Hi everyone,

My name is Gyromight -- I'm the founder, executive director, and lead tournament organizer of Port Priority 9. Truly, thank you all for the support of our tournament over the years, and for your help in making this one of the premier tournament series in Smash Bros.

Events like these always involve a healthy degree of financial risk. While we've managed to avoid any major losses at prior Port Priorities, unfortunately our financial situation is much different this year. At the time of writing, Port Priority stands to lose, at worst, $21K from hosting Port Priority 9. There's a couple of main causes for this loss, which I've listed out below.

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OVERALL DROP IN ATTENDANCE: Port Priority attendance has dropped 27% year over year, including a 30% drop for Ultimate, which was, truthfully, expected as the game enters its twilight years. This sort of drop was expected and budgeted for during our planning process, but when put in conjunction with the other two factors, this kind of drop isn't manageable.

DIFFICULT ECONOMIC TIMES: Difficult economic times have caused prices to spike everywhere, and the events industry is no different. Costs have gone up anywhere from 30% to 200% across the board for critical elements of our event, and, given that everyone is feeling the economic crunch these days, we can't justify raising our prices by the amount we'd need in order to bridge this gap. If we did, we'd lose the remaining 70% of our attendee base.

REALITIES OF A GRASSROOTS EVENT: The community has always been our #1 focus for our event--we're hyper-aware of the financial difficulties that many in our community are facing, and focused on making our event affordable for all. This guiding principle was the reason why we only raised prices $5 compared to Port Priority 8 and introduced low-cost options like the Limited Competitor Pass so everyone who wanted to compete got a chance to attend. The lower prices meant that we needed higher attendance in order to hit our metrics, and, unfortunately, weathering a 30% loss in our attendee base simply wasn't feasible at the current price point, and we risk bleeding more attendees by raising our prices any further.

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It's important that we talk a bit about structure before getting into my final ask. Port Priority is, at its core, a true, grassroots tournament. There's no major esports org behind this event running it; just a small team of local talent that wants to bring the international spotlight to the PNW. And as owner and founder, the financial burden falls on me to cover any potential losses we may have.

What this kind of loss means for me, personally, is taking $21K out of my personal bank accounts / investments / home equity / etc, putting it towards an event that I already don't get any financial benefit from, and figuring out the rest later. There are tools and strategies that I can execute to cover a loss like this myself, but none of those options make me comfortable.

It's crucial that our events are run sustainably, without massive financial losses from organizers -- organizers that at least break even on events can continue to build and grow their events from the ground up. It's how Port Priority got this big in the first place, and we'd love to continue that growth as we enter the next era of Smash.

While I'm not asking the community to cover all of the potential losses, I humbly ask for the community to come through for us to lessen the financial burden, allowing us to grow and build on what we have from now and into the future. Thank you for reading.

<3 Gyromight