• FPA is proposing a new European (and potentially also American) MAJOR tournament to fill in the gap years between EFO and AFO

 

  • It will not be a regular FPA tournament, on the contrary, we want to support new approaches, encourage TDs to experiment and push the sport forward

 

  • Read the detailed proposal below and take part in the survey

 

 

Hello jammers,

 

As you probably already know, in the spring of 2016 the FPA board decided to make the European Freestyle Open Championships (EFO) and American Freestyle Open championships (AFO) happen in alternating years – that means 1 year EFO only, next year AFO only. The reason for this call were because of the following:

 

  • It was a challenge to find tournament directors to organize all these events when they take place every year, especially in the US (in 2015 there was no bid for AFO 2016) but also in Europe (last moment bids for 2012 Amsterjam EFC and also 2015 Bologna).
  • The FPA does not currently operate with enough funds to financially support 3 major tournaments in one year (FPAW, EFO, AFO) and pay for ongoing website development, spread the jam project grants, etc. at the same time. 
  • FPA wanted to try to keep some semblance of balance in ranking points from majors/FPAW between the continents. 
  • FPA attempted to make these events more exclusive and therefore more attractive for players to come and also for TDs to organize.

 

This decision was based on the survey which was conducted in the period of 8/16/2015 – 10/22/2015. This survey was taken anonymously by 66 active FPA members (2015, competitors membership). There were two major questions in the survey: First one about continental tournaments being open vs closed (majority voted for open); second one about EFO and AFO happening in alternating years (53 % voted for alternating years). Full results of this survey, including some additional comments you can find here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-XWXQTDZ2/

 

Although the survey was conducted in 2015, the final decision about AFO / EFO was made by the newly formed board in spring 2016 and announced at the FPA website on 10th of June 2016 (http://www.freestyledisc.org/fpa-news-june-2016/). Admittedly, the FPA could have communicated this change louder and clearer.

 

Anyways, the decision to have a European major tournament only once in 2 years led to general dissatisfaction amongst eurojammers. We hear your voices and the last thing we want to do is to limit the numbers of tournaments in Europe, especially when the number of European jammers is still growing, there are still Tournament Directors willing to run events and jammers continue having interest in attending major tournaments (the attendance at EFC/EFO in the last 3 years was significant).

 

That’s why we present the possibility of creating a new major European (and possibly even American) event to fill in the gap years between EFO tournaments. At the same time we would like to support more players to attend these tournaments and give TDs the freedom to try new things and push our sport forward.

 

Here are the proposed parameters of this new European major tournament, however it will be called:

 

Name of the tournament

  • Could be European Freestyle Disc Championship (EFC) again, but we would like to come up with a new, different name which will resemble the new approach to this event and/or will have a better potential to attract the audience.
  • For example, the European Freestyle Games (EFG).

 

FPA support

  • Event would NOT be financially supported by FPA (at least for now), or in very limited way compared to EFO/AFO.
  • FPA would still fully recognize the event and would support it non-financially (managing bids, providing advice etc.).

 

Open vs. Closed

  • The tournament should be OPEN (players from all around the world should be allowed to attend).
  • Only all-European teams will be crowned as European Champions (same way as the German Championship where everybody can compete but only full-German teams are declared German champions).

 

Rules and formats

  • Event would NOT have to follow the official FPA competition manual except in broad terms (advance notice of different formats etc).
  • We encourage TDs to use different competition formats (turboshred, battles, HAT divisions etc.), different length of routines and even different judging systems (although we would not recommend to experiment with new, untested judging system for the first time at the major tournament).
  • No fixed entering fees or required items in player packages (although a disc would be highly recommended). Of course the entering fee should correspond to the content of player’s package and services provided to players.
  • One of TDs primary goals should be to maximize the audience and bring in the crowd.
  • Decision about the tournament site (indoors / outdoors) will be in the hand of TD (but he has to provide appropriate facilities for players and audience and has to have a backup site in case of bad weather when organizing an outdoor event).

 

Who can attend

  • We would like this tournament to be easily accessible for anybody. The board is currently discussing a new membership structure that should allow that…

 

Ranking points

  • In terms of ranking points, the event would be ranked as a Major (same level as EFO / AFO / WFDF Worlds).

 

Hosting the event

  • The event does not have to be stand-alone but it could be hosted by any existing tournament (ie. Frisbeer, Jam Britannia, Lazzaroni etc.) → That will save a lot of effort organizing this event and also could make the current tournament more interesting for players and the audience.

 

JAMMERS, WE WANT TO KNOW YOUR OPINION ABOUT THIS PROPOSED NEW EVENT AND IT’S PARAMETERS. PLEASE TAKE PART IN THE FOLLOWING SURVEY AND LET US KNOW YOUR PREFERENCES AND OPINIONS…

 

 

 >> TAKE THE SURVEY <<