[tournament-org] Consultation on the BGA Levy
Toby Manning
ptm at tobymanning.co.uk
Tue Sep 26 10:47:59 BST 2023
Matt raises (obliquely) a significant issue:
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.)
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.
Toby.
On 26/09/2023 09:53, Matt Marsh via tournament-org wrote:
> Hi Colin,
>
> A few of my thoughts:
>
> * 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.
>
> 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.
> * 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
> * 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?
>
> 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
> * 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.
> * Even new players could be asked to register for an EGD PIN prior
> to entering a tournament. This way we can ask that *all* 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.
> * 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...
>
> Matt
>
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2023, at 16:21, secretary at britgo.org wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> 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 …
>>
>>
>> Background:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Proposed Fee Structure:
>>
>> From 2025 the EGF membership fee for each country will consist of two
>> components
>>
>> 1. A set annual amount per member from that country, plus
>> 2. For each tournament played in that country which is submitted to
>> the EGD, a small participation fee for each player in the
>> tournament /which will vary according to the status of the
>> player/. Players who are members of a national association which
>> is in the EGF will incur a much smaller fee than non-members.
>>
>>
>> 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, /regardless of which country the players
>> are from./ 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.
>>
>>
>> An example:
>>
>> Please note these numbers are from my head and are very much
>> *indicative only* and the final figures will be set as part of the
>> debate with the EGF. The scheme may look like:
>>
>> * The BGA pays 2 or 3 euro annually to the EGF for every member we
>> have.
>> * 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.
>>
>>
>> Some immediate implications:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> 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
>>
>> * 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?
>> * What about first-time tournament players where typically we don’t
>> charge? Will the EGF do the same?
>> * What about concessions? Will the charges for juniors etc be
>> lower, and if so how will the EGF know who qualifies for a
>> concession?
>> * Will online tournaments/events be charged?
>> * 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?
>>
>>
>>
>> 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?
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>>
>> *Colin Williams*
>>
>> BGA Secretary mail: secretary at britgo.org
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> *Matt Marsh*
> matt at crazedbytes.net
> 07795 297779 <tel:+44-7795-297779> / +44 7795 297779 <tel:+44-7795-297779>
>
>
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--
Toby Manning
26 Groby Lane
Newtown Linford
LE6 0HH
01530 245298 (best)
07798 825299
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