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<p>Matt raises (obliquely) a significant issue:</p>
<p>Will the EGF bill individual TD's, or bill the BGA as a whole? (I
would have thought the latter, for a number of reasons, but Matt's
email suggests the former.)</p>
<p>If it is the latter, then any errors will be the responsibility
of by the BGA - and it will be up to the BGA whether it covers
errors itself or seeks to reclaim from TD's. I would hope that the
BGA will cover errors itself, and would only pursue TD's in the
event of egregious or deliberate flouting of the rules.</p>
<p>Toby.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/09/2023 09:53, Matt Marsh via
tournament-org wrote:<br>
</div>
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<div>Hi Colin,<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>A few of my thoughts:<br>
</div>
<ul>
<li>In my experience, management of the BGA's levy system has
always been quite loose. It relies a lot on trust - tournament
organisers generally rely on players declaring whether they
are a member or not, whether it's their first tournament etc.
The BGA relies on tournament organisers submitting the correct
levy payments. <br>
<br>
Some organisers will check such things more than others, but
the overall looseness of the mechanisms will have led to
significant margin of error in payments taken I suspect.<br>
</li>
<li>If the EGF is to have a similar levy system they need to
decide if they are happy with a loose system like ours - and
accept the margin of error that will undoubtedly result - or
whether they want a more formal mechanism which might have a
greater admin overhead<br>
</li>
<li>Players in the EGD already have a unique identifier (EGD
PIN) and presumably this would be the basis for checking
whether a player is a member of an EGF affiliated organisation
or not. To me, this is really the basis of the 'EGF Passport'
that Gerry suggests, I think?<br>
<br>
I'd expect that, as an organiser, I should be able to go to
some online tool and enter the EGD PINs for all the players
entered into my tournament and it should tell me which are
members and which are not. It doesn't need to divulge anything
else<br>
</li>
<li>For the above to be useful it would help for tournament
organisers to be more consistent in collecting player EGD PINs
on tournament entry. Currently some organisers do this, others
do not. There would be other benefits of this too since often
post-tournament there are queries when we're trying to
understand whether a given player is a new player or in fact
someone already in the EGD. <br>
</li>
<li>Even new players could be asked to register for an EGD PIN
prior to entering a tournament. This way we can ask that <b>all</b>
players provide an EGD PIN on tournament entry. This would
remove ambiguities that we get at present, whilst also
providing a framework for identifying the correct levy charge
to apply to any player.<br>
</li>
<li>The EGF could even choose, if they wished, to charge all
players an annual fee to keep their PIN active. It is
obviously a different scheme, but this would remove the
complication of the EGF having to receive fees from each
member organisation and some of the overheads involved...<br>
</li>
</ul>
<div>Matt</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On Mon, 25 Sep 2023, at 16:21, <a
href="mailto:secretary@britgo.org" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">secretary@britgo.org</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style="overflow-wrap:break-word;">
<div class="qt-WordSection1">
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Hi,<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">I am looking for some input on lessons
learned from running the BGA Levy system on tournaments. In
fact this is to help the EGF, but will indirectly help
ourselves as well. I have circulated this to the tournament
organisers list, and a few others who will have relevant
experience. I need to explain the background to this request
first …<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Background:<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoListParagraph">The EGF is proposing to change
the way it charges membership fees to its member countries.
If it gets agreement (possibly a big if) this will be
applicable from 2025. The details are as yet undecided, and
I did expect there to be a formal consultation exercise, but
it now looks like they will just bring their proposal to the
2024 AGM and vote on it. However, as we already run a system
which is similar to their proposal (the levy system) they
are keen to hear from us about what works well and what
doesn’t. Hence we may have some ability to shape the debate
before next year’s AGM.<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Proposed Fee Structure:<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoListParagraph">From 2025 the EGF membership
fee for each country will consist of two components<br>
</p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm;" type="a" start="1">
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:54pt;">A
set annual amount per member from that country, plus<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:54pt;">For
each tournament played in that country which is submitted
to the EGD, a small participation fee for each player in
the tournament <i>which will vary according to the status
of the player</i>. Players who are members of a national
association which is in the EGF will incur a much smaller
fee than non-members.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;">The first
part requires each country to maintain a list of its
members. The second part means that the BGA will be charged
based on UK tournament participation, <i>regardless of
which country the players are from.</i> Whilst we have
still to discuss this it is likely that the BGA will expect
Tournament Directors to pay that component to the BGA, who
will then pay the EGF. How the TD’s set the price for their
events will of course be down to them, but the EGF fees will
apply to all events submitted to the EGD.<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">An example:<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;">Please note
these numbers are from my head and are very much <b>indicative
only</b> and the final figures will be set as part of the
debate with the EGF. The scheme may look like:<br>
</p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">The BGA pays 2 or 3
euro annually to the EGF for every member we have.<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">For each tournament
held in the UK, the EGF will charge the BGA 0.5 euro for
every participant who is already a national member of an
EGF country, and 2 euro for every non-member.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Some immediate implications:<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;">The EGF have
already realised that TDs will want to charge non-members
more than members, given that non-members will cost them
more. This means that that TDs will need easy access to a
Europe-wide membership database, so they can quickly check
for each entrant whether or not they are a paid up member of
an EGF country. The EGF know they have to build this
database, and then persuade all member countries to keep it
up to date. Without this the system is unworkable as TDs
won’t be able to do differential charging.<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36pt;">Just a
little thought raises a whole slew of questions on the
detail of this, none of which we have answers to yet. Some
that I can think of are<br>
</p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">What about
multi-day tournaments, is the charge per day? If so how
would the EGF know which rounds were on which days to
raise the correct bill?<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">What about
first-time tournament players where typically we don’t
charge? Will the EGF do the same?<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">What about
concessions? Will the charges for juniors etc be lower,
and if so how will the EGF know who qualifies for a
concession?<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">Will online
tournaments/events be charged?<br>
</li>
<li class="qt-MsoListParagraph" style="">Will the membership
database say when the person’s membership starts and ends,
and will that be used by the EGF in their billing
calculations?<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Sorry for the length of this, but what
I would like from you please are your experiences of
handling our current levy system, what problems it has
caused you, and how you got round them. Also given the
proposed structure above, what would be needed to make it
workable for you?<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">I will collate all the responses and
create a document to send in to the EGF. It will ostensibly
be a ‘lessons learned’ document, but if there is a strong
view on any topic I can use it to put the case for the
things we want to see.<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal">Thanks in advance.<br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal"><b><span class="size"
style="font-size:12pt;">Colin Williams</span></b><br>
</p>
<p class="qt-MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6pt;"><span
style="">BGA Secretary mail: <a
href="mailto:secretary@britgo.org"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">secretary@britgo.org</a></span><br>
</p>
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class="" width="275" height="95" border="0"><span
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<p class="qt-MsoNormal"> <br>
</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div id="sig18623274">
<div class="signature">-- <br>
</div>
<div class="signature"><b>Matt Marsh</b><br>
</div>
<div class="signature"><a href="mailto:matt@crazedbytes.net"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">matt@crazedbytes.net</a><br>
</div>
<div class="signature"><a href="tel:+44-7795-297779"
moz-do-not-send="true">07795 297779</a> / <a
href="tel:+44-7795-297779" moz-do-not-send="true">+44 7795
297779</a><br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Toby Manning
26 Groby Lane
Newtown Linford
LE6 0HH
01530 245298 (best)
07798 825299</pre>
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