In my opinion, one of the silver linings of this pandemic is the emergence of Online Competitions. Given the Pandemic, most big comps like NAKO or Catch and Flow have been forced to adapt and hold their competitions via twitch, discord, or other online platforms. One good result of that is that if one has a good internet connection, the competitions are now open to players who would never have dreamed of being able to compete. However, now that some countries are starting to move on from COVID and roll out their vaccines (not in the Philippines, unfortunately), will online competitions still continue in some shape or form? Or do we go back to the pre-pandemic setup (which I think will happen)? I'm asking because during the pandemic, the kendama scene in the Philippines has grown exponentially, and I would love to have more Philippine talent be seen on the world stage. Most Philippine kendama players live in poverty, however, so a lot of talented players can't even afford a plane ticket to the states (let alone an actual kendama lol). Hope I could get everyone's thoughts on this.
It's cool that folks who might generally be unable to attend or compete at international events were able to participate but I wouldn't want to see all future competitions 100% online. A combination of online and IRL events throughout the year would be pretty cool; maybe even both in one event. Online only events will have a hard time emulating the entirety of the IRL experience particularly crowd participation; hyping up the competitors and/or stressing them out. Playing solitary in your room is not the same thing for you or the spectators. Also while the costs associated with going to a competition IRL can be substantial, the costs to enter online events are not inconsequential. In many cases, particularly if there are participant swag/goody bags that need to be shipped overseas, there can be a large cost. There likely will always be barriers to any type of competition online or otherwise that filter out some players. It would be cool to see kendama get big enough that there are national team organizations who could support players the way we see for other international sports like those in the Olympics. Then perhaps we would have the chance to see even more players from disparate backgrounds.
I would also submit the idea of online qualifiers for an in-real-life event, where the winner gets a ticket to the event. I got the idea from Magic: The Gathering. Magic now has an online platform which holds tournaments sponsored by Wizards of the Coast (the company behind Magic). The people who place in the top 8 of those online tournaments can get free entry to the major, in-real-life tournaments. I can bet that if enough people came and registered for the online event, the company behind it could definitely pay for the winner's ticket to the event.