To sum it up and make one thing clear, a pay to win concept is fcked up, and completely rubbish. If I put myself in the eyes of the grower/breeder I am why would I want to win something that is setup beforehand? The prize would mean absolute shit to me...
But in the eyes of the company behind me... well yeah they could maybe see the benefit, since prizes boosts sales, simple as that.
That is also the reason why some cup organisers work like that, the biggest contributors 'seem' to often win, is it rigged? Well it could well be, it certainly feels that way sometimes, especially looking from the outside...
Where it all comes down to in my opinion is
transparency... are you transparent about the cup itself? The way it is being judged? Are you sharing the individual results from the judges? From the lab? Are the judges not somehow connected to the companies that compete? Etc. etc.
To give you all some perspective, some cups work with a handful selected 'Industry judges' that do get days/weeks or even months to sample
(and blind-judge) all the entries and make up their own score-card. Others work with the cup entrants being the judges, and they have to sample the entries on 1 day, or two days, smoking maybe even 20-30 samples per category... which is when you look at it, pretty undoable to judge properly, but on the other hand sort of fair, because it is sort of peer-reviewed, but also this type has it flaws in my opinion...
Should we, as a company, be allowed to both sponsor and compete at these cups?
Why the hell not?
Keep in mind that most of these cups can only be held/organised by the 'sponsoring' money from the bigger companies.. besides having your logo somewhere during the event, the biggest thing to gain is to actually win something, holding them from the right to compete would make no sense in my opinion..
As long as the process is done correctly and transparant I see no issue...
The only problem I see would be if we, Dutch Passion, would hold a cup ourselves, ask everyone to chip in, compete and then give prizes for winning with our own samples/entries... a bit like FB is doing with their AWC-cup/growdiaries site... In the Netherlands we have a saying that goes like, it is like the butcher rating his own meat.. Exactly like the example
@Son of Hobbes gave with AFN holding a 'cup' about holding the best forum site..
My 2cents above here bro...
Lol, that's what I mean
Regarding the pink elephant, like I said here above, why the hell not?
It's one of the other options indeed, that actually happens quite often, a decent part of the cups we win (same goes for other companies) are being done via growers themselves, without us even knowing so we have nothing to do with it. But still I see no issue in sponsoring an event, helping the community/organisation with hosting and competing... it all comes down to transparency/judging.
Smart guy
but you can bet your ass there will be talk inside the industry, because it is a small world!
