Does Wifflerock Rock?
Okay, let’s make this clear at the outset: I am not here to bash Wifflerock, although there are many in the WIFFLE community that do. I don’t know the inner workings of their tournament. I will not publish conjecture and I will not make unsubstantiated conclusions.
That said, I just paid $100 to sign up for Wifflerock. Every year, I tell myself I won’t, and then every year I do.
Wifflerock is one of the largest tournaments in New England. Their website boasts that they have held tournaments of close to 200 teams. So why is it that Wifflerock can draw 180 teams and BLWB can’t? I think we need to seriously examine that issue if we are going to grow this format, because, frankly, the value for the money isn’t there at Wifflerock. It has to be the marketing.
I hate it when people rip the tournaments for not returning enough prize money. Most of the time, the comments don’t account for field costs, insurance and other hidden costs associated with holding a tournament. But the payout structure at Wifflerock is ridiculous by any standards. Let’s say they get 180 teams averaging $100 per team. That means $18,000 in entry fees. While some text on the Wifflerock homepage states, “$2,000 in prize money aren’t bad either,” unless we value a box of Twinkies at $100, the actualy number is closer to $1,900. That means that about 10.5% of the entry fees are returned to the players in prize money, resulting in a house hold of 89.5%. A slot machine in Vegas is illegal if it has a hold of more than 17%. And this is a tournament with multiple sponsors. I assume that these sponsors pick up some or all of the costs of holding and advertising the tournament.
It should be noted that the website claims that some money raised by the tournament goes to charity, and I think that is wonderful. Perhaps a majority of the $16,000 in profit goes to charity. If that is the case, I congratulate those who run Wifflerock for their service to the community. However, I would also recommend that if they are raising $16,000 or more for charity every year they should make that point clear on their website to eliminate some of the confusion in the community regarding where all of this extra money goes.
So Wifflerock returns 10.5% in prize money. NEWA is regularly bashed for returning a number much higher than that, and BLWB leads the region, often returning 80%, 90% and even on occasion more than 100% of the money to the players. Yet people rush in droves to play Wifflerock while BLWB is still struggling to grow. Why? The organizers of Wifflerock do a competent job, but, frankly, they run one tournament a year and they are not nearly as adept at keeping the player happy as are Euro J-Rod and Benas. Moreover, the format is designed to get games completed as quickly as possible, not to identify the best WIFFLE ball player/team (although the year Dallas won as a one-man team they probably did both). Tiebreakers are arbitrary and confusing. Teams advancing to elimination play are required to return on sunday morning for what might amount to one game.
Considering the size of Wifflerock and their realtive inexperience (one tournament a year), the organizers do a passable job. However, the tournament offers horrible value from a financial perspective, and the format is certainly less than ideal. So I ask again, why do they draw 180 teams while other more player-friendly tournaments struggle? Clearly they are capturing the casual WIFFLE ball player at an impressive rate. It absolutely has to be the advertising, because there is simply no other explanation.
The organizers of other formats like BLWB need to figure out what the folks at Wifflerock are doing and copy it. If they can draw 180 teams, imagine how many BLWB could draw with the same advertising, offering players free drinks, doughnuts, sandwiches, shirts, calendars and 80+% return in prize money. The choice between BLWB and Wifflerock should be clear. If they continue to draw better than BLWB and other formats, it can only be because they are playing the advertising game more intelligently.
And before I get inundated with support emails for Wifflerock, I want to make it absolutely clear that I don’t know what they do with the money, and, indeed, all of it might go to charity as far as I know. My only motivation was to draw a comparison between the different formats and examine their ability to draw record crowds.
On a side note, and by way of follow-up on my last article, I would like to congratulate the Hustlers on their first Goldenstick victory last Sunday. In fact, the boys were 1 run away from going 2-1 on the day. After the jamboree experience, I was expecting it to take weeks to get a victory. I now have hope that we might not humilate ourselves too badly.
For those playing Wifflerock this weekend (and clearly most of you are), good luck. For those who are playing Wifflerock and haven’t yet tried BLWB, give it a shot. You will be amazed by the difference.
Dave, the main reason Wifflerock draws so many teams is because Jeff and his wife Carrie Anne have been compiling their little black book since 1992. Talk about financial worth on EBAY if they ever chose to sell the thing. Tournament Organizers line up and start the bididng.
The best way to get word out there of other formats is to plaster fliers all over the 200+ cars in attendance, although rumor has it, one year those fliers disappeared. Competition not collaboration was the thought being floated around.
Myself personally, I have been playing in Wifflerock since 1993. It was our first tournament together as DOOM and we finished 2nd. It took us 4 years to capture our 1st Championship despite many final 4 appearances. It has been commonly referred to as the Granddaddy of WIFFLE ball tournaments. Formly known as WWF- the World WIFFLE Federation, then WTF- the World Tournament Federation, and now Wifflerock- b/c for one season they had bands playing after pre-lims it is best known for it’s 2 day format and backyard family atmoshpere.
