This mail has very disappointing news for you all.

Due to various unforeseen circumstances and reasons, we are forced to CANCEL ECU2019.

SHIT, What the F…, Scheiße, Merda, Merde,

….#!@!??….

Angry? You have the right to be… we are too…

Disappointed? You have the right to be… we are too…

Sad? You have the right to be… we are too…

Now, let us explain what happened from our last mail until today, and why we made this decision:

It all started off with Cityresort changing hands. Cityresort was the venue where we planned to have the dormitories, social area, gyms, dinner facilities, and the infopoint. This news dropped on us suddenly and very unexpectedly. With that, all of our agreements were invalid, and the new owner, the Fletcher Hotel group, denies to let us use their facilities which we were informed about only on May 1st. This means: we do not have a social area. We do not have a registration area, or a restaurant and dinner facilities for you and for providing the volunteers with food. Also, the prices for using the sports facilities went up drastically. This was quite a shock for us, as this was our central and most important location. Everything that we have prepared so far went to the trash.

The municipality of Sittard offered us a solution, and ensured us we could put up our event and sleeping area at the Tom Dumoulin Bikepark. We spent 10 days frantically preparing tents with sleeping facilities, electricity, shower and toilet units, and breakfast options within our budget. On May 14th, the municipality then suddenly changed its mind, and denied to permit the event and sleeping area there…. So, even though we spend a lot of time and effort on preparations for that, we had to change our plans again.

On the side, we also tried to accommodate everyone in the Stadssporthal, Glanerbrook, or the Fortuna stadium, but all these locations cannot host us. 

Monday, May 20th, the municipality of Sittard offered us two old gyms to use as dormitories. The gyms are 2 kilometers away from the athletics stadium.  We went to see the gyms, and also whether we can have the campsite there as well. However, we still do not have dead certainty that we can really use them, especially because the fire department (for fire safety reasons) and permit department did not yet give us any assurance.

We started calculating again… rent for gyms, electricity, beds, breakfast, toilet units, security… The costs are too high for our budget. Additionally, we may lose participants if we cannot offer accommodation, and then we will very likely not be able to host the urban competition, basketball and hockey, and group freestyle. 

Due to the rising costs and falling number of participants, our budget for the whole event is not big enough to run the ECU properly under these circumstances.

The event is approaching soon, and our team is very small. These changes require huge amounts of work, and preparation time which we simply do not have any more. Therefore, we came to the sad conclusion that we do not have enough time to organize an event of sufficient quality that you can actually enjoy.  We are not even close to making this look like the 2017 edition.

After many nights with almost no sleep and weighing all the options the sad outcome is we cannot guarantee you a good championship. Worthy to your sport. Worthy to our standard. We really tried everything to make this ECU happen.

We are fully aware that our decision has far reaching consequences for all your preparations and reservations. 

We will inform you about the next steps (e.g. concerning refund) as soon as possible.

Again, we really wanted it to be different, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience.

Alwin Jacobs and Core team ECU2019″