Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

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Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Berniecrat »

Groger Ranks has learned from writers of several sets about a recent phenomenon of attempted monopolization of online tournaments. The scenarios they described were fairly identical where they received a neatly templated email from the Long Island Quiz Bowl Association promising to compensate set writers 150% of the mirror fees in exchange for the sole right to any online mirrors of that set. The email goes on to tout the expertise of the LIQBA and their experience in running premier online tournaments and promises fields of around 200 teams split across 8 regional mirrors.

I don’t think I have to explain why this is concerning, but allow me to do so anyways. Recently when people were raising questions over the high costs of online tournaments in the COVID era, a point was brought up that it was unfair to call it monopolization since the costs for running a tournament were pretty low and anyone could offer a cheaper alternative. An exclusivity contract would prevent this from happening and would allow the LIQBA to charge much higher prices to teams than is really warranted. These costs could be seemingly justified as for better compensation of set writers (which I am totally in favor of by the way) or prizes (which I am much less a fan), allowing the prices to go largely unchallenged.

Moreover, the LIQBA is not just targeting exclusivity over one set. They are targeting as many sets as they can which would expand their reach significantly. This would also mean that basically every online tournament would be under the auspices of the organization if they had their way, with no chance of having reasonable tournament fees if the cost was a concern for teams.

On another note, I am also quite concerned about the 200 teams promise. Recently, the Long Island Quiz Bowl Association opened an offer for contact finders to enter in contacts for potential teams across circuits while being paid an effective rate lower than minimum wage. They chose not to direct people to give contact information to local quizbowl organizations but to have their own master list to keep. I hope not to appear overly conspiratorial when I question whether they are keeping these lists in the interest of increasing attendance for their online tournaments and once again maximize profits with their online tournaments monopoly.

To be clear, I am not attacking outreach or even LIQBA’s specific outreach efforts. I think like many other members of the community I was very impressed about how they were able to get teams that had barely attended pyramidal quizbowl tournaments before to turn out to online events like Scottie Online. I am also probably being unfair to LIQBA and their intentions here. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of their efforts, but I think my concerns about potential monopolization in quizbowl are pretty warranted. As far as I can tell, the LIQBA is offering no assistance to the actual production or editing of sets, but instead their only participation in the process is their desire to receive exclusivity contracts. Even if the LIQBA now has no malicious intentions, it would be incredibly easy for another organization to copy the same tactics in their desire to have virtual control over virtual quizbowl.

For what it’s worth, all the sets that reached out to us have indicated that they intend to turn down Mr. Feldman’s offers. Our hope is that this thread will provide a rationale for why the actions of the LIQBA are quite worrying and we hope that they recognize how their actions can be perceived by the larger quizbowl community.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by 1.82 »

With respect, Arjun, I don't actually see the "problems" that the title of this thread promises.

The first time I read through the post, I was confused because online quizbowl doesn't seem like something that it would be possible to monopolize. You can't hoard quizbowl or corner the market on quizbowl, after all. Online quizbowl isn't something you can hoard; anyone can write a set and then get it played. Then I saw that you were talking about monopolizing specific sets, which confused me further. For "monopolization" to be a novel concern, we'd have to presently have competition: different vendors running online tournaments on the same sets, and customers choosing whose tournaments they want to play. As far as I know, that is not anywhere the case, so there is no open market for Joe Feldman to destroy with an online quizbowl monopoly.

The situation, as far as I understand it from the post, is that Joe Feldman has offered the editors of a number of sets payment in exchange for the rights to those sets. I'm not exactly plugged into the online quizbowl scene, so I'm not sure why he has decided to insert himself as a middleman for so many online tournaments, but if the editors he has contacted were to decide that it would be a good idea to have him run their tournaments, they could take his deal. From the post it seems that they have decided that it would be a bad idea, so they have rejected his offer. I'm not sure what the issue is.

Likewise, I'm not sure why "exclusivity" would be an issue. I have never run an online tournament, but the assurance of exclusivity was implicit every time I've agreed to run a tournament. If I were to agree to run a tournament and then the set editors granted the set to someone else for the purpose of running a tournament at a lower price to compete with mine, I would be justifiably offended, and in a broader sense that sort of fragmentation would be bad for quizbowl.

So, again, while I find the Long Island Quizbowl Alliance's methods odd, I'm not sure how they're an existential danger (or really any danger at all) to online quizbowl as an institution.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by High Dependency Unit »

Dude, set producers can do whatever they want with their questions; we're not giving NEAT to LIQBA for a variety of reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion, but I'm going to be working on a separate, tossups-only set for him because if Joe gets even 100 teams to play the set, the mirror fees add up to about $6 per question -- a really fantastic amount. If set producers want to run their own online mirrors, that's fine, and if they want to follow another model, that's also fine! Ultimately each writing/editing team will make whatever decision they feel is best for them.

