Poké-Economics: How Much Will Worlds Cost You?

Hello SixPrizes readers!

National Championships are over in most countries and the players that have earned their invite for the 2013 World Championship are probably asking themselves the same question:

“How much will it cost me to participate?”

There are a total of 32 countries that have the possibility to send players to Vancouver this August. Usually, the best players from each country get a “travel award” and do not have to worry with the financial aspect of participation, but that is not the case for most qualifiers and not all the national champions may have the chance to represent their country in Vancouver.

I had the idea to write this article after seeing a lot of Canadian players from Ontario and Quebec complaining that traveling to Worlds is too expensive and that it is unfair that Pokémon decided to cut their 2nd travel award.

In this article I will try to explain how in some countries it is difficult to send players to Worlds and why players that live in countries with at least 1 travel award should be happy.

Why Travel Awards

jesse james st. anne ticketpokemonscreenshots.tumblr.com
Travel awards help to truly make it the “World” Championships.

I think travel awards are great and very important for the game and I have two reasons for believing this.

First of all, it ensures that the best players can participate no matter their financial situation. It ensures that Worlds will really be about who is the best player in the world and it helps to keep a high standard in the competition. I like very much the idea of meritocracy, and I think that it is something that Americans (and so TPCi) have in their culture.

The second thing is that a World Championship involves countries from all over the globe. For that reason, it involves people with varying distances of travel to the championship and with disparities in purchasing power. If we want to keep player diversity at Worlds, the travel awards are essential. How could it truly be considered the “World” Championship if all the participants were North American?

Countries with Travel Awards

This year Pokémon will distribute a total of 29 travel awards for each age division. Here is the amount given out by country:

  • United States: 4
  • France: 2
  • Germany: 2
  • Italy: 2
  • United Kingdom: 2
  • Australia: 1
  • Austria: 1
  • Belgium/Luxembourg: 1
  • Brazil: 1
  • Canada: 1
  • Czech Republic/Slovakia: 1
  • Denmark: 1
  • Finland: 1
  • Hong Kong: 1
  • Malaysia: 1
  • Mexico: 1
  • Netherlands: 1
  • Norway: 1
  • Portugal: 1
  • Singapore: 1
  • Sweden: 1
  • Switzerland: 1

The countries that have no travel award are:

  • Argentina
  • Chile
  • Indonesia
  • Malta
  • New Zealand
  • Philippines
  • South Africa
st. anne sad depressedpokemonscreenshots.tumblr.com
Sorry Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, and others.

It is interesting to note that Argentina has had solid performances at Worlds, a good player-base, and yet still does not have a travel award.

There are two countries that are in a special situation: Luxembourg and Slovakia. Luxembourg is lumped together with Belgium for Nationals, but as I could not find a single player from Luxembourg this year I didn’t even bother in gathering travel pricing for them (it is a rich country anyway).

Slovakia is grouped with Czech Republic. I found that a Slovak Senior managed to win the National Championship of Czech Republic/Slovakia, and even though I don’t think another Slovak got the invite I decided to gather the travel pricing data for them.

I do not know the situations in South Korea or Japan because their organized play is not under TPCi jurisdiction. I believe that they probably have travel awards for their best players.

Criteria for Comparison

In order to compare how difficult it is for someone from a country to pay their trip to Vancouver I created a few rules:

  1. The US dollar will be the currency to compare the airfare prices.
  2. I will compare the price of round trip flights for the same dates (from the 3rd of August to the 12th of August).
  3. I will take only the cheapest flights for the comparison and will use data gathered from kayak.com.
  4. I selected a major city for each country. In the case of the United States I took 4 different cities with a varying geographic locations.
  5. I will use the most recent World Bank GDP (PPP) data to compare the countries from the financial point of view.

You can find here the list of the cities that I selected:

Amsterdam, Berlin, Bratislava, Bruxelles, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Dallas, Geneva, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Malta, Manilla, Mexico City, New York, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Roma, Santiago de Chile, Seoul, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna, and Wellington.

