One of the objectives of the BPA Board of Directors is to give the membership greater visibility into the deliberations of the board and to give insight into the things being discussed. To that end, we are publishing a quarterly “Tenth Seat” update so that everyone has a better sense of what’s going on with the board and the deliberations we are undertaking for the convention. This article details board activities from July to September 2025.

WBC 2025 Convention Stats

For the WBC 2025, there were 1,485 attendees at the convention out of 1,584 registered members. Included in that were156 walk-on General Memberships. Overall, the attendance was up 5% from WBC 2024. 158 Events were run at WBC 2025 with 26 of those having more than 100 unique players.

Tech Committee

At WBC 2025, the board announced that the BPA has struggled with our initial selected tech partner. As a result, the board will reopen our RFP to select a new vendor to partner with. Further updates will be given from the board throughout the year.

Auction/Auction Store

The board was generally pleased with the success of the WBC 2025 Auction and Auction Store. Though some timing issues still need to be resolved, the reduced time format will be continued at WBC 2026 with less items to address the issue of fitting the Auction/Auction Store into its new timeline.

Consolidating Events within a Smaller Time Period

There have been a number of complaints at the last several WBC events about how difficult it was for members who could not attend the entire week to participate in tournaments due to many events being spread across the entire convention. In order to try and improve the experience for all attendees, the board is implementing a recommendation for WBC 2026, which will become policy at WBC 2027 to contain individual events within a 4–5-day time period. If a tournament has a Semifinal and Final, all Heats, Semifinal, and Final will need to be completed within 4 days of the start of the tournament. For those that also include a quarterfinal, all eats, Quarterfinal, Semifinal, and Final must be completed within 5 days of the start of the tournament.