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To clubs affiliated to the LMBA

Dear All:

London Metropolitan Bridge Association is holding a club meeting on Tuesday 13th May (7.00pm, Young Chelsea BC) to determine its stance on the English Bridge Union (EBU)'s controversial Pay-to-Play proposals, in which individual subscriptions to the national governing body are to be replaced by a levy on club duplicates.

I shall be asking the LMBA reps to vote against this and would encourage others to do so too. Here are some of the reasons:

1. The exercise is essentially a bureaucratic move. It is designed so that the EBU can count as members all players who play duplicate bridge in clubs, whether or not they receive any direct benefit from the EBU, whether or not they collect master points and whether or not they have any ambition to play outside their club.
2. In order to do this the EBU is proposing a steep universal tax to be levied on clubs that organise bridge. Levying substantial tax does not seem to be a constructive way forward in promoting the organised form of the game. The proposed method of collection of the levy is for clubs to electronically report on all their activities with member details. The scheme smacks of co-ercion and materially invades the independence of clubs.
3. The combination of these factors is likely to result in up to a third of registered bridge clubs withdrawing from EBU membership. It seems scarcely credible that the English Bridge 'UNION' is embarking on a policy which by its own figures may result in discarding a third of organised bridge.
4. The EBU claims the move will be revenue neutral. However a massive £170,000 is being offically budgetted (some would say 'risked') to introduce the scheme and unofficial estimates are that the new revenue collection model, with revenue collected in arrears throught the year instead of up front at the beginning of the membership year, will result in a negative cash flow shift of up to £150,000. If a substantial number of clubs withdraw there will be a cash shortfall or P2P will have to rise quickly to meet the deficit.
5. The EBU claims that the move will give it more influence with public grant-awarding and other bodies. Bridge is not recognised by the UK authorities as a sport and it is beyond belief that this will change. It will remain a minority leisure time activity and experience of other minority activities is that any influence on decision makers will remain vanishingly small. We are on our own.
6. The EBU is claiming that bridge is in decline so this measure is necessary. However it is asking for P2P to be implemented before introducing any measures to change the way the EBU delivers its services. The EBU needs to address its own issues first. Let me comment about bridge being in decline:
   1. What is definitely in decline is the EBU competition programme. It is tired and jaded and poorly marketed; bringing a lot of less active bridge players into nominal membership will not by itself increase numbers at EBU events.
   2. The overall numbers in society claiming to be able to play bridge is undeniably in decline, but this is because of societal shift in family patterns and use of leisure time. Despite all that there are still over a quarter of a million bridge players, ten times the EBU membership. What services has the EBU been delivering that over nine-tenths of bridge players don't want or need? Taxing them won't make them want these services any the more.
   3. Organised club-level duplicate bridge is not in great decline. I am constantly amazed and surprised at the number and variety of bridge groups that abound. Just in South West London I know of the big clubs - YCBC, Robsons. Wimbledon and Richmond, but there are also organised games at Roehampton, Hurlingham, Putney BC, Twickenham (Leisureland BC), Kingston (Ruff Diamonds BC), Battersea (Lavender BC) Hammersmith (Riverside Club), Chiswick, Ealing (x2), Tooting (Monday Club) and other groups I know of either for teaching or for play include Whitton, Osterley, Kew, Sheen, Chiswick (again), Barnes, Twickenham (again), Hanwell. As far as I know the pattern is repeated all over London. Buckinghamshire where I have recently done some work is heaving with bridge players; Surrey is the most densely bridge-y county in England, etc. The proposals rate to damage, limit and centralise this activity, great for administrators and tax authorities who want to count us all but not good for the overall health of bridge.
7. The proponents constantly claim that no other constructive ideas have been put forward, but they do not seek such proposals and there is no machinery for unappointed officials to bring any such ideas forward. Despite this I make some suggestions below.
8. The proposals contain no move to One-Member-One-Vote. I am having to conduct my campaign at third hand because I have no individual vote to mandate even my county rep and the county rep is simply appointed by the county committee. It would be a start if county reps were elected by the county membership at large but it will not be legitimately democratic until the officers of the EBU are subject to individual voting.
9. The P2P proposals are being presented as an 'ordinary resolution' to the meeting of reps of the 39 county organistions. This means a momentous change might be made on a simple 50% majority of those voting. How can it be right for a bare majority of county reps to commit the whole of organised bridge to a dangerous and unproven scheme, that will certainly result in a large number of disaflliations? The implied arrogance parallels that of our national politicians in public affairs. This reason alone should make our reps reflect on whether they have a full mandate to vote in favour of this change.

As you can gather I am against the scheme. I would urge you to reread the EBU document and then visit the website www.sayno2p2p.co.uk where amongst other things you will see a document from Sandra Landy. Then please come to the meeting at YCBC on Tuesday.

Finally I did promise some contructive things the EBU can and should do. here are a few:

The EBU does not need universal registered membership in the co-ercive way it is proposing. Pay-to-Play is not needed for the EBU to introduce a universally circulated bridge magazine (think Mr Bridge) setting out its services to bridge.

