Updated Thoughts on Tournament Hosting for 30k

Precis.

A few days ago, we floated the idea of running a Horus Heresy tournament locally in the East Riding of Yorkshire and Humberside area. In the short amount of time that that blog post and idea was posted, I have been contacted by a number of people all expressing their encouragement and positive ideas for such an event. This post today is therefore an update as to where this idea is currently at. 

Venues and Costings.

I have informally asked a number of different venues for potential costs for room hire for one and two days. A few have got back to me with prices, and a number require chasing up. At the high end of the scale, venues such as KCOM stadium would be rather costly at (or over) 350 pounds per day. That cost, in and of itself, is not prohibitive though, it just means a high ticket price for attendees. The Deep (aquarium) would cost at least 250 pounds per day for a small tournament, and double that for a larger tournament. Possibly do-able, but again, I'm unconvinced about these two upper tier venues -- at least for the first tournament. On top of this, public liability insurance would be required to be paid. Hence I am thinking that these upper tier venues might be locations for a future event down the line.

The main problem arising is that the venue hire is only a part of the initial outlay for me. The purchase of additional boards (or gaming mats) and appropriate scenery is another large component. Therefore if we went a little bit more down market, the cost to the attendees would be significantly lower. 

The other factor in all of the costings that I've put together so far is the fact that I would need to run not just one event, but probably a minimum of two events to make my money back if I wanted to keep costs to the attendees reasonably low. Again, this is not a big problem, it just means that either my business account or my personal account would have to take a short term "hit" until I ran two separate tournaments to recover my expenses. I am not sure how I feel about running back-to-back tournaments yet though and whether such a short term loss would be significant for me. Equally, if the first tournament is successful and popular, I don't see why a second couldn't be hosted later in the year. Or perhaps even a 40k tournament instead of a Horus Heresy one. 

Polling and Viability.

As above, I have received a good number of positive messages, both here on the blog and via email. Please keep them rolling in as I am genuinely interested in hearing about what you think would make a high quality tournament (rather than something hosted at a local GW store, or similar). 

It seems from the responses that I have had that such a tournament would be viable. However, a few more people telling me that they're very likely to come would be more … re-assuring. 

The polls to the right are still open for responses until the start of next week. Please let me know your preferences using those polls and carry on emailing me (warpstoneflux AT gmail dot com), or leaving messages in the comments.