I completely agree; that entirely depends on the donation manager. There's a couple ways to go about it, and I would expect that any donations manager would state what to do in that case. I certainly wouldn't donate if there wasn't a contingency plan.

EDIT: make more clear WHAT I MEAN

ETF2L and ESEA should end relatively close to each other right? Both leagues are going into playoffs pretty quick. After LAN and ETF2Ls finisher, why not do a show match like they are with Highlander?

Switch between NA and EU servers and just do it for fun and all people keep in mind that high ping has a huge effect.

Then talk a bunch of trash and build hype for a LAN.

Hype hype hype, would definitely donate!

I'd rather donate for "ESEA LAN winner" rather than for a particular team though, but that might be cause I'm a silly EU person not following NA scene much and thus not having any preferences / biases.

Shame tf.tv is not able to run this donation drive (if it's true), they seem to be most fitting organization for such thing.

before you start donating to any particular team you should probably wait a while, who the hell knows what invite rosters are going to look like come august

I think TFTV is capable of doing so. Currently there is some discussion about the structure of donation drives and whether it's good or bad to have non-team entities running the drives on behalf of teams. I'm hoping some action is taken soon, but I won't be the one taking it. Just prodding people.

I've kept quiet on this thread so far...

Like Sal I hope something comes together, but am not currently involved in any plans to do so.

Last year's qualifying tourney was definitely a bit of a bungled affair. Part of the reason why is because scheduling is such a bitch. Picking the ESEA LAN winner is an easier route to go, but that should be made clear from the onset.

Last year we also didn't want to compete with ESEA LAN fundraiser efforts, so felt we couldn't start fundraising until after LAN Finals. Picking the ESEA LAN winner as the fundraiser's goal team is a clean way to do it, but there isn't any lead up competitions that can be used to cheerlead donations. Showmatchs in Vanilla ruleset could definitely be played by the LAN Winners to get ready.

However, there really isn't any guarantee that the LAN winning roster will stay together. A potential trip to Europe could definitely lead the team to shed some "dead weight" and pick up some invite superstars.

One of the mistakes we made last year was to not open the field of the tournament wider. Some pretty strong teams could form out of the woodwork due to the allure of tickets to Europe.

I think the community would definitely fund another team to go, but probably not two.

eXtv would definitely consider spending resources to get there + film again, but we'd also like to save up for gear as well as considering returning to FITES in August.

Hey Guys

I-series lan god here \o/. Basically 3 months was not enough to plan the last event to involve the Americans, 2 teams was perhaps over reaching, the 12 computers arrived an hour before the games were due to start but we got there in the end. There is no way to quantify if i46 was a success/failure as people measure it in different ways. I really don't think anyone expected massive sponsors to get involved and breathe life into TF2, i think everyone just wanted to make history and get EU vs NA at a lan and provide decent coverage of it and thats what happened.

If we try to get NA to i49, the planning needs to start *now*, Myself, Sal, Extine and others put a lot of effort into it last year and it was bloody hard work. If we don't get someone competant to lead this fund raising effort with clear defined goals etc, its not going to happen. Less procrastination about how awesome or how pointless its going to be and more someone stepping up to organise it.

Stuff is in the world for the Australian guys to get over to i49 but nothing concrete again so dont raise hopes too much.

Shit or get off the pot kids!

Easily best part of the LAN.

I am going to try and be there again, cost a ton but I had a fantastic time.

This, SO MUCH.

You need to start a donation page asap, or don't do it at all.

an i49 donation drive requires a big amount of work, a big amount of responsibility, and anyone put in charge of it needs to be 1) ultra competent 2) trustworthy 3) unburdened since it will be a pretty significant amount of effort. there are not many people like this in the tf2 community.

you can act like it's just a matter of throwing up an indiegogo page and taking $$$ but if it were that simple, you guys wouldn't be asking enigma to do it.

enigma is actively working on it and thinking of ways to approach it. be patient~

Without sounding flippant, I'd be more than happy to do it personaly; but I have zero clue about the NA scene, as I said to enigma; hence my suggestion that someone like enigma take ownership of it.

I think enigma has ownership at this point. He's been planning things out.

I was pretty sad from the results of i46, I think an extremely close NA vs EU lan would be extremely hype, and it would probably garner a lot more attention for comp tf2

If Enigma is willing to put in the work and he's an intelligent guy who knows what is required to get this off the ground and also willing to announce somthing in the next couple of weeks, i'd say he's got a pretty good chance.

