BCA League prize Money.

J

Jason Robichaud

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Just talked to owner of local room where I use to play BCA league. Decided to quit. The final #'s are

Revenue from entry $21000. 10, 5 man teams $700 weekly x 30 weeks.

He is paying out $7700???? 1/3 of entry. Made me sick to think about it. I never asked the payouts when I joined. I thought it would be close to the same as leagues in NB. Entry was $14 I thought house would get max $4. Boy was I wrong.
 
Jason Robichaud said:
Just talked to owner of local room where I use to play BCA league. Decided to quit. The final #'s are

Revenue from entry $21000. 10, 5 man teams $700 weekly x 30 weeks.

He is paying out $7700???? 1/3 of entry. Made me sick to think about it. I never asked the payouts when I joined. I thought it would be close to the same as leagues in NB. Entry was $14 I thought house would get max $4. Boy was I wrong.
Click to expand...

Still way better than APA in my area. Payout is less than 1/10.
 
Is that even legal?

Our league is 10 teams (5 person + 1 spare who sits each night) * 27 weeks at $20 each a night = $27,000

House take $5 for each person per night ... so subtract 6000 (24*10*5*5... 3 nights are double nights and the house still only takes $5)

So, the league has $21000 + some money from playoffs (almost $1000) + more than $1000 from 50/50 draws.

This year with about $23,000 we are sending 30 people (out of 60 total in the league) to Vegas (from about as far away in North America as you can go.... Halifax,Canada) and that doesn't even count the 6 people who took $600 buyouts for winning teams.

Probably the best run BCA league as far as R.O.I. goes.

See you in Vegas, Chris
 
Last edited:
iba7467 said:
Still way better than APA in my area. Payout is less than 1/10.
Click to expand...
OMG :eek: That's atrocious!!!

FWIW, I just went back to the money stats on our corporate league when I was the treasurer... and verified that we paid out 90.4% of what we collected.
 
Getting Screwed!

Jason Robichaud said:
Just talked to owner of local room where I use to play BCA league. Decided to quit. The final #'s are

Revenue from entry $21000. 10, 5 man teams $700 weekly x 30 weeks.

He is paying out $7700???? 1/3 of entry. Made me sick to think about it. I never asked the payouts when I joined. I thought it would be close to the same as leagues in NB. Entry was $14 I thought house would get max $4. Boy was I wrong.
Click to expand...


I would let all the player's know what a "Greedy " room owner you have!

Seems like if it's "BCA Sanctioned", that someone would like to hear of this!, even if it's not, regardless, that's "Highway Robbery!"

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if everyone quit, let him pay his bills with his own $, the owner should make a "hefty " sum with table time, drinks, ect...anyway!


David Harcrow
 
As far as the APA leagues go, it's structured to pay the league operator, and pay expenses for trips to Vegas for the winners. So the payback to local players is nothing compared to what you pay in.
The VNEA league we have played in the last 10 years, established a Vegas fund. We used to have 4 divisions, {it's now down to 2 because of BCA and APA leagues starting up in the area} and the league operator didn't take any money out. The Vegas fund would pay 10% of all league fee's collected for each division to the first place team, but only if that team was going to Vegas. If the first place team wasn't going to Vegas, they got so much $$$ per round point won back, and the second place team would get the vegas money. It usually worked out to about $2500 the first place team got toward their expenses of going to Vegas.
The amount your operator took out, is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. Anyone who goes back for more of that league is NUTS.
 
Here is the way I see the leagues in our area.

BCA: Here they are in house leagues, meaning they are sponsored and run by the bar. They pay back close to 90% of weekly dues and can afford to do that because they are selling you beer, food, and collecting a percentage of the dollars in each table.

Valley: We have 2 separate Valley leagues here. Both allow you to play ONLY in bars where they own the tables. They both pay back close to 90% of weekly dues, but also can afford to because they are collecting a nice percentage of the money you(and everyone not playing leagues but playing pool) are plugging into their tables to play every night.

