[SBU Board] ACBL BoD Material

[JC Chupack]

First, Tim, thanks for sharing.  Always great to know what's going on
"above".

The data and assumptions in this presentation raise some flags for me. The
presentation overindexes on aging membership as a root cause and yet shows
no data that supports that it is specifically a loss of members aged 70+
contributing to the decline.  Slide 4 asks several good questions, but the
presentation focuses on the last bullet (age) only.

Further, there's nationwide data that strongly contradicts the "older
people travel less" hypothesis, so if that is a trend, it may be limited to
the ACBL (which calls more into question the choices of locations or
overall interest in bridge rather than being a behavior of the segment).
Here's one example found with a quick Google:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-aging-changes-the-way-we-travel-2017-03-10,
but the AARP and AAA have both published studies showing that travel as
well as activity generally is up among retirees, not declining. The age of
diminished activity is increasing as well. (Caveat: health care is a big
factor...and if the US health care system continues to decline in
availability and continues to increase in costs, that will be an impact on
seniors most of all.)

Slide 6 is deceptive in a vacuum as well. We know from Slide 6's data only
that age is correlated with lower regional attendance. We don't know that
age is the cause vs. factors like distance to regional, availability of
alternative entertainment, etc.  It also doesn't show whether this has
changed over time or was always the case.  If this distribution has always
been true vs. being a recent change in behavior, then it is less likely to
be the reason for the decline.  (And again, if it *is* a change in
behavior, it's likely unique to the ACBL vs. being a common behavior of
individuals 70+.)

I'd like to see this committee provide data specifically on segmentation of
the members that play once and don't return by gender, age, masterpoint
level, and years of ACBL membership.  Who are the players that arrive and
don't return?  Do those players continue to be active at the club level?
Has the committee reached out to a sampling of the "didn't return" segment
to ask why they came once and not again?  Even just having a phone call or
email with 20-30 randomly selected "tournament abandoners" would likely
yield valuable insight.

I'll also note, IIRC, Seattle's unit has one of the lowest average ages in
the ACBL (SFBay/Mountain View beats us, maybe a couple others). Yet, we are
still seeing declines. If the same is true of other "low avg age" areas,
that further supports that age is not the (sole) limiting factor.

Has the committee looked into the number of tournaments and count of days
of tournaments being offered in the decline period?  I believe there was
some data pulled by the ACBL that showed that the number of days of
tournaments offered in the past 5 years has increased sharply. That is,
it's entirely possible that people simply have more tournament days to go
to and thus a fixed size market is being spread more thinly across many
days of play.  While no region may like it, it may benefit the financials
of all tournaments if we simply offered fewer and/or shorter tournaments.

tl;dr - If this is a starting point rather than an ending one, that's
great..but if it was intended as a conclusion, I think it's missing the
mark.

--JC





On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 1:03 PM Tim White <trkwhite at gmail.com> wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> I will be filling in for Julie Smith as D19 representative to ACBL Board
> of Directors and various committee meetings in Columbus.  I have begun to
> participate in preparatory teleconferences and have begun to receive
> various pre-coordination materials.  Where I come cross something I feel
> might be of interest or value to U446 board members, I will send it your
> way.
>
> One of the committees Julie works on (as vice chair) is the Strategic
> Tournament Task Force.  I am attaching a .ppt file I recently received
> reporting on developments with this committee.
>
>  I understand Julie plans to share this file with the D19 board.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sbuboard mailing list
> Sbuboard at mailman.celestial.com
> http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/sbuboard
>


-- 
JC Chupack
* Seattle ACBL Unit 446 <http://www.bridgeinseattle.org> President,
Web/Email Admin, & Publicity Chair
* Lead Technical Product Manager, Zulily <http://www.zulily.com>, Inc.
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