We now know that WYYC 2023 will be in Osaka, Japan, but what about 2024? We know it will be in North America, but where? This will be a place to put your predictions for the city that will hold WYYC 2024. I’m guessing it will probably be Cleveland again, but they could go some other place like LA, NYC, or New Orleans, or go to Canada and have it in Toronto or Vancouver. What do you think?
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I hope it will be somewhere new this time like Vietnam, Singapore or Hong Kong. It will be better for anyone to travel and discovering new places and at the same time give the opprotunity to players in those near by area that has travelling difficulties (such as Visa, cost) to countries like US or Japan.
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As someone from Vancouver I can only hope it will be here, but I’m sure they’ll make the right decision when the time comes.
From what I remember it’s all based on whoever submits a proposal to their national organization, aka whoever steps up willing to be the organizer; it’s not a small event and takes a huge amount of time and energy. As much as I’d love a Boston, NYC, SF, LA, etc Worlds, Cleaveland is a good city for it, being cheaper than those places while still having a great energy; the city was really invested in helping make the event happen as well IIRC from the Scales interview about it post-2016. @unklesteve was the one of the main drivers/organizers behind the last two USA Worlds but I think they’ve stepped back a bit from organizing stuff as it’s a lot to take on your plate and is a pretty thankless job.
I could see the Phoenix area, Orlando area, the Atlantic coast, and Massachusetts + New York + Pennsylvania being contenders as those have all had contests organized there in the past year-ish. But, who knows. I definitely wouldn’t mind Cleaveland again because it would unquestionably be cheaper to attend than Osaka will be, I’m seeing 2-3k minimum for flights alone 
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I lived in Southeast Asia and hopefully the admins from SG and HK yoyo community will proposed to IYYF for having a worlds in their country for the next few years, whos knows maybe it might happen but only time will tell.
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Transparency!
The IYYF is no longer soliciting proposals from other people to run Worlds, but we’re open to suggestions and help from local organizers. No matter the location, the IYYF is running Worlds from here on out, to help guarantee quality & consistency of the event. This means the default locations are very much Prague (Ondra), Japan (Hiro), and Cleveland/Midwest (me). We’re open to (and looking for) ways to spread out from there but that makes a logistically difficult event even more difficult so the location and local support have to be top notch for us to make that kind of leap.
Leading up to 2019 Worlds I investigated a number of other options for locations. I worked for several months with Harry Lee (Harrison’s dad) on scoping out Vancouver but once we ran all the numbers there was just no way to make it work with our projected revenue for the event.
I worked with Joseph Harris on scoping Honolulu (20 year anniversary of 99 Worlds in Honolulu!) and it was WAY too expensive. Like, the venue alone cost something like 2x the entire 2019 event budget in Cleveland.
It would be very easy for me to run a quality event again in Cleveland for 2024. It’s also financially a very safe bet for the IYYF since we would have a very clear view of costs and income, and we have a tremendous amount of local support. It’s also very clear to me that yoyo players want the event to be somewhere more exotic, or at the very least somewhere different.
The financial reality is that Worlds in the US is only viable in a so-called “secondary market”. It’s not going to happen in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, but it could happen in Buffalo or Sacramento or St. Louis. From a financial standpoint, historically here’s how it breaks down:
- Worlds in Europe turns a slim profit.
- Worlds in Japan breaks even or loses money.
- Worlds in US makes a considerable profit.
So right now, keeping the US location as profitable as possible is what helps make the other two locations (the more exotic ones) financially possible. So it’s in the IYYF and the community’s best interest for Worlds in the US to continue happening in Cleveland or in a similar city. I realize that’s not very exciting as a travel destination, but I think we can also generally agree that everyone had a really good time in 2016 & 2019 and that we ran a high quality event.
I’ll say that honestly I have mixed feelings about running it in Cleveland again. I know that it would make my job WAY easier, but I also know that’s an easy trap to fall into and it could lead to the same path as “Worlds in Orlando every year” which would stagnate the contest. I know I can continue to iterate and improve the event here easily every year, and I also know that people will complain about it and I’ll spend an entire year running an event just so people can go on FB and tell me how much I suck for doing it.
I’ve been a bit burned out on yoyos over the last couple years and I’m just now starting to get inspired and come back to it a bit, and I know that running Worlds 2024 has to start really soon and that means I have to commit to a decision that is either going to make my life very, very hard OR a decision that will make my life very, very unpleasant. Or, you know, both.
So…not sure. But we’ll definitely announce it soon.
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would love to see it in MA.
Having run Triple Crown in Boston I can say it was expensive.
That said, somewhere like Northampton/Easthampton could be doable although I don’t know the area well enough to know if they have any appropriate venues.
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Personally, I live near Toronto, Canada so Buffalo would be awesome because it would be accessible for me to attend. I’ve also always wanted to go to Cleveland, and it is still relatively accessible for me to drive there. If worlds 2024 is happening at either of these locations I will definitely try to make it and finally attend my first physical yo-yo event! 
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Probably unlikely, but Canada or Mexico would be very cool.
Or west coast US (CA/AZ/NV/OR/WA). Even if it was smaller city.
Thanks for the breakdown Steve! I’m excited for Worlds '24, wherever it ends up 
St. Louis Worlds at the City Museum in the spirit of MoYo would be so cool but I don’t think that venue is actually practical for the event haha. I’ve only heard good things about 2016 and 2019 so Cleveland would be great too! Especially since it wouldn’t be the first time it was hosted there, which should make things run smoother. Plus I have a cousin in Columbus so it’d be an excuse to go visit them or get them up to Cleveland for the event 
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+1 vote for Sacramento - I’m biased for sure being in CA, but a strong argument for doing it there is that CA has one of the largest hubs of yoyoers in the world. Drive isn’t terrible from SoCal, and flights are relatively inexpensive as well. SF isn’t too far away either if people from out of state want to rent a car and sightsee during their trip.
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As a clarification, I didn’t list those cities because I’m working on them. I listed them because they are in the correct tier of “secondary markets” and I thought it would make my point a little better.
Hartford, CT might be a realistic Northeast option.
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mexico would be sick
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It would! Regrettably I don’t have an organizing partner down there who could help and it’s a bit much for me to handle by remote with a language barrier.
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Going there next week. Looks like a VERY neat place!
I think Baton Rouge could be suitable for a world contest. For starters, It’s relatively small compared to other cities like Sacramento or St. Louis, but it’s still big enough to be considered a city. There is pretty good food here, too (in my opinion.) And we have good places to hold the contest like the Raising Cane’s River Center. There are only 2 problems, 1 being that it could be really humid during the contest. but the contest would mostly be inside anyways. But the kicker is that I am the only yoyoer in the area that I know of, and I’m in middle school, so it would be decently hard to organize the contest.
Just a thought, though.
I just remembered Chicago and LA US Nats seemed like great events and worked well, do costs for worlds compared to these Nats scale so much that makes this impossible?
Or is it the fact that back then the locations were viable and now they are not?
Also iirc worlds in europe were at least half less in terms of competition fees than the other two. Maybe there could be ways to make worlds in europe more profitable instead of compromising one of the locations? Given majority of the yoyo-locations are pretty cheap as is, (such as Hungary, Poland or Czechia).
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Im hoping for Seattle or something on the west coast. But I am bit biased.
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