Hmm. I guess I just assumed VIP passes were a way to net the event more money. Why exactly are you spending in excess of $20 for VIPs? Wouldn't you just give them $20 worth of the free swag sponsors give to you? I guess that's where my assumption erred. Are sponsors not giving you much swag? What swag did you buy for CryoLAN Beta? I thought everything short of the custom t-shirt was donated to you from sponsors, leaving at least $10 of the VIP pass cost purely as surplus. In fact, what *did* you give out last time? I only seem to recall the t-shirt and the 2gb flash drive in terms of physical gifts. The rest of the benefits were in the form of things like special seating, meta tournament perks, and priority access to food. Maybe I'm missing something. It just seems to me like the VIP should be earning the event free money, not costing it.

T shirts were actually rushed (our fault) and ended up costing more than 20 each. Even not rushed, T shirts are expensive, we're looking for a sponsor for that so that hopefully we can give more stuff. And we had to buy the flash drives as well, so we took a hit on both of those, we're hoping to stick closer to the 20 limit this year though likely will go over a bit anyway.

The t-shirts and flash drives were all us last year. So were the PC lighting kits and blue keyboards, and almost all of the tournament prizes.

The reason we can justify spending more than what comes in for VIP is that VIP, as stated, help us out with our cash flow well in advance of the event. That is super important, as it gives us the ability to pick up things we might not otherwise be able to get.

Now, as far as giving VIP's sponsored items, I'd LOVE to do this. If we can do this, we certainly will. However, the sponsorship situation for last year didn't allow for it, and as of yet, we have nothing from sponsors to toss at our VIPs. We're asking for sponsorships, and I'd love for the situation you're assuming existed to actually be real. It would make things a whole lot easier for us.

So, the short form of this answer is that your perception is pretty far from reality. We're working to make what you're talking about happen though.