The Flight Costs

After gathering the data from the online travel agency I learned the top 5 most expensive flights to Vancouver:

  1. Bratislava, Slovakia: $5,896
  2. Jakarta, Indonesia: $1,948
  3. Wellington, New Zealand: $1,862
  4. London, United Kingdom: $1,772
  5. Lisbon, Portugal: $1,747

The first thing we can notice is that 3 of the 5 countries are European and the two other are part of the Asia-Pacific zone.

blimp pokemon animepokemonscreenshots.tumblr.com
Maybe a blimp would be a cheaper flight? (Piloted by Team Rocket of course.)

The high cost of airfare from Bratislava surprised me a lot. Then after some research, the reason seems to be that there are not many international flights departing from there. I guess that if a Slovak player wants to come to Vancouver, he or she will probably try to catch a flight from Vienna, Austria ($1,667) or Budapest, Hungary ($1,356) depending on his geographic location in Slovakia.

Then we have Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia is among the countries with the lowest purchasing power in the Pokémon community, has no travel award, and by bad luck it is also the 2nd most expensive flight to reach Vancouver. Seeing this, I fear to not see a single Indonesian player at Worlds this year.

New Zealand is the 3rd most expensive flight and it is also a country without travel award. Traveling from London is, surprisingly, very expensive. Portugal is in the middle of a financial crisis and also has very expensive airfare to Vancouver.

And this will be less interesting, but here are the top 5 of the cheapest flights to Vancouver:

  1. Los Angeles, Unites States: $365
  2. New York, United States: $574
  3. Toronto, Canada: $597
  4. Honolulu, United States: $609
  5. Dallas, United States: $641

There is very little to say there. The price changes according more or less the geographic distance from the venue. Air Canada is an expensive company and that is why there is not much difference in the prices flying from New York or Toronto despite Toronto to Vancouver being a national flight. Vancouver seems to be an affordable travel destination for any city in North America.

Finances in the Pokémon World

I will list here the five countries with the highest GDP per capita according to the World Bank data using international dollars.

  1. Singapore: $60,688
  2. Norway: $60,392
  3. Switzerland: $51,227
  4. Hong Kong: $50,551
  5. United States: $48,112

And here are the five with the lowest GDP per capita:

  1. Philippines: $4,119
  2. Indonesia: $4,636
  3. South Africa: $10,960
  4. Brazil: $11,640
  5. Argentina: $12,023

What we can see from this data is that all the “richest” countries have travel awards. I think that this was something to expect. Pokémon cards are expensive, and so the game has more popularity in this kind of country. On the other hand, of the 5 “poorest” Pokémon countries, only Brazil has travel awards.

The Final Comparison

In order to compare how difficult it is to purchase a round trip to Vancouver, I will use the following formula:

Airfare / GDP per Capita * 100 = Comparative Value

The higher the value is, harder it is for players from this country to come to Vancouver for Worlds. The best reference value to use is New York as it is the closest to 1%. In other terms, if Sidney has the value of 3.47%, it will mean that an Australian will have roughly to work 3.47 times more than a New Yorker to come to Vancouver.

The higher the value, lower the chances to see someone from this country to travel to the World Championship if they do not have a paid trip.

