Editor’s Note: This was the original email announcement for the first LA Throwback, held in 2018. For information on the upcoming 2019 event, click here.

Announcing the Inaugural
LA Throwback Beach Ultimate Fest

January 13 & 14, 2018
Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend
Santa Monica, California

I know. You’re saying to yourself “Wait, isn’t there already a beach tournament in Santa Monica on MLK Weekend?” Well, yes, there is, but we’re hoping you’ll take a few minutes to hear about the new tourney, LA Throwback. Throwback is a labor of love created by a group of LA ultimate players and friends from other places, with the goal of offering an alternative to what we’ve experienced at the incumbent tourney, Lei-Out, in recent years.

Some background: Lei-Out was created in the year 2000 by a group of LA ultimate players who wanted to host a premier tournament in LA. With a strong ultimate community and some of the best beaches anywhere, LA offered a great opportunity to kick off the season in style. The event grew in popularity, and after five years (with about 50 teams participating) then-tournament director Canada Gordon handed the reins to another local player, Brian Calle. Since then, Brian has leveraged the ongoing growth of the sport and the community, along with his marketing expertise and media savvy (he is opinion editor of the Southern California News Group) to expand Lei-Out into a truly enormous event.

While it’s great to see so many teams out there, our experience is that as Lei-Out has become gigantic, the event itself has suffered. Entry fees have risen steadily but staffing hasn’t nearly kept up. There are just a few paid staff, and a crew of volunteers to help with the work at the event. And though they work hard, there are simply too few of them for an event with nearly 400 teams and over 4000 people. To us, this doesn’t seem right given the ~$200,000 in entry fees collected, and some amount more in sales and sponsorships. Given that the cost paid to the city for the facilities – fields, police and sanitation – is modest (in 2017 it was under $7500), we expect more. We don’t know where the money goes – that’s up to Brian Calle – but we certainly don’t feel it “on the sand.” We won’t belabor the details. If you’ve played at Lei-Out you already have your own opinion, and you can read what others have said about it on Reddit, too. But we feel the community and its ability to essentially “organize itself” at such events is being taken for granted.

So we thought it was time for an alternative, one that would prioritize participation and the communitarian spirit of ultimate. To do that, we’ve created a new tournament, on the beaches south of the Santa Monica pier, that pledges to do these four things:

1. It will take care of its participants. Fields will be uniformly sized and every field will have a scoreboard. We will have a local contact/liaison for each team, with each liaison responsible for a limited number of teams. S/he will be at the fields to be sure everything goes smoothly with your bracket and to deal with unforeseen issues. To the extent possible, s/he’ll even help with logistical issues your team may have, both before you arrive and at the event.
2. It will be as affordable as possible. We’ve determined that we can charge a reasonable entry fee ($400 per team for up to 14 players, with a discount for early registration), and still fund tournament operations and staffing equitably, provide amenities for teams, and put on a great party.
3. It will be financially transparent and fair. After the event, we will publish our budget so everyone can see where the money goes, and we’ll work to have something left over to donate to efforts to support the Ultimate community more broadly.
4. It will be responsive and fun. Tournaments should first and foremost be about the players, and are best when they stay in touch with your needs. We will solicit and listen to your input. In the early years Lei-out experimented with a number of different ideas, and if teams want it, we’d be up for doing that again, including perhaps different divisions with different formats (e.g. Grandmasters, 4-on-4, novice, etc).

We think it’s critical to insure that the interests of tourney participants and organizers remain aligned as the sport continues to grow. We hope that your participation will be a vote of support for this approach.

Our goal is to provide great service and a great experience to all teams. We will limit the event to a size that lets us insure that we can. Bids will be on a first-come first-served basis. So if you’re interested, please go to our website and get on our mailing list so we can send you registration materials. Once you’ve signed up, we’d appreciate it if you could answer a few brief questions on the site to let us know what’s most important to you and how we can create a great experience for all of us. This has to be a group effort in order it to be successful and most of all, fun.

We’d also appreciate it if you could spread the word and share this letter with others. We look forward to hearing from you, and in seeing you out there!

Sincerely,

The Throwback Organizing Team: