Winners and Losers under 'Membership Only'

[Roger de Coverly]

. Cowley pays the League £45 per team .

Another way of looking at this, is to assume the League buys the memberships from the ECF and recoups the cost from clubs as a league fee. Firstly though, revalue the league fee to £ 58 to cover the Game Fee cost increasing from 54p to 70p. This buys three memberships which isn't enough for a team of six. At £10 a head, you can almost pay for six in the team but not the reserves.

[Roger de Coverly]

If the membership doesn't get voted in, then Game Fee would have to go up to 70p (or whatever exact fee is calculated)

If you decided this was too much, and withdrew from the ECF, then you begin the downward spiral Bob referred to earlier

I think what the ECF need to do is convince you that the ECF is worth paying for

The point that Jon and I are coming from is that a downward spiral is rather less likely at 70 p per game than £ 18 per head. That's particularly true if the ECF stopped giving concessions to Congresses and started charging them for rating services.

So in my mind it's not the case as to whether the ECF is worth paying for, but the issue is "who is doing the paying?".

All that club players see from the ECF is a fee to have games graded and an implied licence to play chess. There's fully a case for supporting the international team and having a national infrastructure. Whether this needs a full time staffed office when many of the most mission critical functions are performed outside the office is another question.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Of the players with 120 or more games to their name, only Desmedt and Hartley do not have FIDE codes. I'd suspect you'd have to go a long way down the list to find extremely active players who aren't ECF memberes.

[benedgell]

By my count the list down to 120 or more games in the 09/10 season is 24 people, playing 3721 games. So, under a membership scheme, that would be £2604.70 in game fee income lost (assuming the alternative is 70p game fee), and instead 24 x £50 (at best, if they become Patrons). £1200 total.

Under a one-fee- fits- all membership scheme, the more active you are, the better the deal. If you're category 'C' or lower then you're basically paying for the more active chess players.

[Roger de Coverly]

So why is it fair that one player pays £168 and the other £2.80?

As Jack mentions, it's more than likely that the ECF has given up revenue by talking the most active players into becoming members which caps the payment. For that number of games, even £ 168 is likely to be a smallish proportion of the overall spend on chess as a leisure activity.

The ECF is looking at Gift Aid as a means of fund raising. For that to work, you have to find people who will pay over the odds for the ECF's services and in effect provide income to the ECF as a form of individual sponsorship.

I think generally speaking, the existing direct members at £ 25 a head are not that vociferous in demanding a cheaper price from the ECF. If you play several "away" weeks or weekends at the 4NCL and Congresses, your chess related expenditure on travel, rooms, food and drink soon mounts up even before you visit the bookstall for the latest books, magazines or software. In that context, £ 25 for ECF membership or 70p a game isn't a major show stopper. Being threatened with an £ 18 charge for turning out on a winter's evening to avoid a board default on the other hand ...

So you have to assume the "active" players are at least mostly content that they support the ECF. It's Congress organisers who seem to be most against having to finance the ECF, out of their Congress budgets anyway.

[Roger de Coverly]

Under a one-fee- fits- all membership scheme, the more active you are, the better the deal. If you're category 'C' or lower then you're basically paying for the more active chess players.

You might want to revisit your calculations because I think you mean £ 25 a head rather than £ 5, but that is the proposition the ECF Directors and Council wish to be accepted.

[Roger de Coverly]

I
Why should the amount that people pay for them vary so widely

Pragmatically you charge in proportion to their interest in chess.

Even on grading, it's likely to cost more to grade 100 games than 1. Many national chess organisations make rating charges directly or indirectly in proportion to the number of games played.

Grading is not at no cost to the ECF, or at least not according to its accounts. Congresses benefit more than leagues from having reliable grades, so the ECF are wrong to give Congresses the service for nothing.

