BridgeBig
We love bridge and believe in its future. In fact, we’re working hard on making bridge more accessible and attractive to a broader audience. This has also been the reason why we wanted to be the main sponsor of a new initiative called ‘Bridge Champion of The Netherlands’ (BKVN). BKVN is an exciting new tournament with qualifiers throughout clubs in The Netherlands with a live individual final in Utrecht. The competition was going to be broadcast on national television in a weekly show. You can find more details about the tournament in an earlier blog post.
We decided to sponsor it by guaranteeing a grand prize pool of €25,000 for the event, and by allowing players to qualify online on bridgebig.com. Supporting new initiatives is always risky but we want to stand behind exciting yet unproven concepts because we are committed to making bridge as big and popular as it once was (hence our name: Bridge Big). To quote from Ratatouille (great movie):
” … There are times
when a critic truly risks something
and that is in the discovery
and defence of the new.
The world is often unkind
to new talent, new creations.
The new needs friends.”
Ratatouille (2007). Watch the fragment on Youtube.
The bad news
But today, the BKVN-team announced that the tournament has been cancelled. Even though many people worked hard to make the tournament a success, there have simply been too few registrations from players to make a high-quality TV show. Some of the live qualifiers at locations in The Netherlands even had to be cancelled because they hardly had any participants.
Naturally, we are very disappointed to hear the news, but we also understand the decision of the BKVN-crew. You cannot have a good tournament, let alone TV-show, without the enthusiasm from players. Nevertheless, we are still firm believers in the future of bridge and we are committed to make a stand.
The good news
We had committed to guaranteeing €25,000 for the prize pool of the event and we’re still determined to rock the bridge world with a tournament of this size. So instead, on hearing the news, we have decided to organise an online tournament on bridgebig.com where we’ll guarantee the same €25,000 in a massive tournament that will be open to all Bridge Big players. More details will follow in November, and will be posted here on our blog & on our Facebook page.
Bridge Big continues to work hard to give bridge a bright future. If we all work together we are convinced we can make this possible. Hope to see you all at our upcoming events!
xx The Bridge Big team