Separately the EBU should have a tournament section with an annual subscription and a tournament players (master point collectors) magazine. Both magazines can be mailed (in a single mailing) to subscribers, only the universal one to non-subscribers.

The EBU needs a robust rethink in the way that clubs are recruited and retained. At present there is not even a welcome pack. New clubs should be made a fuss of, and receive a master point holiday for say the first three months. Master points are addictive. Free issue of the first few will repay itself many times over.

The EBU should be using clubs to market individual membership. I run two clubs but have never recieved any membership recruiting literature, still less have I been offered a commission on members I recruit - an obvious and low cost incentive to clubs.

The EBU proposes to abandon paper master points. This is soley for administrative convenience. The scheme pays for itself many times over. It is impossible to overstate the importance of one's first few master points, and whether for members or not-yet-members by far the best effect is to award them certificates in their hand. The marketing effect of this is huge and will be completely lost with electronic only registration. Established clubs have largely gone over to electronic points; that's fine - and it surely has drastically reduced the workload in counting. If technological advance is needed, why not bar code paper points. At the very worst there should be paper certificates that record the master points that have been electronically registered.

The EBU national tournament programme needs a rethink. They are often horrible events in horrible venues. The Ranked Master Pairs at Hinckley (which to be fair is not a bad venue) this year attracted just 4 pairs in the Masters Pairs - the section for everyone below Regional Master level.

There are thousands of players at this level. Why wasn't the event better marketed. It should be an entry level event to the EBU Calendar. We all get the much vaunted EBU diary - this is the only notice players receive of the EBU competition programme - once a year in unreadable 7-point type. New (and entry forms) for all events could be included in the EBU Tournament Magazine (see above). The diary should be scrapped.

Bridge Education needs a rethink. Teaching in my opinion is one of the problems that bridge faces. At present teachers and teaching methods conspire to hold players back. Bridge is presented as something arcanely complicated for which one year of classes will just qualify you to do year two classes. Why aren't clubs running teaching programmes that encourage as many learners as possible to move as soon as possible to playing the game and not learning. It is not possible to learn bridge in a lifetime but it is possible to become a very acceptable player in 3-6 months if you have the nous for it. We have little machinery for recruiting the ambitious who are put off by the thousand-lesson route, while those with perhaps less natural aptitude are encouraged to come and take more and more classes. Neither route produces many new players. The recent Partner Clubs initiative is a kind of cri de coeur from the EBU which is profoundly insulting to existing clubs - but probably with good reason.

Existing clubs need to be much readier to incorporate new players. At how many clubs will a member of the committee be available to provide a sympathetic and constructive partner to any new players with the object of making them feel comfortable in the club and making them wish to return? A few sessions with an experienced partner may be all that is needed to send a newbie on his/her way.

The bridge holiday market needs a rethink. This is an important part of the delivery of 'average' level bridge. Organisations offering holiday bridge weeks and weekends (and also cruises) are toughing it out in a difficult market. Yet they have to pay huge 'licence fees' to the EBU and they have to pay these in order to be able to advertise in the EBU magazine. It would be interesting to have a legal opinion on this restraint. Publishing a 'universal' magazine will enable these operators to fish in more productive waters. Cutting the puinitive levy will make it easier for operators to increase their offerings and will enable higher advert charges to be made so the cost implications need not be negative. Note that they are all competing with the Mr Bridge organistion which has built its own marketing channel and does not pay the EBU levy, nor advertising, nor master point fees. The least the EBU should do is level the playing field.

The bridge supplies market needs a rethink. EBU has constantly competed in this market which is very well supplied with commercial operators. It has consistently been unable to make money varying from loss to breake ven to an inadequate return on the capital tied up. The EBU's only claim is that its presence has lowered prices somewhat. The EBU should abandon this marekt to the specialists.

The EBU Governing structure needs a rethink but that is where we came in. It would be straightforward to have one member one vote. A public AGM could be held at Brighton each year and experience of other organisations suggests that no more than a couple of hundred people at most would be concerned to attend, fewer if things were going well. The slate of officers elected would then hold their mandate directly from members and of course their names, roles and contact details would appear in every issue of the member magazine. It would be great also in the member magazine to have a leadership piece from the chairman. This is normal for most membership organisations, singularly lacking with the EBU. In fact it seems the EBU does not want to be seen as a membership organisation, instead constantly and rather patheticly presenting itself as 'service provider'. If it is only a service provider, then those in charge need to recognise that I have a choice as to where I get my services from. An organisation that comes up with Pay-to-Play is unlikely to gain my custom.

A plea to those presently in charge. Please put our EBU down, and let us have it back as the membership organisation that we want.

Ned Paul

Putney Bridge Club; Ruff Bridge Club London NW1; AcesHi! teaching and supervised play groups. 020-8892 9429 / 07944 768643

PS I just sat down and wrote this piece as an impassioned stream of consciousness. It can doubtless be nitpicked for facts (and spelling errors) but this will not change my basic stance.