Make registration fees free for Newcomer's first two WCA competitions

[abunickabhi]

Context:
WCA recently tried newcomers month with competitions being organized to allow more first timers to participate.
When I attended my first WCA competition in 2013, I had to save my pocket money for a long time to afford a Rubik's brand cube and the registration fees. I travelled and stayed at zero cost with some frugal decisions. I had an insane determination to compete, and I agree it will not be present with every first timer and some incentives are needed to make them stick with WCA competitions and come back to compete more.

Proposal:

• The first two competitions of a first timer will not have registration fees.
• To maintain a healthy budget for the organizer, the other participants can pay more. It is also morally correct, as the experienced competitors are trying to support to invite more competitors and grow the WCA by providing monetary incentives.
• This implementation is not in the hands of the delegate or the WCA, but the organizer and/or the Regional Organization should try to implement this scheme for cubing growth in their region.

 

[Sub1Hour]

I will say this is a proposal that would work extremely well in a scenario like a newcomer month I don't think it's very healthy to implement for every competition. I'm unsure what it looks like in other regions of the world but in my area, we struggle to retain our newcomers in most cases compared to attracting newcomers in the first place. It's not financially viable for organizers to take a risk by letting someone compete for free if they aren't going to be going to any other competitions after that since they are now even less incentivized to compete due to a higher registration fee compared to if they paid a lower fee for their first and subsequent competitions.

This is a matter of opinion but in my opinion competitor retention is far more important for the health of the cubing community than a large newcomer count. Attracting a massive newcomer crowd for a competition or two just for that crowd to never return isn't great for an organization that wants to stick around for the foreseeable future, especially if we punish those newcomers who want to become regulars by forcing them to play inflated registration fees.

There is also the issue of budgeting. If organizers have to roll the dice on how many non first-time competitors register when making the budget that puts a huge strain on them as well as the regional organization that is funding it. Anyone who has organized a competition that hasn't come close to filling up knows how stressful it can be when you are making thousands of dollars less than what you are projected to and have to cut the budget of future competitions in order to compensate for taking a loss when you should've made a profit.

Not a bad idea at all, but I think this should be used once in a blue moon if implemented instead of becoming the status quo. I do like that your proposal also gives the decision of when/if to implement this to organizers and ROs since RO autonomy is the future of the WCA

EDIT: Rereading this it looks like I'm not in favor of this proposal but I am actually quite a fan of it in smaller doses, I just wanted to bring up some things that should be accounted for if this ends up being something that goes mainstream