If you look at the legal position, Game Fee is the charge made by the ECF for bodies like County Associations, Leagues and Congresses to become its members and to have voting rights over the ECF. Long standing conventions, possibly going back to the foundation of the BCF itself, asked that payment by organisations forming the BCF/ECF should be proportionate to their size and influence. Even non-playing bodies, but not individuals, can become voting members of the ECF for a modest fee.

[Mick Norris]

By my count the list down to 120 or more games in the 09/10 season is 24 people, playing 3721 games. So, under a membership scheme, that would be £2604.70 in game fee income lost (assuming the alternative is 70p game fee), and instead 24 x £50 (at best, if they become Patrons). £1200 total.

Under a one-fee- fits- all membership scheme, the more active you are, the better the deal. If you're category 'C' or lower then you're basically paying for the more active chess players.

At the moment, the reverse is true, but the costs are rising either way

[Mick Norris]

It's Congress organisers who seem to be most against having to finance the ECF, out of their Congress budgets anyway.

Roger

The budget the MCF provides to run the Autumn Weekend Congress is nil

Out of this, we have to pay to hire the venue and pay Game Fee to the ECF and prizes to the players

Where do you think we get the money?

[Roger de Coverly]

Where do you think we get the money?

You get it from entry fees, but only from those players who travel to Manchester to play and pay in your event. Most of what you pay goes to running the ECF's office in Battle. So if you, or the players taking part in your event don't pay, someone else has to. In return the Manchester Congress gets a vote on the ECF Council. That's why the issue is "who pays".

(edit) Noting that the Congress is still at the University Halls of Residence and remembering when it was a major national event, you have the option of raising money by overcharging for accommodation. This is popular in Eastern Europe and to a limited extent with the 4NCL.

[Roger de Coverly]

Just a thought on ECF pricing.

If you look at the accounts, the direct cost of grading is about 5-7p per game or £ 1 to £ 2 per head. If you sell grading services at 50-70p a game or a grade itself at £ 18 per head, you have a massive mark-up, which is going to finance all the rest of the ECF's activities, notably the office in Battle.

The likely effect of selling grades at £ 18 a head is that the more active players will be prepared to pay, but the less active ones perhaps less so. What I can see happening is that local graders and treasurers will connive to not report non-member games to the ECF in order to avoid £ 18 charges. Either that or the games won't be played at all. Both affect the revenue the ECF is hoping to raise.

[Mick Norris]

In return the Manchester Congress gets a vote on the ECF Council. That's why the issue is "who pays".

If the Manchester Congress company was running the event, it would get a vote, but as the MCF is doing so, we only get a vote if the Congress moves us from under to over a round thousand votes (which is one of the things I don't like about the current Council voting structure)

And we retain 1 BCF vote regardless of whether the Congress or League are run at all

[Mike Truran]

Roger

Overcharging doesn't happen in the 4NCL. You don't half talk a load of old bo**ocks sometimes.

[Roger de Coverly]

Overcharging doesn't happen in the 4NCL. You don't half talk a load of old bo**ocks sometimes.

What is "room commission to the 4NCL then? The 4NCL encourages captains to use the official hotels where the 4NCL receives a commission.

From http://www.4ncl.co.uk/hotels.htm

Captains/managers/players booking rooms should mention the 4NCL National Chess League to the hotels' reservations staff. This will ensure that the get the agreed rates, and will also allow the hotels to keep a record of rooms booked overall, which is important because the commission the league receives from the hotels is calculated on the basis of rooms booked - the more rooms are booked, the more commission the league receives to e.g. increase prize money and keep entry fee increases down.

Whether the commission has been added to the player's room costs or is from some separate hotel marketing account, the point is that a residential event has income sources linked to accommodation bookings. For teams that aren't sponsored, 4NCL entry fees come from the players taking part, so a reduction in entry fees financed by increased room costs, if it happens, is just rotating the costs.

[Ian Kingston]

Reality check: Sunningdale Park quotes a room-only rate for next Saturday of £59 (single or double). The 4NCL rates (bed and breakfast) for last season were £46 single and £62 double. Draw your own conclusions about 'overcharging'.