian had to get on the mic and say they were going to call the cops. Gotta love vegas tournaments. Sergio is so chill he doesn't get into with people. One time he and Laimon were arguing and I was amazed at how much respect Laimon gave Sergio. He was still loud but argued points in a more respectful way than his typical matside behavior. And don't get me wrong, I like Laimon.

 

[Uchi Mata]

I'm not sure this is actually true. One of my friends is pretty involved with the IBJJF, and he says that registrations are starting to go down relative to previous levels at a lot of IBJJF events. Maybe not Pans and Worlds yet, but things like American Nationals, etc.

They are running a ton of events, but they are spread a lot thinner now. Competition from other tournament circuits is really heating up. Plus you have several top level grapplers now saying they consider the World Pro more important than the Mundials. I think both Rodolfo and Keenan have said so on record now, and I've heard some other guys making the same comments offline.

IBJJF is still the biggest player out there, but I think their growth has leveled off and would not be surprised if they start shrinking considerably in the next five years or so.

People forget that Mundials and Pans are only prestigious because competitors say they are. Unlike a sport like Judo or Wrestling where you have Olympic inclusion and a single designated governing body structures the big tournaments around Olympic qualification, in BJJ there is no reason that any one governing body is the most prestigious other than they have the best competitors. That's why ADCC is more prestigious than IBJJF no-gi Mundials, simply because they get better guys. As various sanctioning bodies move into paying athletes I could see the IBJJF getting marginalized to some extent. I somewhat hope that happens, personally. I'd love to see a two tier tournament structure where you have big amateur tournaments that are less expensive to enter (like in Judo and wrestling) and then the pros get paid to fight each other for our amusement rather than paying to wax a bunch of recreational guys in the early rounds before finally having to fight each other for free (or really, to make money for Carlinhos).

 

[platfox]

We need some billionaire grappling fanatic like the Shiek in the US to throw gi tournies in the states with 20k - 40k prize money. That would be awesome and pretty much make Mundials second tier.

#wishful thinking

 

[Balto]

We need some billionaire grappling fanatic like the Shiek in the US to throw gi tournies in the states with 20k - 40k prize money. That would be awesome and pretty much make Mundials second tier.

#wishful thinking

Even the sheik spends less on grappling than we tend to think.

I was shocked to realize that for ADCC 2013, all expenses were not paid. I think if you qualified, you got a plane ticket to China paid for. But as far as hotel, food, transportation, plane ticket for your coach, etc., that was not paid for all competitors.

There's just not a lot of money in grappling, even with a sheik involved apparently.

 

[Ice 9 Cobra]

Yeah, GQ's riots and fights in Las Vegas were always fairly exciting.

A 10P purple twister'ed one of Drysdale's. There was confusion over whether or not the twister was legal, because the rules specifically state no neck or spinal cranks but in the rules meeting Javi said twister is fine. It created all sorts of drama.

 

[Ice 9 Cobra]

Even the sheik spends less on grappling than we tend to think.

I was shocked to realize that for ADCC 2013, all expenses were not paid. I think if you qualified, you got a plane ticket to China paid for. But as far as hotel, food, transportation, plane ticket for your coach, etc., that was not paid for all competitors.

There's just not a lot of money in grappling, even with a sheik involved apparently.

I've heard horror stories of various organizers of ADCC blowing the budget on a good time, then stiffing competitor's on their pre arranged compensation.

 

[kenetics]

Gustavo Dantes throws some of the best tournaments I been too and competed. Ibjff rules.

 

[ShanghaiBJJ]

What are some of the challenges?

I'm not experienced with tournaments (about 4 in 5 years).

I'd imagine a big challenge would be finding refs. I'm asking from the perspective of a gym that wants to start a small tournament in their own space and not as an independent person looking to build a brand.

Another challenge I'd imagine is maybe dealing with the sheer size of the pool of competitors and arranging brackets? I've had friends successfully organize basketball tournaments with 100+ people, but the teams that make up brackets are much smaller than brackets filled with individual competitors.

Anyway, sucks that GQ is going out of business. I considered them a "household" name around here.

Most important bits have been said already.

Biggest issue on time management is bracketing. We have been running one of the bigger tournaments in Germany here for many years. We had one guy develop a software that brackets automatically and is linked in with the scoreboards. But it took a few years to get there, now it runs really smooth.
Reffing is another thing of course.

I think the real key is pre-registration. And you can only do that, when your tournament is a real draw in terms of demand. If you put on a tourney just to make money, it will be difficult. If you put on a tourney in an area where there are basically none, people will be happy and come.