APA: No payback. We do have a portion of our fees that go into a Travel fund to send one 9 Ball and one 8 Ball team to Vegas each year for the National Teams. This comes out to 1/3 of our dues. Also we get trophies for first or second in each division(4 divisions) each session. However, APA does not allow League Operators to own a bar---No proceeds from Beer, Food or Tables. APA also collects 20% of weekly dues from the LO each week. Now... Granted in our area we only pay $3/person a night for APA. However, if our LO wanted to pay out cash to the players, he would be taking it in the shorts. Maybe if he raised the dues to $10 a night he could pay out 30 or 40%, but then he is going to lose all his players, since the local Valley dues are only $5.

It just kills me any time I see people wanting APA to shell out what Valley or BCA shells out. They obviously do not understand how the organizations work.

I can see in the big areas that are in the $10 plus range for dues that there should be some payback, but I think it is unreasonable to expect anything more than 40% out of APA no matter what they charge. Even at that, if the LO is trying to make a living, not just making this a second income, there is going to be little room for them to be making payments to the players.
 
Jason Robichaud said:
Just talked to owner of local room where I use to play BCA league. Decided to quit. The final #'s are

Revenue from entry $21000. 10, 5 man teams $700 weekly x 30 weeks.

He is paying out $7700???? 1/3 of entry. Made me sick to think about it. I never asked the payouts when I joined. I thought it would be close to the same as leagues in NB. Entry was $14 I thought house would get max $4. Boy was I wrong.
Click to expand...

If I did the math right,

he's keeping $9 per player;

you expected max $4 per player

Chris, the happy maritimer, is in a league that keeps $5 per player, and he thinks it's a great deal.

What would be a reasonable number?

You can't just look at the fraction of the fee paid out. Chris pays $20/night. Then $15 of that goes to send half the league to Vegas. So league fees are almost like a Vegas layaway account.

Chris's LO could just as well charge $6/night and then pay out $1 of it and forget the Vegas thing. It's the same deal to the league. But clearly they have generated some excitement with their Vegas frills.

I'm curious. For these leagues, what do you get for that $5 or that $9?

Do you get free practice time before league?

Can you stay after and play?

Is there a round of drinks?

Is the league well organized?

Is the equipment well maintained?
 
And in addition to that, add on:
how much would you pay, if you went to that bar to just play for a couple of hours with a friend? - Especially note, if it's a (non-coin op) pool table.

With a 0% R.O.I....


If you don't like the way the leagues in your area are being conducted, then one option is for your to try to run a league yourself. You may discover that there's a lot more to it than you might think.

Leagues are in place to provide a service and to benefit the players, pool hall, and league director as well. For a good league to be successful, it needs to be a win, win, win scenario for all aforementioned.


There are articles in the local pool magazines talking about how pool players expect to get everything and very often contribute very little. And then they wonder why pool isn't more than it currently is...
(note: of course there are always some exceptions where people do contribute to the pool hall or whoever is involved... but in general, the pool players as a whole expect much more than they contribute).
 
Last edited:
mikepage said:
Chris, the happy maritimer, is in a league that keeps $5 per player, and he thinks it's a great deal.

...

I'm curious. For these leagues, what do you get for that $5 or that $9?

Do you get free practice time before league?

Can you stay after and play?

Is there a round of drinks?

Is the league well organized?

Is the equipment well maintained?
Click to expand...

$5 gets table time before AND after when lots of people stay to play sets. (These aren't coin-ops, they are 4x8 oversized tables)

The league is extremely well organized. The organizers (all whom love pool) get nothing out of the deal other than most of them usually get to Vegas, but they have to play well to get even that (or win a wildcard draw)

The tables are fairly good and most are recovered before each season... one needs work bad right now, but it will get it.

Yes, the math works out that I put in about $500 this year (I missed a few weeks) and got a trip that only cost about $750 if I had paid it out of pocket. But I got to play about 25 * 3 or 4 hours of pool for that too.