I also find it interesting that you're criticizing LIQBA because they're dominating a market that Groger Ranks also wants to compete in. LIQBA taking "exclusive online rights" definitely hurts Groger Ranks' ability to run online mirrors, a business you guys really started but which these guys are taking to a bigger (and hopefully better) level. I'm more concerned about how this impacts the "quiz bowl economy," and that teams who normally host tournaments as fundraisers might not be able to do so next year, but whether it's LIQBA, Groger Ranks, or set production teams running online mirrors (and they have the financial incentive to do so), this problem will exist.

So, with all due respect, I just don't think you're the right person to bring up this issue.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Bhagwan Shammbhagwan »

abolish Joe feldman
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by CPiGuy »

I need to be awake in six hours and im on my phone so this is not gonna be a long post but... I don't see any harm in making such a request? People can always say no.

also if you don't like the terms you're free to propose alternate terms. Joe isn't forcing anyone to do anything, and I have a feeling he reached out to everyone bc he assumed some would turn him down. this seems like a really exaggerated concern tbh.

besides if Joe says he'll get 200 teams to play your set and then he completely fails at outreach and only 25 do, it seems like you could reasonably argue he's broken his part of the deal and it won't be exclusive any more. (Or, even better, you could negotiate that explicitly!)
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Berniecrat »

The concerns came not because of any threat to our plans to run online tournaments (of which we only run a few anyways and which we have decided to not use any of the revenues from for our own purposes), but rather for the potential consequences of “monopolization” of online quiz bowl. You are right, there is no particular reason that Groger Ranks has to be specifically concerned more than any other group - the only reason I made the post was not to make a specific statement on behalf of Groger Ranks but rather because we were probably the only people who could post asides from people affiliated with the individual sets. This has absolutely nothing to do with concerns about us running online tournaments - if it takes having no third party organizations run online tournaments at all in order to ensure that none of these shenanigans happen we would be more than happy to bow out. Before making this post we checked individually with the sets that had notified us with drafts of the post to make sure we weren’t overly revealing anything about the fact that they had leaked to ups since the writers simultaneously wanted something to be posted about the situation, but also did not want to be seen publicly leaking their communications.

I don’t see how this problem has existed before with online tournaments in their current state. If say an organization X wanted to run a mirror of set Y with a planned tournament fee of for example $80, set Y could easily say that they aren’t comfortable having their sets mirrored for such a high price that could be burdensome for teams attending. However, if organization X had secured an agreement way before that said organization X had sole rights to mirroring set Y, the writers of set Y would have no leverage in this situation. Moreover, if organization X had procured the exclusive rights for Set Y way in advance, and the state of tournaments next year means that the profits Set Y would have earned from in person tournaments was significantly diminished, there would be no option for Set Y to run an online mirror on their own set that they had written.

Monopolization was probably the wrong word to use - I took it from Discord discussions where people complained that the overcharging of online tournament fees in a time when the only tournaments that could be played were online was akin to monopolistic behavior only for others to chide them that it was not in fact a monopoly as anyone who wanted could theoretically run their own mirror on that set for cheaper. In the case of exclusivity, this hypothetical option isn’t even on the table.

This post is not necessarily about any apocalyptic scenario that is happening right now. The monopolization referenced in this post’s title has indeed not happened as multiple sets have in fact turned down the offers from the LIQBA. This post was more as a concerned statement over what the potential implication of these behaviors could be. Quizbowl could definitely use a little more centralization in some cases, such as more codified protocols to deal with confirmed cheating cases for example, but I do not see how a third party group, whether it be LIQBA or Groger Ranks or any organization that may come up in the future, trying to claim the entire sphere of online quizbowl to itself and taking away the rights of individual sets to choose how their set gets mirrored is beneficial.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Jack »

I'm a bit late to this party, and perhaps I've misunderstood the exact details of this proposed "monopolization" since I don't have access to any emails (meaning I'm speculating here), but I am a bit confused why people are so dismissive of this post. The concerns raised in the top of the thread seem to be focused on monetary gain and price gouging (which, to respectfully echo what others have already said, is definitely not an issue), but I think that's missing the biggest potential problem.

