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stay on the tour. You see, you have to motivate the
pros to go on the road. You have to have the
abilities built into the prize money breakdown.
Because of that, the first -prize money in a $10,000
tournament i not an impressive figure, no matter
how much you make it. When you get to the larger
tournaments, your philosophy changes, however. It
all has to do with the turnout.
PLAY METER: 0 for your regular tournaments,
you aren't looking to establish one big payoff, but
rather four or five moderately good payoffs. That
way in tead of helping one person along, you've
helped four or five people along?
PEPPARD: It's very important that you don't
make it a winner-take-all tournament, where the
top three or four teams take everything there is.
You've got to pread out the prize money. Look at
our nationals thi past year; you can see where 64th
place paid $500.
ROGER : You've got to realize that a guy can't
make a living winning one out of five. But he can
make a living by taking fourth in two of five. There
is, however, one other philosophy that we use in
about three events over the year, and it does
include the pie-in-the-sky big-dollar purses. You
need to have these because you have to have the
motivation, a reason for someone to become the
best. Therefore, we have events like the Super
Doubles where they win two Corvettes, and the pro
championships where they are going to win a ton of
money for first -place. And there's a $100',000
tournament coming up soon where the first -place
money will be a sizable dollar figure. But when you
talk about the $10,000 and the $25,000 events, you
have to realize that you're providing a livelihood. So
the prize money has to answer those questions.
PLA Y METER: Are cash prizes legal in all states?
PEPPARD: When we went out to conduct the
quarter-million-dollar tour, we contacted in every
market either the district attorney or the attorney
general, and we received no negative input from
anybody. There's an excellent precedent for us.
And that i the Iowa attorney general has taken the
position that a foosball event is a sports event.
There are many states, however, where you will
run into problems in any events where the entry
fees exceed the prize money. What I mean is that in
a $10,000 tournament we could run into problems in
some states if we collected $12,000 in entry fees.
You have to show them that you are giving away at
least one hundred percent of the entry fees. But we
don't have this problem because we've always run
into a deficit. Now, we have occasionally run into
some complicated licensing problems, be we have
never run into a problem as far as the actual
operation of the tournament itself.
ROGERS: The Iowa case is a classic in that we
presented the case to the Iowa attorney general.
The front page of the local newspaper reported one
day that the attorney general was evaluating the
prospects, and the next day the paper reported that
he had backed approval of the sport. It was really a
PLAY METER, May, 1978
very simple proposition, a simple demonstration
that howed that foo ball does indeed require skill
and not luck.
PLA Y METER: What is the ratio of referees to
tables?
ROGERS: One to four. There' probably one
refer e available for every four tables. I should add
that the portmanship, which I said had reached a
very low point at that Wichita tournament [during
the quarter-million-dollar tour] has reached a very
high point today. The players, in fact, have been
known to call technical fouls on themselves.
PLA Y METER: What can an operator do as far as
running his own tournaments?
PEPPARD: We don't see the operator as the key to
perpetual promotions in his locations. It isn't that
important that he turn all his locations into in -house
tournament locations. Instead, he should look for
the right locations, then he should go out and apply
our tournament principles at the grassroots level.
There's no operator in the country that can run a
tournament in everyone of his locations. But there
are very few locations where the operator cannot
find the right kind of person to oversee that kind of
promotion. So the operator can get involved by
turning his locations on to promotions. We have
someone here at our toll -free number who works
with player associations, operators, locations on
just how to promote at the local level, how to run
tournaments. I would say we probably get a
minimum of thirty phone calls a day coming either
"It's very important that you don't make it a
winner- take-aU tournament" - PEPPARD
"I don't think we're too far away from a 50,000
mailing list of committed players" - ROGERS
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