Author: Dave Worton
Last saved by: David Worton

League Bowling Prize Fund

This document explains how the league finances will work for the forthcoming season and how prize money will be distributed at the end of the season.
(1)	The league is not carrying forward funds from previous seasons and will not carry any into future seasons so the accounting balances to zero each season.
(2)	The money collected from each player will be divided into the amount required to pay the bowling alley for your games (also called lineage) and the remaining amount which will be added to league funds.
(3)	At the end of the season, after the deduction of a small amount of league expenses, all funds will be distributed back to the team captains in the form of prizes. Team captains can then decide how they will allocate that to their players. 
League Expenses
(a)	The Web Site	
The bowling web site is hosted by a company called Freehostia and (despite the name) we use a service plan that is one level up from the free/trial service called “Watercircle” (mainly to let us host the size of database we need).
https://www.freehostia.com/hosting/watercircle-plan/
	Total cost for this is 35.40 dollars per year so the expense here is about £25 once a year/season (exact amount depending on the exchange rates when the payment is due in Feb) 
(b)	Printing Costs.
As and when we can pint these for free we do but there may be a small amount for printer ink over the season to cover costs.
All the labour for maintaining the site is of course free.
Prize Money 
Prize money will be paid out on the basis of handicap results only (at least for the current season). The league traditionally only tracks handicap scores. There is expected to be an experimental parallel table for scratch scores starting this season but since this is being tested for the first time, the intention is to use it for fun only at first and maybe in future seasons (if desired by the league) there could be a scratch based pay-out.
Prize money will be allocated as follows:-
(1)	A fixed amount of £50 for the first placed team
(2)	A fixed amount of £30 for the second placed team
(3)	A fixed amount of £20 for the third placed team
(4)	Some small prizes (e.g. boxes of chocolates) for individual achievements. For details of these achievements see the end of the document.

(5)	After this has been paid out and expenses accounted for the remaining balance will be split between all teams according to the following formula:-
(a)	The sum of all remaining funds will be divided by the total number of points across all teams to calculate a “value per point”
(b)	Teams will receive the value of their points in the handicap league as “value per point” multiplied by their points total. This will go to all teams Including those who have won 1^st , 2^nd and 3^rd place prizes, meaning that in practice these teams will get more than the base prize level, but every team will receive some share of the season funds according to their success in the season.
There will be no monetary prizes for individual high scores or series, however see (4) and the next section.
Individual Achievement Prizes
The individual “token” prizes (e.g. chocolates or the like) awarded at the end of the season will be a maximum of seven altogether:-
The winner of the individual cup when we are running the competition (see below).
High Handicap Game (one for men and one for ladies)
High Handicap Series (one for men and one for ladies)
Best Performance (one for men and one for ladies). This is the best percentage achievement in head to head competition over the season (so like a most valuable player award).
Note that there is a minimum qualifying number of games you must play to win the best performance trophy which is 50% of the games in the season. On the web site, qualifying players are shown in bold. 
All prizes are only awarded if there are at least two qualifying players. So, for example, if there aren’t at least two ladies who have bowled 50% of the games there will be no trophy awarded in the performance category.
There will be no prizes (this season at least) for season high average or for high team games or series, although these things are shown on the web site for interest.
Individual Cup
In some seasons an individual cup will be run. The way this works is that you don’t bowl any extra games but your “best” handicap series is compared with your opponent over the qualifying weeks. The competition starts with a qualifying period which selects 16 players based on their best handicap series during that period. 
After the qualifying period, there will then be three knock out rounds to reduce the field from 16 to 8, from 8 to 4 and from 4 to the 2 finalists before the actual final round.
Cup Rounds will begin and end on dates to be announced.
Qualifying		: Top 16 qualify with their best handicap ranked series over the number of qualifying weeks (varies from season to season)
Last sixteen	:	: Usually 5 scheduled weeks 
Quarter Finals 	: Usually 5 scheduled weeks
Semi finals 		: Usually 5 scheduled weeks
The final 		: Arranged to run to the end of the season and finish on the final position night.