So I gotta ask, since you've been so adamant about transparency... if it's ~$4k for the prizepool, where's the other $10k go?
It's a live event with related live event costs, I'm sure you can begin to see how expensive that is and how quickly $10k would be eaten up??? Eight players being flown in and accommodated, a venue being ran and a show being produced, GCS2 is a live event tournament it has live event tournament costs.
I intend to release the budget once costs are finalised, but
last year's costs are all public as a reference point.
If we were to run at a profit and a direct recompensation of time spent you'd be looking at 22k at least in my estimation. As it is we're on the cusp of doing something amazing and doing a lot more with less, which I'm very proud of.
You also said that you won't do another one of these, which is too bad, but ofc I understand it completely. Is one of the reasons that it's just not worth the amount of time you put in, financially speaking?
No- the dominant reason is after this tournament I would have completed my objectives in this endeavour and the project will be considered complete.
It is not an ongoing concern aka a profit motivated business. It's simply a hobby based passion project, driven by the satisfaction of doing a good job and the motivation of wanting something great to look back on for the next 50 or so years.
I don't seek to make any monetary gain from this endeavour and that isn't a motivating factor. As evidenced from the fact that I have only ever given myself reasonable re compensation for direct costs incurred as part of the project, no monetary gain. So fuel for travel to venue, modest but very necessary hardware upgrades during GCS1 which massively improved my casting quality.
When money is in the question hobby based stuff like this can get very convoluted and passionless in my opinion. It is best to keep financial gain in the business world and passions for your private life, at least that's how I see it. For the same reasons I turned down a well paying position at ESL.