Would it be possible to give subscribers the option to tip the players? Say if we wanted to throw an extra $20 to the winner? Or even just add it to the prize fund.
If there was a way I didn't have to pay taxes on it I might be fine with that. We use paypal for everything. This means we get a statement for all transactions with them and a number at the end of the year that gets put in our taxes. I dont have time to keep track of what is donations and what is PPV payments in the same account. Think of going through hundreds of transactions, picking out the donations, figuring what the tax on that would be, keeping that and paying out the rest.
Just eat the tax maybe ? If ten people give $20 a match and we do ten matches a year thats $2000. So for each player in a match to get $100 extra I would have to pay taxes on the full $2000. Every April I bend over and take it deep from Uncle Sugar. I have no desire to make it any worse than it already is.
I am not a fan of donations for professionals. When we first started TAR I had a donate button on our website but never felt good about it. It has been gone for years now. My outlook is that its my job to produce a product that people want to buy. If I succeed I make an honest profit. If not then I didnt do my job and should not ask for charity.
Over the years I have had people offer things to help like Jack Justice giving us a case and many cuemakers giving cues (only one of many reasons I like cuemakers as a group so much). All of those things were awesome but IMO different than just asking people to give money.
IMO the players are paid fair compensation for the time they spend at TAR. My goal is to increase that pay because if they make more it means I make more. TAR is very symbiotic with the players. If we do better they do better. Over the years what we pay has steadily increased. We make money we do more events. More events means more paydays for them. If we can pay $10,000 instead of $5,000 that means we have more flexibility in scheduling. I would love to pay a bunch of money each event. Right now we honestly pay out a higher percentage of revenue than we should but it is what it is. Hopefully we can grow things and everyone does better.
I know you didnt ask for a manifesto on this subject but it has come up in the past and these are my thoughts on the issue.