TL;DR: I am throwing my most stacked (S-tier!) Vars Fest yet, and going all-out on the production so it’s an enjoyable event for the community as well as the players. I’m not financially in any SERIOUS trouble if I don’t recoup the costs, but it’s still a lot of money, and as per the request of some of my viewers, I’ve decided to accept community support! No pressure, but if anyone would like to lend a hand and make the philanthropy less independent, it would mean a lot! <3

Hi! My name is Jinli. I’m a tristate smash player, as well as a content creator for the scene (you might be familiar with my YouTube channel, Vars III). Outside of my content and casual competition endeavors, I TO a bit as well, and I’m known for running large scale smashfests out of my house. This January, I was planning to throw another Vars Fest the day before LMBM. Then, one thing led to another, more top players expressed interest in showing up, and now, I’ve found myself running a high-production, summit-style invitational out of my home. As such, I’m really gunning to give the community an invitational experience that I feel we’ve all been missing. For the time being, it’s currently a one-off, but if I don’t go tooooo into the negative with this, I’m open to making it a recurring thing!

This year, I’m hosting 40 of the best Ultimate players in the world, and we are currently slated to be an S tier (at least!), and I’m very passionate about making this the love letter to competitive Ult that it deserves to be. My hopes with this pilot event is to prove to myself (and you, the community), that this concept has legs, and is sustainable. However, since the event scale increased somewhat on-the-fly, there’s definitely some growing pains in the planning process, particularly with expensing the production, players, equipment, and staffing that sets an S-tier invitational apart from a silly little house tournament.

Presently, I’m footing the cost entirely out of pocket. It’s definitely an ambitious endeavor, and while I was/am prepared to shoulder all the expenses on my own (to be clear, without donations, this event will still take place in its promised form), I wanted to put up a fundraiser to try and recoup some of the costs for the event, for anyone who likes what I’m doing and wants to chip in. This tournament is a community (unlicensed) event, and as such, my options for marketing and merchandising (read: a quid-pro-quo for financial support) are limited within Nintendo’s guidelines. It’s presently too late in the game to retroactively license the event, and we want to stay law-abiding here. So, within these bounds, I’m trying to do what I can to do right by the players and community, without financially exhausting myself too much to affect the planning of future large-scale Vars events.

To everyone who asked where/how to pitch in for the event, thank you so much, and here it is! Thanks again to everyone who reads/shares/donates. I hope you enjoy watching Vars Summit, and I hope it proves itself as a worthy successor to the OG BTSSmash Ultimate Summit :)

(Note: statement has been revised for clarity and brevity)