Wifflerock may not be the best format in terms prize payouts nor will the rules satisfy the most avid participants, but one thing you can be sure of, Wifflerock does guarentee a level playing field for teams of all ages and abilities, and at the end of the day almost everyone goes home feeling like they got their monies worth.
Comment by Adam Trotta — June 26, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
Trotta- I fully agree. It is a free market and I pay my $100 every year, so by definition I must feel that I get my money’s worth. My point was that if you like Wifflerock, you will love BLWB, and the huge disparity between the number of teams that they draw and the number of teams that other formats draw is evidence that they are doing something right that we should consider doing.
I certainly tried to make it clear at the outset that I wasn’t trying to bash their tournament. In fact, CA has always been nothing but friendly in her interaction with me. I was merely interested in the comparison.
But Wifflerock isn’t the granddaddy of all tournaments. The granddaddy of all tournaments is the 2015 BLWB world finals in London. Played on the grass courts at The All-England Club and featuring 875 teams from 26 countries, it will be won by Lou’s Diamonds 15-2 in a final over The Grandsons of Doom. I know this for a fact. I borrowed the Delorean and got the almanac.
PS- Bet the Astros tonight. Trust me.
Comment by Animal — June 26, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
Dave- Totally random and irrelevant question, but I like the math behind house edge and stupid crap like that. Where did you find the minumum slot machine house edge being 17% in Vegas? I’ve always believed it to be 25% in Nevada, and I found two sources online to back me up(granted they just websites, I do question the validity, but that’s all I can obtain)… thanks! I’m hoping this will lead to more useless knowledge!!
Comment by Kyle- Yo Ho — June 28, 2008 @ 12:22 am
wifflerock sucks, dumb rules, way to easy for pitchers, rock paper scissor to decide a hr call in a playoff game, thats just embarassing
Comment by mikeph — June 29, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Ok, ill be more politically correct this time i guess. Wifflerock is way too pitcher friendly, with the 6 balls, swing and a miss, and shitty new bats. And the waits a killer too, it just doesnt move along during the second day the way it should. And whats up with each team that earned a bye playing eachother right off the bat? That makes no sense to me at all.
Comment by mikeph — June 30, 2008 @ 8:38 am
I’m not sure how many teams participated this past weekend in Wifflerock but I feel the reason Wifflerock draws so many teams is due to their marketing. I know it was the first tournament I played in back in 1999 when the Sportsplex in Vernon, CT was still standing. I remember hearing the advertisement on the radio about 1 month before the tournament and was attracted to it immediately. I also really loved how they had a radio station at the tournament blasting tunes all day long. I still remember winning our first ever game on a walk off triple with Crazy Train blasting in the background. We immediately hit the parking lot to shot gun some beers and celebrate and it was at that time I knew I was going to be hooked on wiffleball tournaments forever.
Now as the years have gone on I realize that outside of the number of teams it draws, it is by far the worse organization of all the tournaments. Both BLWB and WiffleUp do a much better job at their tournaments. The prize money at Wifflerock is way too small, the rules are horrible, they make us turn our jerseys inside out, and the Dongs are constantly being hassled about boozing. The last time the Dongs played wifflerock (about 2 years ago) our team was actually banned from the entire city of Framingham. Yes, you read that right…the entire city! While the other organizations embrace and encourage our partying, Wifflerock treats teams like the 80 foot dongs as criminals.
BLWB and WiffleUp already do a great job with their core teams as most of them play in multiple tournaments and are extremely happy with the rules and prize money (Although a tipped 3rd strike into the zone should be an out). If the goal is to grow the tournaments in size then BLWB needs to find something that will draw the casual/1st time team. You need to give the people a reason to go until they see how much fun it actually is. The Dongs have brought an entourage of Super Fans to tournaments over the years and every time we bring a 1st time fan/player, their first response is usually, “you travel to play wiffleball for the weekend?” Then once we get them there they love it and are hooked on coming back. If possible, the suggestion I would give to BLWB is to have some type of promotional event at the field or bring in entertainment to attract the casual player. The Fat Boy golf tournaments have succeeded at this for golf outings. Lets say the tournament had a cover band jamming out, you would attract people who normally go to places just to listen to them and would figure why not spend the day playing wiffle in the sun too. The Over the Line tournament in San Diego draws hundreds of teams every year. For those of you who don’t know what OTL is it’s a game that is a mix of wiffleball/softball held on the Beach in San Diego (http://www.ombac.org/over_the_line/). I know BLWB tried to create an event like this at Yale Field last year and I think you would of seen double or triple the number of teams you usually have if something of that nature took place.
Comment by Donger — June 30, 2008 @ 9:24 am
relative inexperience? they have been putting tournaments on for 15 years and have the most extensive rolodex of wifflers in NE.
Comment by whippits — June 30, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
Yes, relative inexperience. If I play one game of chess per year for 16 years and you play 20 games of chess a year for 4 years, who has more experience?
And as a case in point, one need only look at their elimination draw on sunday. Teams fight all day on saturday to go 4-0 and get a bye only to be matched up 1st round against another 4-0 bye team. Hours of delays, confusing seeding, complaints about speed enforcement, etc., are just some of the myriad of complaints flying around the wiffle world this weekend.
