How do I organize a Rock Band Tournament?

[AmpRack]

Done and done!

[volmurphy]

Amprack:I would LOVE a copy of that spreadsheet also. Planning fundraising event at school. Kudos!
tgcpmurphy@comcast.net

[RidethePiggy]

Can you throw a copy of that spreadsheet on google docs so we can share it easier?

Cause, yeah, I'd like a copy as well.
starmanfantastic@gmail.com

[AmpRack]

Sent and Sent.

Also, sent a new copy out to all the other email addresses in this thread, so everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet. It's a little different than the old one, but better, and has all the info you need.

I'll work on putting the sheet on google docs, but I've had weird issues with formatting and macros. If/when I get it all working proper, I'll link it here.

[Blues_Rocker94]

I have a question, and that is, are Rock Band (or Guitar Hero) tournaments positive fund raising methods?

[AmpRack]

Sort of a difficult question to answer, but I'll try.

If you mean fund-raising in the sense of 'bringing in money', then sure. At our events, everything is free outside of drinks from the bar or food from the kitchen (which is all normally priced and goes straight into the restaurant). We have a tip-jar set up to take donations that ONLY get used to buy more songs. On average we pull about 300-500 dollars a night just on food/beverage sales. We do all this for free, using our own equipment, so there's no overhead. The important part here is that we dont see any of this money, it's profit for the restaurant that hosts our event. We have events about once a month.

On the other side, if you mean a more traditional fundraiser for an organized charity, that's a bit harder to pull-off. For the past 2 years, Umloud has been a once-a-year Rock Band for Childs Play Charity event, and it goes all out. $150 tickets for each band (to play 1 song), raffles, silent auctions, merchandise, and others. Profits go to charity. This last year, they cleared over $11,000. I'll use them for the comparison.

The big difference here is workload and overhead costs. For our smaller events, we can only safely hold about 50 people at a time, and with time constraints, any more than 8 bands in a tournament would run way too long. I work at the restaurant so I can get the private room for free, we have our own projector, all the instruments, the console, the games, the sound system, and everything else we need, so it literally costs us NOTHING to setup and run a night. As such, we don't charge any players, we all just enjoy playing. The fact that people also come to drink and eat is a bonus; business goes into the restaurant, the owner is happy that we bring him extra money, and lets us do whatever we want.

For the latter though, you have to consider all the costs associated with it. Renting the venue is the most expensive part, so consider finding a place that may cut you a deal. Then, the cost of equipment: assuming you have all the game hardware/accessories, you still have to worry about monitors, projectors, screens, speakers, mixers, wiring, and other things to deal with THAT end of it. If you dont have any of this, perhaps the venue does and maybe they can supply it, or rent it to you. There's a WHOLE lot more that goes into it, but from a strict cost standpoint, those will be 2 of the biggest hurdles to get over.

The most direct way to get around that is by getting sponsorship. Umloud gets some pretty big-name sponsors (including HMX), so that helps. To be fair though, most of those guys already work in the industry and have some good connections to help GET these sponsors. Umloud is a different beast because it is strictly for charity, and not a tournament, in the sense of it's no competition. It's performance, it's display, it's a show, but no one is keeping score, no one is competiting, and there's nothing to "win". Also, it's worth noting that it helps to be a legitimate non-profit organization to get that point across (which Umloud is now). By being (and looking) official, people will be more likely to help out with the cause. It also ramps up the scale of the event so consider that.

If you're looking to do a large scale tournament, I've seen one of those in the past. Also doable, potentially easier than a charity setup, but still has the same initial costs mentioned above. Once you get past the costs, you also have to tack-on the cost of prizes. Also, think about bracket-styles, play-styles, prize tiers, timing (if you have the venue for 3 hours, don't plan on having more than X amount of songs played), crowd turnout size, just to name a few. If your venue can't hold more than 100 people, there's no point in getting big-name sponsors, but that doesn't mean you can't make an awesome, but appropriate, event.


So that's my take on the RB/GH Fund Raising thing. If I missed something, or you have any other questions, ask away and I'll see what I can do.

[MokiDokiDoki]

Hey Amp! Do you mind tossing that spreadsheet my way? :P
austin_zobel@yahoo.com

Much appreciated!

[AmpRack]

Sent!

Also, google docs acts a bit funny when I upload it. It uses macros and references that dont transfer between products that well. I had the same problem when I used OpenOffice (before I got MSOffice), and had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch because it wouldnt work. Sorry guys. But at the least, I keep a close eye on these forums so at least I can email it out within 24 hours.

[TomPagnozzi]

Hey AmpRack...I'll be helping run a similar tourney in a few weeks and would love to use your scoring spreadsheet! Could you please email it to digger10t @ yahoo thanks!

[hmxhenry]

...insanely informative post...

WOW, thanks so much for posting AmpRack! This is all great stuff to share with people. HMXdropslash, out resident event specialist, has been making some notes on how to run a RB competition with specifics for small, medium and large scale to share with charities and events people that contact us. If that's something that the community is interested in we could easily post that here in the Rock Events forum. Let me know what you think!