At first, I thought the proposed "monopolization" referred to packets that were written this academic year and never had had an online tournament, in which case, yeah, I agree, it's pointless to get mad about that and there's no problem there. But it seems like the proposed sets are housewrites for next academic year, in which case, it seems fairly self evident that getting exclusive ownership to online tournaments has problems for hosts who depend on running tournaments for money. As far as I know, NAQT has not made any clear statement about whether or not its questions can be used in an online tournament over Zoom or Discord for next year, and as date-claim season is now upon us, hosts have to start thinking about what sets to use. No doubt many schools, especially colleges who don't get money elsewhere, heavily depend on running mirrors to be financially viable. And given the whole Covid thing, I don't think it's crazy to expect that most, if not all, housewrite mirrors in the fall and even winter will be online, whether through Discord, Zoom, or other service. If "Generic Quiz Bowl Org." already has the rights to an online mirror in, say, the "Mid-Atlantic area," do typical hosts have any way to actually fund themselves? Though I'm sure some high schools would be affected too, colleges could definitely take a hit. This entire theoretical arrangement raises many questions and problematic implications.

Take Columbia for example. I obviously don't know the state of their finances, but Columbia typically hosts the "Columbia Cup," a two (three?) tournament series that IIRC tend to use housewrites. Certainly they make a sizable income from this in a typical year, and I would assume they depend on this income to play the tournaments they attend in a given competition year, without too much to spare (which I think is typical of most college clubs that don't get uber-bankrolled). If Columbia wants to use Housewrite A for their first leg of the tournament, but a "mid atlantic" online mirror of Housewrite A is also hosted by Generic Quiz Bowl Org., would Columbia also be allowed to host an online tournament? Even if they are allowed by the editors, if GQBO is as successful at bringing in teams as they probably say they are, Columbia is gonna have a sizable reduction in their own field -- not to mention the fact that fields are already gonna be smaller than they typically are anyway due to school district budget cuts, health concerns, etc.. I think this is further problematic given that there is some community expectation that most college qb events will happen online, in some form or another, without any change in costs (which is totally reasonable), so it's not like Columbia's gonna have a major cut in expenses. Regardless, there are no clear boundaries here -- if "regular" HS tournaments become online, it raises the question of what the point of even having an online mirror is, especially one that divides itself by region. It seems to me like these types of arrangements have a high probability of causing a "stepping on others' toes" situation that might flout the philosophy behind geographic exclusivity.

Now, based on the responses, it seems that editors are not choosing to do this, so I guess there's no reason for worry, but the prospect of a sizable number of hosts losing an important source of revenue is clearly worrisome. If nothing else, I would encourage editors to really think about the lines between "online" tournaments and mirrors given the context of the coronavirus pandemic, and understand that, if the situation I described (a situation I think is very possible) were to happen, the editors are gonna be stuck with a rotten situation.

There are definitely ways to avoid this problem, and maybe these emails and proposed arrangements have actually thought about this, though this is unclear from this thread, and I feel that my speculation here is warranted. Maybe the regional online mirrors are set after all "regular" in person mirrors (many of which end up online) have concluded. Maybe the regional online tournaments are set in places that don't already have quiz bowl circuits. I don't know. Princeton, which depends entirely on hosting for all its qb money, has already been discussing if we should host an online version of PHSAT, since it's extremely likely we wouldn't be allowed to hold an in-person tournament, and if we consider any housewrite, we're definitely going to ask the editors and make sure that no other events, online or "in person," have the possibility of cutting into our field. That seems like a totally reasonable expectation.

Again, I'm not privy to these email conversations and what editors have considered, so perhaps my worries are frivolous, but it would really suck for hosts to get smaller fields or have no tournaments available to run at all because all the schools already went to an online mirror (or are skipping your tournament for the online mirror with harder competition!).
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Important Bird Area »

Jack wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:54 pmAs far as I know, NAQT has not made any clear statement about whether or not its questions can be used in an online tournament over Zoom or Discord for next year
We have not yet reached a decision about this issue (but we are having internal discussion about possibilities for online hosting). A lot will depend on the details of the public health situation in the fall.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

Important Bird Area wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:01 pm
Jack wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:54 pmAs far as I know, NAQT has not made any clear statement about whether or not its questions can be used in an online tournament over Zoom or Discord for next year
We have not yet reached a decision about this issue (but we are having internal discussion about possibilities for online hosting). A lot will depend on the details of the public health situation in the fall.
I feel like if this were to happen, it would need to be a joint community effort to get online qb up and running (so NAQT, ACF, PACE, independent community members, possibly even IAC). If there was ever a time when wholesale cooperation between all qb stakeholders was needed to ensure qb's stability, it's now. There's already been trial and error with all the summer tournaments, notes can be compared, and a joint effort can be undertaken to learn the lessons of those tournaments, test new software, and ensure that a fully fleshed out guide for TD's to run online tournaments is created by the next school year, for the benefit of all.
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Re: Quizbowl Monopolization and its Problems

Post by Bhagwan Shammbhagwan »

Bhagwan Shammbhagwan wrote: Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:17 pm abolish Joe feldman
this
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