The Showcase team FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions by all the amazing teams that showed interest

Thank you all for raising questions about the showcase. I gathered the answers here to help every team make a good choice.

I want to note that I’m trying my best to explain this in my second language (Dutch is my first), I absolutely love everyone’s efforts so far to translate it to your people and team. Thank you 🤟.

What’s a membership?

A membership is basically a season pass. Next to the contents it gives members voting powers in a season.

Fans can become members by buying a one time membership. Fans love Ultimate or they love the Ultimate players/teams that want to play. A membership is a one time cost of €10..

Members are member of the UltiLeague Community. They are not members of teams.

• Memberships give access to live and on-demand content in this season
  (4 separate game days and 1 game weekend in total).

• Members get a one time vote in certain decisions within the UltiLeague Community (team selection, game format, etc).

Memberships can also be earned if you’re a volunteer on the ground (offline) or behind your computer (online).

Memberships can also be won in our little competitions and lotteries on social media.

How does the voting work?

Members can vote once on decisions UltiLeague proposes. The first and most important vote is for your team to play in the showcase.

Right after people buy a membership they will get an email (everyone has email, right?) confirmation of their membership where they will be given a choice to vote on which team within the Online Competition they want to see play.

Furthermore, when there’s important decisions to be made, members get an email (and reminders on social media) to share their opinion of a decision in a vote. There’s always a deadline for the vote, and they will receive the context of the vote so they can get engaged and vote quickly.

Members can vote once per decision. And if people buy more memberships, they vote counts as more. Founding members have a vote that counts double, as they bought in early.

The format of the game we will have to decide with the community, because this is a league for the fans. When it affects the ‘entertainment product’ it’s a vote for the members. If it only affects teams, it’s a vote for the team.

Do we play mixed 7 vs 7 or 6 vs 6?

This is significant change to everything (the game, strategy, costs of moving players) and that is why we want to also ask the community.

If we play 7 vs 7, with what gender rule will teams play?

That will be most probably decided in a vote too.

What team jerseys can we use as a team?

You can use your existing jerseys, but you can also let three designers from (Ultimate) apparel companies compete for a new shirt design, and…. you guessed it, let the community vote!

LOL, this wasn’t actually a question raised, haha tricked you. We want to make almost everything a fair competition like this because this way we can make things better.

What is the costs for teams/clubs?

We ask a 'buy in’ that is equivalent to a team fee from the teams to start competing in the Online Competition.

Teams will get a team page that presents their team with video, text and visuals. This will show you’re committed and actually want to get that spot, the money will be used to cover initial costs.

What is the cost for players?

The costs of the players will mainly be in time. They want to play and they can share a video or message to their fans, friends and family so that they become a member.

We try to work stuff out with the teams mostly because they are good in translating messages if necessary. If we’re raise enough (see below) we help cover most of the player’s expenses.

So will the showcase be cost neutral?

The cost to run the original showcase idea will be in between €12k to €32k and will be mostly about transportation and broadcasting.

Depending on the money we raise through members and partners we can pay for the playing team’s expenses, the more the teams and the Ultimate community raise collectively the more we practically can do.

It is possible that we ask teams to pay for travel and associated expenses in order for us to hold the competition. We hope we can raise enough from the community to make this unnecessary. It is hard for us to say for certain until we know how much memberships we sell.

Money that we have left is spend on preparing the next season and will ultimately be spend on growing grass roots Ultimate.

So is this just a show which teams has the most money?

Skilful teams will generally get more support because they have more fans around Europe. Communities and teams that have a lot of money but are okay can also get a spot and they will directly sponsor the growth of Ultimate of all levels.

We want to start somewhere, this way we will set it up right now but the mechanics will improve with new seasons.

How and what does campaigning to fans mean?

The task of the teams is to campaign to their fans and community. That practically means that the team (and the players) share some instagram stories, facebook posts, whatsapp messages and maybe some emails to your fan base to buy a membership or memberships.

We will build the campaign machine for the membership flow and voting, and the team pages and area totals with stats.

We will also campaign, but we only campaign to the European and worldwide Ultimate community and potential partners. We can’t convince your family and friends, you can only do that.

What is the ‘Online Competition’?

The Online Competition is all about campaigning better than the other teams so you get that spot in the showcase. The Online Competition has 3 phases which starts with your team page.

1. Start promoting with posts, stories, posters, videos, memes, interviews, updates, etc

2. We promote and share cool content you make, as long as you tag us.

3. Finish your promotion with a sprint and bang!

The goal is to make it a dense promotional race for about 4 weeks which start somewhere in august (timeline is set teams we talked to have applied).

What happens if my team doesn’t make the showcase?

In exchange for the buy in of your team your player and coach roster will get memberships. Members that voted on you will still be members and they can pledge their allegiance to another team they like and they will make the whole project happen.

Can we drop out of the race if anything happens?

Yes. No strings attached! But no refunds. We all want to grow the sport and show kids how awesome this is so that they start playing, even in uncertain times. The money raised will be balanced with the league’s expenses and/or invested into a the new season.

What happens if corona causes no traveling at all this year?

Then we’ll extend the Online Competition by adding some game mechanics. From our safe homes we can compete in a way that supports new and exciting ideas in Ultimate. Then we’ll use the funds to organise the showcase in 2021.

If you have any additional questions you can raise them here in the comments, I will answer them as soon as possible.