Country City Airfare GDP per Capita Comparative Value Travel Awards per Age Division
Indonesia Jakarta $1,948 $4,636 42.02 0
Philippines Manilla $1,644 $4,119 39.91 0
Slovakia Bratislava $5,896 $24,095 24.47 Shared with Czech
South Africa Johannesburg $1,676 $10,960 15.29 0
Argentina Buenos Aires $1,442 $12,023 11.99 0
Brazil Rio de Janeiro $1,218 $11,640 10.46 1
Malaysia Kuala Lumpur $1,670 $16,051 10.40 1
Chile Santiago $1,399 $17,270 8.10 0
Portugal Lisbon $1,747 $25,564 6.83 1
Malta Malta $1,653 $27,504 6.01 0
New Zealand Wellington $1,862 $31,082 5.99 0
Czech Repubilc Prague $1,458 $26,332 5.54 1
South Korea Seoul $1,564 $29,834 5.24 ?
United Kingdom London $1,772 $35,598 4.98 2
Mexico Mexico City $774 $16,588 4.67 1
Finland Helsinki $1,651 $37,455 4.41 1
Italy Rome $1,378 $32,672 4.22 2
France Paris $1,449 $35,247 4.11 2
Belgium Bruxelles $1,561 $38,723 4.03 1
Denmark Copenhagen $1,621 $40,933 3.96 1
Austria Vienna $1,667 $42,172 3.95 1
Germany Berlin $1,559 $39,456 3.95 2
Sweden Stockholm $1,619 $41,484 3.90 1
Japan Tokyo $1,230 $33,668 3.65 ?
Australia Sydney $1,459 $41,974 3.48 1
Netherlands Amsterdam $1,385 $42,779 3.24 1
Hong Kong Hong Kong $1,497 $50,551 2.96 1
Switzerland Geneva $1,480 $51,227 2.89 1
Norway Oslo $1,680 $60,392 2.78 1
Singapore Singapore $1,640 $60,688 2.70 1
Canada Toronto $597 $40,420 1.48 1
United States Dallas $641 $48,112 1.33 4
United States Honolulu $609 $48,112 1.27 4
United States New York $574 $48,112 1.19 4
United States Los Angeles $365 $48,112 0.76 4

At the top of the rankings we find, without any surprise, Indonesia and Philippines, which sadly have no travel award. I hope that at least the national champions will participate to the tournament.

Slovakia is 3rd due to the high cost of the flight from Bratislava, however I believe that if we take Vienna as the airport for Slovak players we would find them with similar numbers as Portugal.

jigglypuff oopspokemonscreenshots.tumblr.com
Everyone will make an effort to get there, one way or another.

South Africa, the only African country, is 4th. In South Africa there is a very big difference between the “lower” class and the medium class. We can find very poor people in the townships and on the other side a middle class with similar standards as in most of Western countries. I believe that almost all South Africans with an invite will be there in Canada, because they are probably part of the middle class.

Flying to Vancouver seems also very expensive for all South Americans, but if you have a look to my “Number of players qualified for Worlds by country” thread on the forum I would not be surprised to see a lot more South American players than usual.

Looking at the numbers, Canadians and Americans are again the most likely to afford the flight for this coming World Championship.

Conclusion

Pokémon is for some an expensive hobby. Playing at Worlds is probably one of the most amazing and worthwhile experiences for any Pokémon TCG fan.

I think that it would be fair to cut all the second travel awards and give a chance to the emerging countries. Do not call me communist, I just think that it would be a way to keep the diversity at Worlds and also a way to continue developing the game in these countries.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and I wish you good luck getting to Vancouver!

Reader Interactions

45 replies

  1. Mark Hanson

    I’m pretty disguisted with the behaviour of some of my fellow Canadians in that thread. And I also rather like your conclusion, to provide travel awards to everyone.

    But as far as all countries deserving a travel award, well…

    South Africa only got premier events last year. Their Nationals (according to https://sixprizes.com/2012/10/26/nationals-report-from-south-africa/) was about 30 players. I think it’s excusable that they don’t have a paid Worlds invite yet.

    I can’t find much information on the other no-invite countries. I would imagine some (like New Zealand or perhaps Argentina) have had decent Nationals representation, and a fair consumer-base. But I have to imagine that they don’t have awards yet because objectively, you’re more likely to reward a player with a chance at worlds by rewarding the countries with travel awards already.

    I’d be up for the position of offering prizes to all countries though. I like the idea of giving players in all Nationals true incentive to go to Worlds.

