We’re sharing the information below for your consideration as you decide what events to attend this season. We understand that a higher bid fee may be cost prohibitive, and we hope that this context helps the community to better understand some of the challenges we are facing as organizers. We encourage you to share the information on this page with your team as you plan for your season. Thank you for your consideration!
What is the rationale behind your bid fee?
As long-time players, team leaders, and community members, we understand that cost plays an important factor in deciding what tournaments your team can attend each season. We’ve been deeply invested in ensuring accessibility and in creating playing opportunities over the past 15 years, particularly for the Women’s Division. We hope that we’ve brought value to this community through our tournaments as well as free skills clinics and resources.
During this time, we’ve cheered on the success of many long-running ultimate tournaments powered by local disc orgs and volunteers, and we’ve unfortunately seen many other quality tournaments fall by the wayside as great organizers and volunteers burnout.
In recent years, it’s become increasingly difficult to sustain ultimate events. The cost of everything has risen steadily over the years, but it has been difficult to translate some of these costs into increased bid fees (due to a number of factors such historic bid fee prices, price sensitivity from players, higher costs related to increased travel, and more). Access to field sites has become very competitive (limiting availability and driving up the price), and we’ve relied more and more on paid staff* to help run our events. Some organizers are addressing these challenges by experimenting with different bid fee structures (e.g. base team fee + additional per player fee). Others are stepping away from tournament organizing as the cost-benefit analysis trends heavily in a negative direction. This year, the cost of our field site has gone up by 11% and the cost of trainers has gone up by 30%.
How does this impact my team?
| Without Limits Bid Fee | Cost Per Player With 15 Players |
Cost Per Player With 20 Players |
Cost Per Player With 25 Players |
| $525 (Mash-Up and Rodeo) | $35.00 | $26.25 | $21.00 |
| $575 (Commonwealth Cup) | $38.33 | $28.75 | $23.00 |
The 2024 bid fee still does not fully address our concerns over the sustainability of running tournaments, but we also recognize where we are with respect to the rest of the ultimate landscape. Much like the “regular” economy, each organizer in the ultimate community has their own competitive advantages. These advantages might include tax-exempt status, access to fields at discounted rates, close relationships with an active local volunteer community, or sponsorship from a Convention & Visitors Bureau. These advantages are often not obvious to attendees, can be influenced by tournament location, and may have a large impact on the bid fee. Other ultimate events at the same complex charged $595 last year, and have charged upwards of $650 in the past.
Thank you sincerely for your consideration. We wish your team the best of luck this season, and we hope to see you on the fields sometime soon!
* Paid Staff
Over the past 5+ years, we’ve shifted from relying on volunteers to paying staff for two main reasons:
- We’ve found there to be a big quality difference in work (and by extension, event quality) when staff is paid. It makes sense! It’s asking a lot for people to give up an entire weekend to fill water, collect scores, and clean up after ultimate players.
- With the ultimate calendar getting increasingly busy and off-weekends at a premium, it’s been harder and harder to find people to work events, even when paying them instead of asking for volunteers.