We'd be asking people not to abuse this. Hence, it's not based on nationality but it's based on where you live and how much it's going to cost you to come to the event. Our language on the website is as follows:Originally Posted by hyunchoi98
"Competitors traveling from outside of North America may have their fee waived. You should contact the organizational team to do so."
So in your case, even though you hold Korean citizenship, we would ask you to pay the registration fee so we can have the revenue we need to run this event.
Plane tickets outside of the United States and North America are expensive, and if you book in a timely manner, no one in North America should be paying more than $400. (Canadians, if I'm wrong on this, let me know.) On the other hand, a flight from Europe will easily come close to $1000 or more. Since running this event in 2004, we've always enjoyed the company of international competitors, and as a thank you to them, we are waiving their registration fee since they'll already be spending much more than a competitor from North America.
That being said, when we did calculations in terms of how much money we needed to raise from registrations, we projected off of 2010 and 2011 numbers. The number of people traveling from outside North America is relatively small, and this doesn't affect our bottom line too much.
If we had the sponsorship to run this competition, we would reduce registration fees significantly, and utilize a small registration fee in order to ensure commitment to attend as opposed to registration fees used to raise revenue for operating expenses.
Not necessarily. If your space holds 100 people, adding another person isn't going to increase your incremental cost. It will increase your cost in time, but that is a more complex discussion.
If you don't want to contribute money to an event which seeks to attract international participation, I would recommend that you stick with local competitions in the United States.
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