I think it is a great deal... and for what it's worth, I'd never play in a league where you had to pump money into the table for each game.... seems so odd to us when we have to do that in Vegas.
 
eastcoast_chris said:
[...]
I think it is a great deal... and for what it's worth, I'd never play in a league where you had to pump money into the table for each game.... seems so odd to us when we have to do that in Vegas.
Click to expand...

I agree

Balls going into a table to get locked up until somebody inserts money is one of the most obnoxious things to come out of the history of human existence.

I like the sound of your league. I was at Burnside Snooker Club a couple years ago (and played a couple cheap sets and a ring game on an 8' table). Then last year when I was in Halifax I went to a room downtown, but I don't remember it's name. Maybe a dozen 9' tables.
 
When I was an APA League Operator, I had 4 distinct league areas (across 90,000 sq. miles!:eek: ). All were different, and separated by many miles in between. Only one of the four wanted a 'payback' league. My league fees were $5/player per week (and they still had to pay quarters on top of that)...the payback league players paid $6/week. Only one dollar per week, from each player, went into my pocket...the rest went back into running the league. The extra dollar fee, for the payback league players, went to the payback, and everyone was happy. The payback was paid in the form of playoff tournament monies, for teams not going to Vegas, and was paid to 6places. All league areas still had chances to win trips to Vegas. It doesn't have to be $10/player/week to be able to offer a payback.

In the area with the payback (my hometown), the dominant league is VNEA.
They charge $4/player/week, and include quarters for the tables (because they owned them). We played 22 weeks (Oct.-Mar.), and if you won EVERY game all season, you'd still only get back about $66...or about 70% of what you paid in. Most players in this league are lucky if they get back $20. The Valley league operators send 3 teams to Vegas every year (out of about 80 local teams). I sent one APA team to Vegas for every 20 teams I had (APA qualification rules). Valley rules allow one team per every 8...so you can see that the local Valley operator is pretty cheezy about that.

The bar owners could care less about pool. They make money hand over foot on the legal gambling (poker/keno machines) in every bar...which are also owned by the same people who run the Valley league, own the tables, jukeboxes, cig and candy machines! :rolleyes:

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

soulcatcher said:
APA: No payback. We do have a portion of our fees that go into a Travel fund to send one 9 Ball and one 8 Ball team to Vegas each year for the National Teams. This comes out to 1/3 of our dues. Also we get trophies for first or second in each division(4 divisions) each session. However, APA does not allow League Operators to own a bar---No proceeds from Beer, Food or Tables. APA also collects 20% of weekly dues from the LO each week. Now... Granted in our area we only pay $3/person a night for APA. However, if our LO wanted to pay out cash to the players, he would be taking it in the shorts. Maybe if he raised the dues to $10 a night he could pay out 30 or 40%, but then he is going to lose all his players, since the local Valley dues are only $5.

It just kills me any time I see people wanting APA to shell out what Valley or BCA shells out. They obviously do not understand how the organizations work.

I can see in the big areas that are in the $10 plus range for dues that there should be some payback, but I think it is unreasonable to expect anything more than 40% out of APA no matter what they charge. Even at that, if the LO is trying to make a living, not just making this a second income, there is going to be little room for them to be making payments to the players.
Click to expand...
 
In our little 10-team BCA league, we just finished our 10th season at Family Billiards (dumb name for a pool hall) here in San Francisco. I add $1,000 to the prize fund in my exalted position as treasurer. We collected $6,552 and gave away $5,187 in "point money," which is the actual cash the players receive after trophies and all other expenses are deducted. 79% return is okay but not enough to encourage players to join the league just for the money. We pay only $12 per night, or $2.40 per game. The top team, essentially, plays free. All players get point money, even those who finished in last place.
 
BCAPL payouts.

Every BCAPL league operator is independent. They control how much they charge and how much they payout. I think the overall average of payouts across the country is over 75%.

Unfortunately there are some that charge a bit too much. They usually go away because of competition or they get the idea that leagues should be for the players - or at least a balance between the house and the players.

If there are any questions please contact our office at 702-719-7665 or my cell at 812-987-1461.

Thanks

Mark Griffin
BCA Pool League
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top