    • Stephen Botha  → Mark

      I’m quite glad that we (South Africa) got a proper and correct mention here. This year our first, proper and official Nationals had about 90 players, but without a paid invite (and the 400 points that comes with it) you probably won’t be seeing any of our players there due to the huge costs involved.
      This year/season was our first under OP so it’s understandable that we don’t have travel awards (yet), but I think other countries that have bigger fan/player bases should have travel awards. Like you said, it gives players from across the globe a real incentive to go to Worlds.

      • Rafaelkatsuya  → Stephen

        Sad to ear that maybe we will not habe South African players :S it is the first time in history that we might see all continents reprensented.

        Doesnt Brian Murdoch plan to come ?

        • Stephen Botha  → Rafaelkatsuya

          I think he’s probably seriously considering it, but he has mentioned that unless a sponsor/sponsorships come through, he won’t be going. Will keep you updated if any of the winners can actually afford it and do go.

        • Brian Murdoch  → Stephen

          This article is great, how long must it have taken you to get all those figures. WOW! Very accurate as well.

          I’m looking into the flights and it is around R16 000 ($1600) for a ticket and I have someone that I can stay with there. My wife and I have just had twins though so it’s not going to be coming out of my pocket. :(

          I’m looking around for a sponsor and have asked a few companies. It does not hurt to ask and has already got a few more people involved in Pokemon here in South Africa.

          We might have our Seniors National Winner coming over, we will see.

          I hope I can sort things out and come over. :/

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Brian

          Yeah Sponspoship is worth to try. If they don’t pay 100% of the ticket, a discount would be welcomed.

          You can try what Crawdaut say and try to gather funds. Few years ago a player did that here on 6prizes.

        • Brian Murdoch  → Rafaelkatsuya

          I can have BuyPokemon.co.za set something up for people to donate, but what do I do with the money if I don’t get enough to go? Donate it to next year and the person who wins Nationals?

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Brian

          Souns good to give to the best south african without travel award next year. Maybe card shop are whiling to help or the distributor ?

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Brian

          Oh that’s a good idea. It is possible to pay with the credit card also ?

          You should definitely post on the forum, beach and gym forum and share on facebook ;).

        • Mark Hanson  → Stephen

          You could start a kickstarter, or indiegogo or something similar. Some online pledge thing that could raise a few funds. I bet the Worldwide TCG community could get behind bringing a South African representative to Worlds :) I could donate a fiver at least!

  2. Nick Doucet

    I like this article and I agree with everything it says, but what about the cost to others to travel across the country itself to go to Nationals/Other Competitions?

    I am from Nova Scotia (3 Hours outside Halifax), where we have no Leagues or any Organized Play whatsoever. I have to pay the cost of going to world’s to travel to compete in any Competition. I decided this year I am going Nationals, and it will probably be my one and only competition of the year (Side Note: Super Glad our Nationals is open to anybody and not Invite Only).

    If I finish 2-4th at Nationals (I probably won’t, but there is still a chance), I can guarantee you that I will not be traveling to worlds because I have already spent enough money to travel to Nationals.

    My Cost to travel to Nationals, 1200$ for Airfare+Hotel. I still need to include Food and Taxi rides.

    • Rafaelkatsuya  → Nick

      This study is only taking in account the people living in large cities area.

      It is sad that you cannot come to Worlds, but if you don’t have the invite makes sense to participate National instead.

  3. Cristopher Delgado

    I have one question, I’m Spanish, but I live in Italy from September, I can classify me!?

    • Rafaelkatsuya  → Cristopher

      This year it will not be possible. Next year you can try Italian nationals as you live in Italy. If you get the invite you would represent then Italy.

      If you played enough tournaments and have at least 10 Play Points you can try the last chamce tournament.

  4. Joshua Myles Lim

    I’m from the Philippines and I’m going to worlds no matter what you say!

  5. Soon 黄順益

    I wish this article can be of a more neutral tone.

    “Then we have Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia is among the countries with
    the lowest purchasing power in the Pokémon community, has no travel
    award, and by bad luck it is also the 2nd most expensive flight to reach
    Vancouver. Seeing this, I fear to not see a single Indonesian player at
    Worlds this year.”

