We've got three rosters signed up so far, and another three people have contacted me but not sent an ESEA roster yet.

I've had a few people ask about their team of all new players that aren't necessarily a straight team porting over from UGC.
That's my bad for wording this not so clearly.

If you're a team of new players to Open (CEVO counts, sorry!), you are absolutely eligible regardless of where your players came from. The point about bringing people from the same team is mainly that if you bring your team over but pick up some experienced Open players, I won't hold it against you as long as they're not sandbaggers.

I've pugged with them several times, they're really nice and working hard at learning, highly recommended if you're looking to get into Open this season!

Messy was a great team leader, loved playing with him the last few seasons.
He's extremely chill and learns from mistakes rather than raging, he'll be a great teammate.

That's plinkooo, thanks!

Yeah, thinking it over I felt that what I wanted to do was give teams something to shoot for by playing in ESEA.

My gut feeling is that it's not the fees that keeps teams from trying ESEA, rather that transition in playing is hard (we can't all be Street Hoops), so I am giving out an incentive for teams to not only sign up but to play it through.

I might be wrong and literally no one will sign up based on accepting the challenge, and so I'm glad Cook (and anyone else who sponsors teams at any level) do what they're doing because we cover more bases that way.

I linked it the reddit post, should have here. Thanks for the reminder!

Awesome, thank you!

I was inspired by Cook's offer to help out some new/low Open teams with league fees for S18.

I am offering an incentive for teams to give Open a try this season.

I will put up $200 in prize money for the top finishing current/former UGC teams that play in ESEA Open TF2 S18. Prize distribution will be $100 for the top team in S18 Open standings, $60 for the runner-up and $40 for the second-runner-up among teams that apply and are accepted into this challenge.

There's only a little time left before S18 closes, so if your team is considering giving Open a shot, let this be an incentive to move on over.

A few rules (that may be tweaked as we get feedback):
1. To apply, PM me on TFTV (or have your team leader add me on steam) with your team's ESEA roster link and your UGC team profile link. You may do this up through the second week of seasonal play to apply.

2. Your roster must contain of at least 3 paid players who have at least two seasons of UGC together on the same roster (note: can be 6s or HL) and no complete season history in ESEA or CEVO (partials are OK within reason).
3. Your roster must contain no paid players at any point in the season who have ever been on an ESEA IM, Main, Invite or CEVO-P roster in any season.
4. I reserve the right to disqualify any team suspected of using players on alt accounts that would otherwise not qualify.
5. Completely new teams that are joining S18 may apply but will be up to my discretion to accept them into the challenge - in general I will accept any team of completely new to ESEA players but will be more open with largely intact current/former UGC teams.
6. After season's end, winning teams will be announced in this thread and the the team leader will receive the funds through PayPal (or we can work out another method later).

If you aren't eligible but want to contribute, I would be happy to join up with other donators to increase the pool or add more prizes, or get help spreading the word to potential teams.
I will cross-post this later today to reddit and UGC (assuming they're OK with this on their site).

Edit Jan.29 - OK! Submissions are closed!

I am gonna be tracking the teams in this here doc. 14 teams entered, only one is dead so far, leaving 13 contenders! I am going to check rosters periodically for sandbaggers, so just because you're in right now doesn't guarantee anything!

I'm trying to decide between sponsoring some low teams like this or just offering a cash prize to the top teams of new players/that make the jump from UGC/somesuch in Open.

Any suggestions/ideas?

If you're serious about getting everyone signed up early, maybe try offering something to the teams that get signed up/paid early, because it seems that threatening the season/not extending hasn't worked well in the past.

Say every roster with 6 paid a week early could get some 1 week premium codes or let them get a backup "paid" for free, or just a lower rate - that might a bunch of folks to actually sign up before the last minute.

As it is, there's no incentive to not wait for the last minute.

Has a thing for baby seals.

Otherwise a good guy to have around.

Confirmed

I think those agitating for a new free league have a good idea in their hearts, but it would absolutely be much more likely that we could successfully grow NA 6v6 TF2 by working to improve/develop UGC than by attempting to take a flyer on creating an alternative that's more likely to fail than succeed.

Yes, please.

I am not so sure about this given the number of unusuals, killstreak and australium items floating around the community, not to mention how many gift wraps have been sold so that top players can sign stuff for people. I am guessing the average 6s player has a much larger than average investment in TF2 than the typical pubber, we just make up a relatively small % of the customers.

Came from TheVille. They're fairly anti-comp so it took me forever to get around to 6s.

Holy shit, mach4 sighting.

This is an important point.
Typically, elite sports leagues have salary/roster churn built in that forces teams to keep developing and taking risks.
No one's going to pay up big money to create a dream team to beat Froyo, or for some folks to defect from Froyo and play for other teams with LAN drams.
Age/injury in physical team sports mean the very best players decline and make opportunities for new talent to rise to the top. It's going to be many years before age takes a toll on anyone's skill in TF2. So, it's basically up to them losing interest in playing as much or in playing together for them to decline, making it really hard to exceed them for any teams that aren't there yet.

With no payoff besides the acclaim of this community and pleasing yourselves, why not just cycle out through teams in high open/IM with your friends and have a good time?