You need time to hype the event and then when you reach your goal you still need time to then book the travel and the TUP pc's without it being too last minute to make it so expensive. Last time it was bank rolled by the honorable gentleman Sal so we didnt need to wait for all the money to roll in before booking stuff, i'm unsure if Enigma will have this available to him.

Hopefully eXtv can release their i46 documentary in time to add to the hype train and show what an amazing LAN atmosphere we have in europe and really get the viewer engaged and "part of the lan" themselves. This will provoke people to donate and if donated last time will feel their money went toward somthing great.

If the yanks do get to i49 then Epsilon will have learned from last year that they actually have to practice and be "professional" and we should have some much closer games.

I think a lot more Euros will donate this time, we don't want it to end how it did at i46, we have to get our revenge ;)

yeah okay

best/worst idea for i49 ever: sell pay-per-view tickets for the twitch stream

will never ever work because you'd just end up reducing viewers but IF IT DID IT WOULD BE COOL

PPV only works if it's considered a "major"

Even then, it's always best to provide free SD content and put HD behind paywall. Pay only content only works for certain folks.

Luke tells me he wants the documentary released "before summer." As near as I can tell, that's easily done.

http://www.datgif.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/riker-deal-with-it.gif

Will be good for a final push if necessary but cannot be the starting impetus as it'll be way too late.

I think we have to think about the two things that brought the most money last year. To me it seemed that the two major things pushing people to donate were patriotism and Salamancer. The VanillaTV-hosted showmatches were popular and seemed to bring in a lot of money (like $1000 per event or something). This can be exploited a lot with different events and and just overall exploiting the NA v EU hype. People love that (showmatch yesterday peaked at like 2700 viewers). The "Salamancer got our back" from last year seemed to push the donations a lot. Obviously that can't be done again, but the same thought can be used in some way I think.

ughhhh please don't do this this is not a great idea. this cashmoneys could be used in much better ways in the community; i49 wasn't that huge for the american scene. please reconsider ;_;

like...? please don't say something like hosting multiple smaller tournaments because the teams what would win those tournaments are the same teams what would be competing to go to i49. this is like argument infinite tried to make last year saying money should go to ugc or whatnot. it doesn't work like that. just because people would donate money to send a team to i49 doesn't mean they would donate that same money to host tournaments or other stuff. its not like the money is already there and can just go to whatever cause.

+1 to harbleus points, but just to add something. It didn't do much for the NA scene, but the NA scene didn't actually raise a fair portion of that money. Everything has extvs name plastered all over it, sure, but I'm fairly sure the eu community donated just as much (if not more due to a few wealthy lunatics). The american scene alone did not and cannot raise that kind of money, certainly not for something less than the biggest spectacle of the TF2 year.

While I'm well aware we had help from other countries, I'm pretty sure we donated more than "a fair portion" of it. Especially since Sal himself spent like 5+ grand or something that never got paid back at all. I think either gaben or robin walker donated a fair amount too.

But yes, no scene is capable of raising 20 grand as we couldn't do it combined without Sal

Watching EU v NA was one of the best TF2 spectator experience I had in this game, it is something we have only seen once on LAN and if it happens again it would be amazing for TF2.

It won't grow TF2 into eSport, it won't suddenly give us 5000 viewers for every invite/prem match but it would be a fantastic event for us to sit there and enjoy for a weekend and be even better for the players involved.

Anyone who thinks we should as a community think of clever ways to invest in TF2's future is deluding themselves, we're not an eSport, the game creators don't want to back the competitive side financially at all. TF2 will die eventually, it won't become a major eSport ever so lets give us some great memories to enjoy this game whilst it is still alive.

My point is just that it was a far more unified effort than is often put across, so to do any fund raising for a single continent and expect anything near the same sum (even without the hefty amount sal put in) is completely deluded.

Americas still the man don't worry.

It was definitely a global effort.

An under discussed element of Sal's backing was it allowed us to purchase things up front, then pay him back. Without some sort of financial backer, the fundraising deadline has to be VERY firm, and tickets have to be ready to go at that date. Makes it a bit harder to accomplish.

Worth a shot. i46 was some of the best telly I've watched in years, including Breaking Bad.