To,
All affiliated member State Associations,
All Associate members, sports controlling bodies, affiliated clubs
BFI has recently entered into a formal agreement with BBO regarding hosting of Online Pairs and Team Tournaments on the BBO platform. BBO, under its new promoters, is moving away from a free tournament structure and has established a framework to collaborate with various NBOs across the world.
BFI requests all state association secretaries to circulate this information to enable their local bodies, affiliated clubs and tournament organizers to conduct tournaments on BBO in line with this new framework. The process is defined as under:
- Any organizer willing to conduct online tournaments should send a request to the Honorary Secretary BFI via this online form – https://bfi.net.in/contact/bridge-education-program/bbo-hosting-rights-registration-form/. State associations may consolidate such requests from within their states.
- BFI has received from BBO, a set of IDs that have tournament hosting rights enabled. BFI will distribute these IDs to state associations, clubs and other parties in India in line with the requests received as above and subject to terms and conditions laid down by the Federation.
- Tournaments may be organized as pairs or team events. Number of deals could vary for pair events; however, multi-session pair tournaments will be treated as multiple single-session pair tournaments for purposes of calculating BBO charges. Team events will be on advance intimation and publicity.
Terms and conditions:
- BBO offers a rate of USD 0.50 per table per single-session pairs event (number of deals can vary, but have to be played in one single session)
- Team events (duration can be multi-day with round robin and KO rounds) will be at a rate of USD 3.00 per team per event. Team event team count is to be self-declared at the start of this arrangement (BBO reporting will capture this information in the future)
- Tournament organizers will pay to a BB$ account set up by BBO at the end of each tournament (pairs and teams). The account to be paid is BFI_fees
- BFI may choose to charge a refundable security deposit for the issuance of BBO IDs in the future.
- Reports will be generated by BBO at the end of each month detailing which user ID created what tournament with how many tables, the total amount payable, as well as amounts received by BBO. This will be circulated 3 weeks after the end of each month and any shortfall will be payable by the respective organizers at end of the following month (For example – September report will be shared around 20 October and any pending amounts payable by 31 Oct.)
- In case of any payment shortfall being identified during reconciliation, the respective organizer (ID Holder) will ensure that this is paid to BBO promptly.
- All tournament organizers using IDs distributed by the BFI for organizing tournaments shall abide by entry fee ceiling of Rs.100 per pair or less for pair event and Rs.1600/- per team or less for team events. Organizers can choose to charge lesser (even conduct tournaments for free), but may not charge an entry fee more than the above mentioned amounts.
- Any tournament organizers who fail to pay to BBO may have their tournament hosting rights revoked following communication from BFI to BBO in this regard.
PRIZES:
BBO strictly prohibits giving any cash prizes or awards for tournaments hosted on its platform.