This is not a personal complaint (congrats to Aggrocrag for playing a great game and knocking us out on Sunday 7-5, they are a fantastic team). I spoke with dozens of participants and cruised the message boards as well. People, I think, are getting fed up with the format and I think it is starting to show. After all, the wifflerock website boasts turnouts of just short of 200 teams only a few short years ago. There were certainly fewer than 100 teams there this weekend. That is a massive drop.
I personally like the organizers of Wifflerock and I do not doubt for a second that they do their best to run a first-rate tournament. However, perhaps they have lost touch with what the players are looking for as a result of running only one tournament a year and not keeping up with the direction of the sport. Certainly there was more frustration from top teams this weekend than I have heard all year.
So I stand by the experience comment. Do you think that if Benas or Trotta were running the tournament that there would be numerous top teams with top seeds battling each other in the opening round? Would there be 2.5 hour waits between games? Would the Dongs be run out of an entire city?
Comment by Animal — June 30, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
i didn’t bother to read your post aside from the first line. FYI - they run more than 1 tourney a year.
Comment by whippits — June 30, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
If they are running other tournaments of which we are not aware, I am sure the community would love to hear about them. We are always looking for new places to play.
And we welcome all comments here, even when they disagree with me. So feel free to express yourself. However, this space is moderated to encourage intelligent conversation and prevent the useless attacks, insults, and anonymous posting that have cluttered traditional WIFFLE message boards. So let’s make sure to keep things contructive and intelligent. Something like, “You are wrong. I didn’t read your post.” doesn’t really cut it.
I let it through this time because I didn’t want to give the impression that I was censoring things, but in the future I encourage you to disagree with me, but if you want to do so please make an effort to follow the argument and respond to the issues on the table.
Comment by Animal — June 30, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
Just for my own personal satisfaction …did anyone get gunned..or see a gun at any point on saturday or even sunday other than field 3 in round two of the playoffs in time for my 38 mph heater????
Comment by Ego Squad — June 30, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
I didn’t see the gun, but I heard about it being used. I am a bit mixed about this. If you have a one-pitcher team, is seems really harsh to toss the pitcher after one pitch without giving him a chance to limit his speed. On the other hand, I guess the hope is that having such Draconian penalties for throwing over the limit will encourage players to make sure that they don’t go over the limit.
We have played you guys 3 times and I have never seen anything to suggest that you are anything but honorable players. That said, one of the biggest problems with these tournaments is that there are certain teams that are constantly throwing over the limit whenever they feel like they can get away with it. NEWA tournaments are (in)famous for becoming fast pitch torurnaments.
The real solution is for everyone to take responsibility and never throw over the limit regardless of game situation. Until that happens, we are going to have unfairness on both sides. Obviously, it was really harsh to lose your only pitcher for one 38 MPH pitch, but it is equally unfair when guys with no class throw heaters by teams too intimidated to stand up for themselves.
It isn’t as if I have a problem with fast pitch WIFFLE. I play it on Sundays and hope to play more of it in the future. However, when we sign up, we agree to the rules of the tournament, and I would never want to win a game because we violated the rules.
I think that there should be automatic speed checks throughout a tournament by someone whose only task is to roam the fields with a gun. If the speed were being consistently checked, it would make it easier for us to make sure we aren’t accidentally throwing too fast, and it would eliminate the need for the Wifflerock rule, which most (including me) think is too harsh.
Most people are schocked by how slow 35-38 MPH actually is. A good rule of thumb is that if the pitch doesn’t look slow, it is probably over the limit.
This is yet another example of things being done the wrong way. Hard to argue that a team that paid money to play shouldn’t be given at least 1 warning and a chance to conform to the speed limit.
Comment by Animal — June 30, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
I agree. There should definately be roaming gun police.
Comment by test — June 30, 2008 @ 7:12 pm
Ego, you were ejected after the first offense of throwing over the limit? The rules used to be as follows: 1st offense - pitch is a ball; 2nd offense - pitcher is out for the game; 3rd offense - pitcher is out for the tourney. If you were ejected after the first, well then that is bush. Also, they are only supposed to gun after being asked to do so, not randomly based.
In my opinion, Wifflerock’s attendance has dropped recently because they just don’t care as much as they used to. This was the tourney that started it all in NE, and they used to do it right. Now, I’m not quite as convinced. But, give credit where credit is due. Without Wifflerock, the sport would not be where it is now.
Comment by Jon - Lawn Boys — July 1, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
That comment will not sit well with Mike from WUP. It’s a long story, but as he tells it, WIFFLE ball tourneys in NE made their intial appearance in the late 80’s.
Comment by Adam Trotta — July 1, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Fair enough Trotta. But what was the first one you played in? You don’t have to answer that because I already know the answer. Wifflerock did the advertising leg work to make their tourney huge. I will amend my comment to say, Without Wifflerock and Wiffle-Up! the game would not be where it is today. Sorry Mike if you are reading. Haha
Comment by Jon - Lawn Boys — July 2, 2008 @ 1:21 pm