US Flames of War Tournament Trends

by Tom Burgess

It always amazed me how many comments I have heard over the last year or so about the “collapse” of the US tournament scene. For sure, Flames of War (FOW) tournament play has declined with Version 4, along with other factors. And though I’m sure FOW has completely dried up in some areas, overall I never felt that the situation was particularly as dire as many have portrayed.

So I did some research to get some actual numbers beyond my own or other’s personal perspectives. Fortunately, US tournament data for the last several years can be easily pulled off of the website, to include its predecessor’s Ranking HQ data. I will share here the data for what its worth. I’ll offer my opinions with it, but I encourage all to make up there own minds on what it all means for the current state and future of the game and our community.

A couple things to keep in mind before you read any further. 1) This data reflects only what has been reported to Battle Rankings/Ranking HQ over the last few years. 2) Tournament frequency and attendance do not necessarily reflect the overall strength of the game and in particular, they do not necessarily correlate to Battlefront sales.

So let’s take a look at the number of events held during each fiscal year (October to September). Why fiscal year instead of the calendar year?

1) Because the “Tournament Season” for each year is on that schedule, and

2) because when I was writing this article, the calendar year for 2018 had not yet ended.

From the reported events for each FY we can see that the number and frequency of reported FOW tournaments have been fairly steady over the past four years, to include during the implementation of Version 4.  Also if one chooses to include at Team Yankee (TY) events along with FOW, there was a significant increase in the total number of FOW/TY events combined in  FY18. More on FOW vs. TY later.

But the number of events held is not the only factor we need to look at when doing tournament trend analysis. We also need to look at how many people are attending those events on average. That data does not look nearly as good.

Looking at just pure Flames of War events we can see that FOW event participation is down about 18% compared to the last four years.

So though the number of FOW tournament events offered in FY18 year is about the same as it was for the last four years, those have generally been smaller events.

However, if you choose to consider Team Yankee events participation in with the FOW events then overall participation of Battle Front tournaments is only down by 5% in FOW in FY18 compared to the last four years. Nonetheless, there is no mistaking that US FOW event participation is simply down.

So how big of a factor is Version 4 in the decrease in FOW event participation? To be sure it is a significant factor, especially if you only got your data from what you see on forums and Facebook. But what the above shows us is that FOW event participation has been steadily dropping even before the emergence of V4. It appears to me that V4 maybe have basically doubled the expected rate of decrease in FOW USA event participation, but it was already dropping nonetheless.

But there’s one more thing we need to look at when we consider the drop in US FOW event tournament participation over the last year.  That other factor is the tremendous surge in US Team Yankee participation that occurred in FY18. Team Yankee tournaments really did not occur much before FY18.

Sure, FOW and TY are different game systems at least for now, and I understand from others that Battlefront looks at them as separate revenue streams. But the simple fact is that Battlefront competes with itself over Flames of War and Team Yankee for the attention of US tournament players and our dollars. We really cannot analyze US FOW tournament trends without taking into account the great headway Team Yankee has been making in the US tournament scene.

When scrubbing the player names from the FY18 Team Yankee participants listed. I noted that 49% of those listed, like myself, were also listed as participating in FOW events in FY18. It is difficult to say how many more FOW events myself and that 49% would have attended in FY 18 if we had not had Team Yankee events to lure us away.

In my case, I attended three TY events in FY18 compared to eleven FOW events. Like anyone, there is a limit to how much money and time I can devote to tournament attendance. Simply stated, Team Yankee cuts into how much I money and time I can devote to FOW, and it looks like there is about 200 US FOW & TY tournament players who faced the same dilemma in FY18.

So what does it all mean? Certainly, if FOW is “dead” in your area then what is happening on the larger US scene may mean nothing to you.  But if you had the impression that the US Tournament scene “collapsed” because of Version 4, you might just be missing out on the big picture.  Yes, there is no doubt that Version 4 hurt the US FOW tournament scene to some extent, but not as big as often is made out to be. And perhaps the surge in US Team Yankee events has had just as big as an impact on decline US FOW event attendance as Version 4 did.

Really it’s up for you to decide what it all means to you, but at least now you have some actual numbers you can reflect on even if you don’t agree with the conclusions I get from them. Perhaps the more important question is what does Battlefront think about the trend analysis?

If what’s shown by these numbers do not correlate well with sales numbers then I’m going to hazard they won’t mean much. I will tough hazard to speculate that if I was BF management that an overall 35% increase in the combined number of TY & FOW events in FY18 compared to FY14-17 along with a 4% decrease in total BF event participation may not be so bad, especially if I’m thinking in FY19 that the V4 Late War roll-out and maybe even Oil Wars will make up for that small overall all drop. Time will tell.

I’ll do my best to come back next year and give some FY19 US tournament analysis.