Proposal Move SPL One Week Earlier

[Ruffles]

Currently, Week 1 starts the second week of the year (So Jan 11 for 2027). To me, there is a couple of reasons why this is not great:

Finals happen around end of March / early April. For some reason, this week is one where people end up doing some big plans, like traveling, camping, or spending time with family. It's probably due to 1) spring break, 2) Easter & good Friday, and 3) if you want to schedule a big event around this time, this week makes more sense than others since many others take it off anyways or you get some time off from work/school. Take me for example, where in 2025 and 2026 I was in Medical School and I had long-planned months in advance important life events during this time. I literally played my 2025 finals game in my suit a few hours before my engagement, and my 2026 finals game from a phone on hotel wifi in Bali Indonesia during my honeymoon. It felt weird because those life events are clearly way more important than Pokemon but I also did not want to let down my team by subbing out on our most important week of all the tournament, potentially throwing hundreds of hours and weeks down the drain. This makes for worse quality games as well.

Another thing is that it makes for a better tournament schedule. SPL players often have Pokemon fatigue and need at least a couple of weeks from big tours, and is the main reason why I joined Slam late (after Ubers, LC, and UU signups were gone). Not to mention, WCoP feels a bit close. Yes SCL is behind SPL but most players play different tiers between SCL and SPL, when they have to play the same in WCoP, so I think making that gap a week bigger is also nice.

There is also precedent for this as it did happen before, in SPL XIII, as well as SPL XI, X, and IX was actually December 31st. I'm too lazy to check more, and I'm not sure if this change to 2nd week of the year was deliberate or not, but I do think scheduling it in the first week of Jan would make more sense to me and also make it more hype.

 

[Tenebricite]

I agree! I think Ruffles gives several good reasons for moving SPL up a week that warrant trying it this year. I think most of us can agree that having SPL finals around around major holidays isn't great. However, everyone's schedules are different so this question may deserve a survey.

 

[Finchinator]

The biggest issue is scheduling the auction around Christmas, New Years, and people being with their families during holiday season. It’s a lot easier to plan an auction for the first week of January than it is for late December.

For reference, the auction has been January 3rd-8th every recent year since 2022 (and 2020 as well). Before that, it was all the way up on December 19th in 2021 and December 22nd in 2019. There is no scheduling an auction between the 23rd of December and 1st of January typically.

Unless people want to scrap the gap week for Power Rankings or make it longer than a week, then it gets really awkward with the timeline. I’m not even opposed because I would like everything bumped up a week, but it’s not easy logistically.

 

[Ruffles]

I forgot about the week break for PRs, and obviously there is a problem with doing auction on Christmas/New Year's. So, the question really becomes do we go back to a 2 week break. In my opinion, the extra wait is very worth.

For example for this year, we can do auction on Dec 19th / 20th, and then W1 can be Jan 4th. Finch mentioned a cool idea that we can even start W1 a couple days early like Jan 2nd or earlier, so that the full two weeks wait is not as bad.

We've done it before, and I feel like it was a better system and we should discuss going back on it.

 

[Astro]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're forgetting tiebreaks in the equation.

If the next edition happens to have a tiebreaker in both semifinals and finals (iirc that's what happened in 2023), that would mean finals will happen around march 22, but then tiebreakers go up on march 29 until april 4th (in case of sunday gamings). While it's true that there are less games, and presumably managers wouldn't get someone in if they can't play at those times for whatever reason, I feel like we just end up with the same issue of finals happening at a time where people start planning on touching grass AND with World Cup qualifiers happening in the meantime.

I don't really have an opinion on this as I'm not an SPL player myself, but since the two tb phases in playoffs are very likely to happen and have happened before, I think you guys should probably keep this in mind for the rest of the discussion.

Just wanted to put this out here because I didn't see tiebreaks being brought up.

 

[Spitfire]

Just wanted to pitch in and say that im personally not a fan of two weeks between auction and week-1. Kills hype and might let a lethargic mindset set in.

 

[goldmason]

Gonna crosspost what I wrote in Tours.

Having the auction 19th/20th into 2 dead weeks seems fine to me, but only if people wanna actually contribute to articles to release in those 2 weeks. Otherwise momentum drags extremely hard.

Currently it is pulling teeth to even get managers to respond to 3-4 interview questions (yes this happened in SCL, no I won't say who), let alone getting anyone other than ego to actually push an article to the finish line without great effort.

I'm also going to be extremely candid: trying to get PRs done the week of Christmas and New Years sounds like it will be impossible, I already have enough trouble as it is with our current timeline. Additionally, I'm gonna be (understandably) doing better things with my life than being on Smogon for most of that period as well, so someone else would need to step up to do PRs.

Also expect 0 custom avatars having to finalize them in the weeks of Christmas and New Years, and frankly the artists should not be expected to be busting their ass over the holidays in order to make those happen even if they are hypothetically available.

It just seems like a logistical nightmare for, what. A single week of time back? I understand where this proposal is coming from but its basically just saying fuck you to the people doing all the things that people expect (dare I say demand) before this tournament. Which I acknowledge is unintentional and not the point of the post so I hope no one takes any of this personally, just again being candid.

Lastly, and this should not necessarily impact the decision here, but I signed up to host this tour again (feel free to call me a masochist, go Tyrants) but if we did this change I would probably quit immediately. I would not feel comfortable with my level of activity as a host (especially on the PR front) and I only like to attach my name to tours I can give at least 50% effort in (usually hope for more). Again, should have no bearing on the actual discussion or decision, but something for the TD Oversight team to take into account.

Not a TD team opinion, just mine etc etc.