Two Suggestions to put more Money in the Player's Hands Posted on May 1, 2023 at 09:49:11 AM by jatna77
My Suggestions:
1) Put a PayPal Tip Jar on watchjaialai.com so that we can tip individual players for exceptional play during Battle Court games and other tournaments. You could even add the commentators and/or a general Fronton maintenance fund to the tip list.
2) Put a PayPal option on watchjaialai.com so that fans can add dollars to the player's prize money for tournaments, such as the Battle Court finals and the US National finals.
Both of these ideas could be applied to the Dania Partido Tournament as well (the last one was completely awesome BTW) through the Dania site. Perhaps it could help crowd-fund some of the needed renovations to the Fronton.
Not only could these suggestions make the players happier and wealthier, but they would also add to fan engagement and if the tournament player prizes got high enough, it might attract press attention to the sport.
Sure, maybe no one would use them. But it is worth a try. The cost of living is just going to keep going up, especially in Florida.
Some TLDR:
I first brought this up with Benny Bueno during the last Partido Tournament. I asked if he thought my 2nd suggestion would be legal in the state of Florida. He said that he thought it might be legal.
I next floated both suggestions in the chat of a recent Magic City Pelota stream on YouTube. Scott Savin said that he wanted the players to "earn their money." I fail to see how these suggestions would not be in that category.
Would some players get tipped for their personalities and/or showmanship instead of play? Possibly but so what? They are still legitimately adding to the viewer experience.
He also mentioned the low pay of ping-pong and lacrosse players. That argument seemed pretty weak to me. So what if Jai-Alai players currently earn more than lacrosse players? That is not saying much at all.
Finally, I tried 8 or 9 times (at various times of the day) to post these suggestions in the MC YouTube comment section. Each time, within minutes, the comment was deleted. I even checked with a different computer. Either I was experiencing a freakishly weird YouTube glitch (my other harmless comment was not deleted) or someone there was censoring me. I felt like I was on the internet in China or something.
But that is neither here nor there.
There are only five reasons that I can think of, to keep potential money from the players, regarding these suggestions. Maybe they are not allowed by the fine print in the player's contracts. Or perhaps they are straight-up illegal in the state of Florida. Possibly, management simply cannot afford the web developer fees to make it happen. Or it might be that there are not enough people watching to make it worth doing. Finally, it could be that management wants people's money to go to betting and not to the players.
But I do not bet and never will. I am sure there are other non-betters like me, as well as many betters, that would like to contribute money directly to deserving players, in a safe and fun way.
What could it hurt to try?
p.s. Speaking of viewer engagement, how about a way to vote for Fan MVP on Battle Court games?
"That shit came off the top of my fucking head, y'all" -Tenacious D Replies:
