Colin Colenso said:Here is some rough math....
In 2007 there will be 9 tournaments for the players outside of the KOH which features just the top 40 players.
A player ranked mid-field (around 75 ranking) would win about 50% of their matches. This will come to about 4k per event. 9 x 4 = 36,000.
To get in the top 100 will probably require about 30,000. The bottom players will probably be around 22,000 which will hardly be enough to cover the costs.
I guess players who can earn 100,000 in prizemoney alone for the season will be ranked around the top 40 mark.
So there will be a lot of money to distribute to get all the players up to 100k. On average, about 50k to around 100 players. That's an additional 5 million to be kicked in to the planned 18-19 million in prize-money on offer.
I suspect there would be a riot if it does not eventuate. Not just from the card holders, but for the hundreds that have ponied up for the qualifiers, a significant part of the promotion which has been the guaranteed 100k for 2007 card holders.
Without the 100k guarantee, or similar amount, it just won't be viable for the players in the lower half of the field to have to give up their jobs to play on the tour. We'd start to get a lot pulling out of certain events I suspect, which would damage the credibility of the tour.
There would need to be strings attached to the 100k, such as attendance, behavior etc.
It's one heck of an ambitious goal to set up a tour like this, and part of doing that has required making big promises. As I understand, the tour has been guaranteed for at least the completion of 2007.
Good luck Colin. Please see above.