Searching for / promoting tournaments / championships [Update: suggestion launched]

[mrdoctor]

It's one thing to actively search for tournaments, but a different story to fill them as a host. And if there's almost never a tournament for a game, one might also just not look for them anymore.

But your suggestion was "I'd like to able to search for championships and hosts and have a "my tournaments" section in every profile". I honestly cannot understand how this is an improvement on going to that centralised tournament page and just filtering by either a specific game or games I know. Why would I want to memorise the random usernames of lots of people who've previously hosted tournaments so I can remember to look at their profile, when I can just go that that tournaments page link and see every tournament for a specific game all in one place?

It's not an immediate thing and it's about communication. You can tell people/friends to check out your "insert championship title here" tournaments. Whether via chat or in person. Or there's a publisher/streamer/designer/whatever hosting various tournaments for different games. It can be helpful from both perspectives.

You can already do that. You can write on your profile using the following format:

"I am hosting tournaments for the following games. Please go to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and filter by the game to view them and register:
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]"

[Rukus McUallas]

But your suggestion was "I'd like to able to search for championships and hosts and have a "my tournaments" section in every profile". I honestly cannot understand how this is an improvement on going to that centralised tournament page and just filtering by either a specific game or games I know. Why would I want to memorise the random usernames of lots of people who've previously hosted tournaments so I can remember to look at their profile, when I can just go that that tournaments page link and see every tournament for a specific game all in one place?

It's not an immediate thing and it's about communication. You can tell people/friends to check out your "insert championship title here" tournaments. Whether via chat or in person. Or there's a publisher/streamer/designer/whatever hosting various tournaments for different games. It can be helpful from both perspectives.

You can already do that. You can write on your profile using the following format:

"I am hosting tournaments for the following games. Please go to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and filter by the game to view them and register:
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]"

This is absolutely not the same abnd only a workaround, like so many things here. I'm doing something similar by utilizing a group to manage the tournaments I'm hosting. Using ones profile has at least two downsides, though. First, if there are other things you want to post there, it can easily get confusing. And second, the fact that you can't use text editing (bold, italics, underline, size, color ...) like on BGG, lets it get messy pretty quickly, making the first issue worse.

Allowing a search by host would also allow to create a list of tournaments by a user, maybe linked via a simple button in the profile. And when talking about a championship, those tournaments could be setup by different users, like two hosts of a stream, two members of a guild, relatives, employees of a company etc.

[mrdoctor]

It's not an immediate thing and it's about communication. You can tell people/friends to check out your "insert championship title here" tournaments. Whether via chat or in person. Or there's a publisher/streamer/designer/whatever hosting various tournaments for different games. It can be helpful from both perspectives.

You can already do that. You can write on your profile using the following format:

"I am hosting tournaments for the following games. Please go to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and filter by the game to view them and register:
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]
* [Game Name] - [Tournament Name], starts [date]"

This is absolutely not the same abnd only a workaround, like so many things here. I'm doing something similar by utilizing a group to manage the tournaments I'm hosting. Using ones profile has at least two downsides, though. First, if there are other things you want to post there, it can easily get confusing. And second, the fact that you can't use text editing (bold, italics, underline, size, color ...) like on BGG, lets it get messy pretty quickly, making the first issue worse.

Allowing a search by host would also allow to create a list of tournaments by a user, maybe linked via a simple button in the profile. And when talking about a championship, those tournaments could be setup by different users, like two hosts of a stream, two members of a guild, relatives, employees of a company etc.

It sounds like you think the number of tournaments and hosts is much bigger than it is. Your initial post is about unpopular games with few tournaments and the struggle to find players. Listing hosted tournaments on a player's profile is far more inefficient than just encouraging more traffic to the main tournament-search page that I've already linked to above.

[Rukus McUallas]

It's a broader issue, and I'm also planning ahead.

[mrdoctor]

It's a broader issue, and I'm also planning ahead.

I disagree. As previously stated - if you want to increase prominence of tournaments, then make the https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist link more prominent on all BGA homepages, and put the upcoming tournaments section higher up the page on each game page. Having tournaments listed on host's profiles isn't a practical solution to anything (and if you want to see other tournaments by a host you can already do that - go to a tournament page, click underneath the host where it says the total number of tournaments they've created)

[Rukus McUallas]

I don't diagree with your visibility suggestions. Feel free to add them to my suggestion entry!

But I must disagree about the profile point. It's just one more spot to find tournaments. Jumping through the hoop of having to first go to a tournament page to find more tournaments by a host is merely a workaround. If I don't know that person is a host, I won't find anything.

It's a broader issue and it takes many steps. There is not one simple single solution.

[mrdoctor]

But I must disagree about the profile point. It's just one more spot to find tournaments. Jumping through the hoop of having to first go to a tournament page to find more tournaments by a host is merely a workaround. If I don't know that person is a host, I won't find anything.

People rarely look at people's profiles anyway. Adding tournaments they're hosting to their page makes no difference, as the only reason someone would be going to someone's profile to see their upcoming tournaments would be because they have seen they have hosted tournaments before - and as I just mentioned above there is a one-click way to see all their other tournaments on each of their tournament pages already.

I recommend adding https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist to your favourites bar and just visiting it to see upcoming tournaments that may interest you. The 'game library' filter lets you filter by a specific game.

[Rukus McUallas]

Okay, what's easier, tell people to "search for a tournament you've hosted before and then check for further tournaments" or "check profile for tournaments"? It's just way simpler and far more intuitive. And why limit people to one path? Also, I actually check profiles regularily. I wish they would be more like they used to be on BGG.