    These players had been flying to nearby region like Singapore to participate in the Asia Regionals Championships and finally, they have their long anticipated Nationals Championships. No travel awards, but the players are extremely excited.

    2013 will be an awesome year for both Indonesia and Phillipines, as they have been preparing and planning their Worlds trip to make their country presence over at Vancouver this august.

    Yes, We will have an Indonesian as well as Philippines representative at WORLDS this year.

    Their passion for pokemon shall not be under-estimated.
    P.S. If you are not aware: We do have Indonesian Judge over at KONA Isle last year.

    But I totally agree with the conclusion, each country should have at least 1 rep at worlds. No awards, a spend tip will do awesomely fine. :)

    • Rafaelkatsuya  → Soon

      No no I don’t under estimate the passion of those players. Especially that I bet how exited they would be to represent their countries for the first time in history.

      I am just comparing the financial aspect of the average people per country. If I would do the same some in Jakarta I might earn only 200$/month. To be honest I not sure that I would afford worlds in that condition, nor if I would play Pokémon TCG…

      • Soon 黄順益  → Rafaelkatsuya

        The GDP does not reflect the general financial capability of people playing Pokemon TCG.
        If the people at jakarta are early $200/month as a worker/employee, they shouldn’t be touching any TCG games at all and help to support the family. LOL

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Soon

          This season I can agree with what you say, because there is very little place for rogue decks.

          BUT I have already seen a guy make a rogue deck worth 25$, win French National and go top8 at worlds few years ago ;).

          What if a genius guy with 200$/month salary from Jakarta does the same?

        • RaverXp  → Rafaelkatsuya

          We are Indonesian maybe not gonna be like that.. make a rogue deck worth 25$.
          but we Indonesian people always help each other.
          the rich help the poor with borrowing it. so they can construct their own deck. so they can be participate in NATS and not waste their talent.

          for example. i can reach the top 4. thanks to my friends help me and let me to borrow their card so i can construct my deck.

          maybe our community is small. but we strong. we have bond each other.

          so don”t underestimated us just with our GDP.

          If you ask, why do you proud to be the top 4 player in NATS with borrowing card from your friends?
          my answer is, “I’m proud because i have a good friends and a good community who understand me with my economic problem but they always support me and let me borrow they card.”

          FYI, 40% Indonesia NATS participant can make their deck with borrowing
          it from their friends.
          coz we learn to make a good community and make our community bigger, we must start with helping the other the rich can help the poor, and rookie can start their new pokemon play with tasted the good deck.

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → RaverXp

          My dear friend. I think you did not understand the meaning of the article. Saya bukan bercakap buruk tentang orang indonesia.

          In this article I am saying that it is much more difficult for the average Indonesian, Philippino or South African to afford an airfare to Vancouver. And for that reason I think it would be fair if Pokemon International would consider giving Travel Award to champions in those countries despite maybe lower sales for now, as those countries can be very interessting markets for Pokemon in the long term. I am saying that because I want to see more orang indonesia, more orang selatan afrika at worlds.

          Also please don’t underestimate 25$ rogue decks ;) It might be a combo that no one noticed. The season after the guy I was talking about make top8 with that deck, it became a tier 1 deck in the next season. Low price of a deck does not mean that it is bad.

        • Roarkiller Master  → Rafaelkatsuya

          What the article is saying is, for the average Indonesians whose salary is ASSUMED by the country’s GDP, it’s a lot harder for you guys to get to Worlds.

          If we want to get into the details, the article should include income disparity as well (Singapore, for one, badly needs it addressed), but for a general article like this, it gives an okay rough estimate. There’s also the issue of how a large portion of players are, in the end, students without a fixed income, so the GDP hardly matters.

          End point, the idea is to give a rough picture of the diversity in players expected at Worlds. Like he said, it’s not Worlds if the majority are N.Americans now is it?

  6. Edgar Hideki Shinagawa

    I’m from Brazil and have the invite, but won’t go to Vancouver due the high cost. The ticket isn’t the problem (~US$2000 with taxes and visa), but hotel, taxi and food are very, very expensive and would cost the same as ticket. I really would like to go to Worlds, but I can’t spent that amount of money just to play a Pokémon TCG championship. Maybe next year.

    BTW, the major city in Brazil is São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro is the second. But prices might not change so much.

    As far I know, Brazil will have like 15 masters in this worlds (we are about ~30 masters with invite).

    I wish we could have 2 travel awards, since our Nationals had high attendence (139 masters this year)

  7. Louis Chi

    Very interesting article. I’m from New Zealand and I have 650 CPs after Nats, so I’m definitely going to Worlds this year for the first time. Hopefully New Zealand will get a paid trip soon. Last year our national champ got a paid invite due to an “error” made by TCPi on their website. We had 40+ players at our Nationals, but that’s representative of the amount of tournaments we have each year (4 BRs, 2 CC, 1 Regionals, 1 Nats). 200 CP is actually very hard to get for us and only 1 player managed to get it before Nats (he won both CCs, a BR and top 4 Regionals). In the end I think 5 of us managed to get our Worlds invite in Masters division, which is the most ever.

    Our player base is steadily growing each year, though the lack of a travel voucher seems to have shifted a few players to Yugioh and Magic (both have travel vouchers). 40+ Masters isn’t a huge number but I believe it is still bigger than a lot of the countries that got paid invites? Correct me if I am mistaken.

    It’s going to cost me $2000 for flights, and probably another $1000 for accomodation, etc. but I think it is well worth the experience of a lifetime

    • Rafaelkatsuya  → Louis

      I think it is more than Hong Kong, but I cant confirm this ^^.

      Anyway it seems that travel awards are not given depending on attendance. It is a bit unclear, because Argentina has a good player base since years and nothing like travel award.

      • Louis Chi  → Rafaelkatsuya

        I wish they would give us a set target to hit, so we know that we will get travel rewards. much like CP kickers. it would be a lot more fair for everyone i think.

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Louis

          Seems that travel award depends on local distributor sales performance and few other things, but not players performance or attendance…

    • Joshua Myles Lim  → Louis

      I agree with you! I’m from the Philippines and it’s gonna cost a WHOLE LOT to get to vancouver.

  8. Rafal Kwiecinski

    I believe your claim that allows the best to compete is flawed. To be able to qualify for worlds, thanks to tpci, requires you to be able to travel around your country to gain adequate points. I’d say that’s just as big of a roadblock.

    • Joseph Lee  → Rafal

      If you want to be literal, no World Championship is what it says.

      Everyone in the world would have to participate and give it their best, as well as having identical resources. Completely unrealistic, and that is before we factor in something like a TCG where you’d need to deduce what decks exist and are good enough to be recognized as “valid” and then have everyone do a best of five series per deck match-up (meaning Deck A vs every other deck, including the mirror, followed by Deck B vs every other deck, including the mirror) etc. until BOTH players have achieved that. I am unsure how to handle the fact that some players would have an advantage due to the deck order/previous results affecting knowledge of your opponent.

      So that is magical thinking and I realize NOT what you are saying… but that’s the base line to start from and get to a realistic option. Realistically, sometimes the best players won’t play because of lack of interest (maybe they play other TCGs, or at least don’t like Pokémon) or lack of time (there’s natural talent and there’s skill) and as you bring up, resources (can’t afford to travel even with award, can’t afford to travel without award, can’t afford to travel enough to qualify for award in the first place, can’t afford to play in the first place, etc.).

  9. Joseph Lee

    A few of these comments got me thinking… do people have a realistic expectation of the World Championship?

    It is “the World” Championship, so we want as many countries represented as possible, right?

    It is the World “Championship”, so we want the best players in the World to participate, right?

    Those two not only don’t overlap, but can flat out contradict. It is hard to predict where natural talent will be found. It is hard to predict (though not impossible) where players will have the most opportunity to hone their skills. We can see which areas have more or less resources, but… TPCi isn’t “God”. No, not even with respect to the this tournament.

    They aren’t all knowing and they aren’t perfect. They won’t know that this season, X players from the U.S. deserve to be at Worlds but Y players can’t afford to come without travel awards and thus Y travel awards are needed for the U.S… plus not being all powerful they can’t just “make” those travel awards happen – they have to be in the budget.

    Organized play is one part reward one part service for the player base, so while I want to see as many countries as possible represented at Worlds, I believe it is more important for player skill as well as player population (and related demographics) to be considered.

    TL;DR: Who should get what travel awards is complicated and confusing. @_@

    • Rafaelkatsuya  → Joseph

      I haven’t
      talked here about invites, but this will come very soon in another article.
      Here we talk about travel awards only. I understand your points, but I do not
      share the opinion.

      Maybe it is because I live in a country with a Federal Democratic system, but I
      think that for the interest of the game we should give even a small chance to
      the champion from each country to win Worlds.

      I will take the example of Brazil. Brazil is a huge country with a very
      promising economy and the game seemed to be not so developed until a Brazilian
      senior took the Worlds Trophy at home. The potential in Brazil is huge in my
      opinion. This year, if I do not mistake, it is their first year to have a
      travel award for their champions. With the new CP system masters took more than
      25 invites this season. I was very surprised and after checking on pokemon.com
      the ranking I noticed that they have more than 500 masters that played at least
      a tournament this season. I mean those numbers are huge, only USA has more
      masters than Brazil and I was never expecting that happening so soon.

      The reason is not the travel award, but probably the fact that a Brazilian won
      a World Championship. Yes a good performance at Worlds can wake up a whole
      giant such as Brazil. Now let’s going back 1 month before the Brazilian Senior
      won, there was no travel award so what if he did not come because of the
      financial issue? Maybe the Brazilian OP would not be as developed as it is
      today…

      I think that, if TPCi has the possibility they have to try their best to give
      travel award to as much many national champions as possible. It can only
      benefit to the game. It will allow good players to emerge from the new
      countries. North America and Europa will not develop much more, but in the new
      merging countries that is a lot of potential.

      It is like in the other sports, it is good to see players from all over the
      world. Take example of the Football World Cup (Soccer). What if it would be
      played with only the best European and South American countries, because they
      are the best (for now). That would be not only very boring, and the other
      countries would never try to develop this sport in their side. This is one of
      the reasons that this sport has much success than any other at an international
      scale.

      • Joseph Lee  → Rafaelkatsuya

        I am not sure if you do understand:

        I was asking how should we define the World Championships? Are people asking what it has been officially stated to mean, and what they believe it should mean?

        Getting more to what you brought up… should an invitation/trip package from Worlds be used to encourage growth in the player base regardless of said base’s actual size? Imagine some small, wealthy countries and how they could manipulate that!

        No system will be ideal, and while I wish that we could focus on just the most deserving players and not have a symbolic title. Not every country will have one of the world’s top players in it, and in fact trying to force it demeans all involved. That being said, judging the quality of the player base is far beyond me, and it makes sense to air on the side of caution. So I would look at sales and player registration to decide, and possibly revise the system more anyway.

        Imagine a Worlds where most players HAD to grind in (though there could be multiple Grinders spread around the world, not just at Worlds).

        • Rafaelkatsuya  → Joseph

          I see worlds a little bit like Olympic Games. Eeach country has a least one competitor, because each country deverses a chance to shine.

          For me the difference between 0 and 1 travel award is huge. 0 travel award, no matter how well you play, no matter how good your deck is, no matter if you are the potential next world champion that means 0 chance, 0 hope to participate if you don’t have the money. 1 trip, even there are 10’000 players, is at least a small chance.

          Nationals are already some kind of grinder nope ?

Leave a Reply

You are logged out. Register. Log in.