What is the history of the ecf office

[Matthew Turner]

Roger,
Let's say organisers add £2.50 on the entrance fee, you, Laurie and I will pay it no problem. However, there will still come a moment after the congress when the organisers will have to send a cheque for £300 or so to the ECF. My conjecture is that a lot will just not bother.
Congresses and leagues are effectively unpaid tax collectors, that to me is fundamentally not an effective system.

[JohnPaines]

It is my judgment that increasing the game fee per person by £0.25 per game - which is about half the cost of a packet of crisps in a pub - would not lead to mass numbers leaving chess.

I fully accept I have no evidence to prove this. It's simply my judgment.

It isn't just the amount - people want to see bang for their buck. You would happily pay 50p for a bag of crisps, but if the price went up to £1 without any more crisps being added to the bag, you might decide that the manufacturers were taking the mickey and you wouldn't buy them any more. If there were twice as many crisps in the bag and they were of better quality than before, you'd probably regard £1 as a bargain.

If in the original scenario you'd paid 50p and there only turned out to be six crisps in the bag, you'd feel swizzled.

[Roger de Coverly]

Roger,
Let's say organisers add £2.50 on the entrance fee, you, Laurie and I will pay it no problem.

Actually we won't or rather the Congress organiser won't. That's because we're already direct members and Congresses don't pay on direct members. Nor does the 4NCL any more. So an increase in Game Fee would hit local leagues rather more heavily than Congresses.

Rather perversely, I think the ECF's recent push to increase the number of direct members (by increasing the number of FIDE rated events) may have both reduced revenue and increased costs. The reduction in revenue could arise because someone playing a lot of congresses would contribute more to the ECF's coffers by way of the Congress paying game fee on them than they would be becoming a member. The increase in costs came from not charging Congresses the costs of FIDE rating.

Congresses and leagues are effectively unpaid tax collectors, that to me is fundamentally not an effective system.

Nothing new there, county associations have been required to do that probably since the formation of the BCF. Certainly since the 1940s, the history mentions capitation schemes, levies, registration etc, all working through the counties. It's cheaper to have unpaid tax collectors than paid ones. In fact the game fee system from 1993 onwards marked a transfer from unpaid collection to paid collection. Whereas previously County Secretaries ( like Simon Spivack) had to chase clubs for registration money to pay the BCF, it was replaced by a system where the office had to chase the County Sec and Congresses for game fee.

[Roger de Coverly]

If in the original scenario you'd paid 50p and there only turned out to be six crisps in the bag, you'd feel swizzled.

There's a body of opinion which is that the bag does only contain 6 crisps, the manufacturer's head office having eaten the rest.

[Alex Holowczak]

So an increase in Game Fee would hit local leagues rather more heavily than Congresses.

The club I pay for charges £40/season, half price for juniors. To cover the extra game fee charges that doubling it would rise, the leagues will have to charge clubs a lot more in order to get their games graded. I will play 13 games in the Birmingham League, 4 or 5 Cup games, and probably half a dozen games in the Wolverhampton and Dudley Leagues. Then there's the Division Individual. So I would probably end up paying for 25 graded games. The club would have to increase it's membership fee to something like £50 to cover the extra costs the League would have to pay. If people are dropping out of club chess (which they are), I'm not sure increasing the cost of club membership by 25% is going to encourage them to stay. That'll have a big negative impact on league chess.

[Ben Purton]

Drunken Knights £10/season........Best value in the entire country.

Ben

[Laurie Roberts]

My point Alex, is that if they saw a better service in exchange for that extra £10, they might not drop out as they would think it worth it.

Roger's point is that this alone still wouldn't raise enough to make a materially better service (albeit it should help at the margin if combined with office efficiency gains). That's a fair point Roger, in which case, you need to combine this with other fundraising ventures too. So this might not be the total answer, but a part of it perhaps?

[Ben Purton]

I don't get why Game fee is so cheap...

[William Metcalfe]

Raising game fee is not the way to go i can now return the history lesson.
The original northern membership scheme came about because of rising game fee costs to congress organisers a lot of the bigger northern congresses were not going to pay game fee the following season.
Ben i think darlington overs great value also it costs £22 a year for employed members £17 a year for unemployed retired students and free for juniors.Out off that you get the MO membership payed we run 6 teams in 3 leagues and run 6 internal competitions.
Under membership and us ofering good value and what our members want we are probably one of the few chess clubs thats membership is acually growing.

[Roger de Coverly]

because of rising game fee costs to congress organisers

Could you explain this point please?

Why was it not an option to just add the game fee increase to the entry fee? If game fee increases by 10p,that's no more than 50p on the entry fee for a five round event. For a congress organiser, game fee is the ultimate in variable costs , unlike room costs, guaranteed prizes etc., it's a cost which varies directly with the number of entries.

[Alex Holowczak]

My point Alex, is that if they saw a better service in exchange for that extra £10, they might not drop out as they would think it worth it.

Well, what can the ECF do to make league chess seem more "worth-it"? If they were independent from the ECF, they would still run. The only involvement the ECF makes is grading the games. I'm not sure what the ECF could do to make an increased charge seem worth it.

[William Metcalfe]

Sorry about the delay in replying Roger the local congress organisers did not want to keep putting the entry fee up to cover the game fee increases.The number of players entering were already on the decline a number of local congresses had already gone to the wall as people only have so much disposable income.
So to keep cost down to the players and to try and keep prize money at the same levels the decision was to not pay game fee.

[Ian Kingston]

Sorry about the delay in replying Roger the local congress organisers did not want to keep putting the entry fee up to cover the game fee increases.The number of players entering were already on the decline a number of local congresses had already gone to the wall as people only have so much disposable income.
So to keep cost down to the players and to try and keep prize money at the same levels the decision was to not pay game fee.

But then the games aren't graded and one of the motivations for people to play has been lost, especially for improving players. So the likelihood is that the number of people entering will fall anyway. Or have I missed something?

[William Metcalfe]

Questionairs were put out and people seemed less intrested in having the games graded than they were about a reduction in prize money or the cost of entry.
If you look at a big weekend congress like blackpool that has 500 players you are looking at a game fee bill well in to 4 figures the amount of people who would not play blackpool congress would be nowere near 10%.
The ECF must have done some number crunching and deceided the membership scheme was a better revinue stream for them than a game fee boycot.
There is a precident for this some countys deafiliated from the then BCF when it ran the levy scheme

[Roger de Coverly]

The ECF must have done some number crunching and deceided the membership scheme was a better revinue stream for them than a game fee boycot.

To put the amounts raised in perspective, the ECF could have given all the NCCU MO members free memberships for a couple of years at about the same cost as the deficit at the Liverpool British Championships.

(The Northern Membership Scheme is quoted as raising £ 6,386 in the year to April 2009 and £5,966 in the year to April 2008.
The British Championships at Liverpool 2008 incurred a net cost of £ 13,221)

There is a precident for this some countys deafiliated from the then BCF when it ran the levy scheme

I suspect some in the north don't think there should be a national chess body in the first place. Or if they do, someone else should pay for it.