2024 WatchCrunch Micro Tournament Recap - Congratulations To Baltic

Over 1700 people showed up, cast their vote, expressed their opinion, and after calculating all the votes Baltic wins this years Micro tournament. Congratulations to Etienne and the entire team at @balticwatches. I hope some are here on WC to celebrate.

Baltic danced through this tournament like Chappell Roan at the Pink Pony Club. Their #1 overall seed held up, never truly having a competitive match-up the entire tournament. To say they were dominant would be an understatement. If this tournament was Road House, they were Dalton.

Huge shout out to Lorier. Many feel they had the toughest bracket and they managed to defeat some heavyweights on their way to the championship.

Organizer observations:

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for making this tournament fun. I try to evolve the tournament every year and the only thing I can promise, if we run this next year, is that it will continue to look a little different. When this started out the goal was to shine a light on small brands. It is an odd place we are in now, as WC has become a gathering place for folks to discuss all kinds of brands, especially smaller ones, but brands folks did not know of a few years ago are now amongst the most popular.

Another shout out to all the brands who were active participants. That means so much to me, the voters, and I am sure the team at WC. 

Speaking of that, while I have had the honor to meet some of the fine folks at WC, and Max is as nice as you think he would be, but I am not affiliated with WC. Nor am I affiliated with any brands. My mailbox is not filled with watches to do this. The only thing I get for running this is the joy of seeing folks debate some amazing brands and their participation with many of the brand owners. 

I am still undecided if we continue to include some of the bigger brands, or go back to the roots and include largely unknown brands. Perhaps a little column A and a little column B. It will get real boring if the outcome is decided before we vote.

Most of you know this, but for many, this will be their first read of the rules and they may be inclined to jump in the comments, push their glasses up, and spit the virtues of what is and is not a microbrand. Let’s talk about the term “Micro” brand. One, it is a silly term. I would not use it if there was a better option. Two, March Micro Madness is just proper alliteration. Three, this tournament has always been a representation of small independent brands. Yes, some may be revival brands. Yes, some may sell hand made watches. Others may use a third party. At this table, all are welcome. Moving on…

A popular topic was ranking. As mentioned, I continue to evolve the tournament to try to make it better and more engaging each year. There is never a right or wrong way to create a ranking system, but versus random rankings where some popular brands are ousted early due to an unfortunate random rank, I created a method to create transparency. This year the formula was pretty straight forward:

• Total posts using the brand hashtags at the start of the tournament. This counted for 75% of the ranking. For the sake of ease, only the single brand # was used. For example, #monta counts, but not #montanoble. It would have been too much work to try to sort through all of those.

• Total brand followers – 25% of ranking.

• The two were put into a single formula and brands below were the top twelve overall (the four #1-3 seeds). For the most part, most of these held up:

We had 21 new brands in the tournament this year. It is a challenge every year to pick which brands make it and which do not. With the goal of shining a spotlight on as many brands as possible, it is healthy to get new players in the mix. It is no surprise that Kuoe Kyoto hit the tournament with a splash, making it all the way to the sweet sixteen. Looking forward to seeing what they do in the new year.

Here is a breakdown of the new brands and the tournament performance:

Each year we hear about watches coming from new parts of the globe and our country diversity shows it. This year we had 19 different countries represented. I would not have guessed we would see four brands from the United States in the elite eight with only one Swiss brand. In fact, there was not a Swiss brand in the final four.

Facts that may only interest me:

• Last year, we had 29,450 votes. At the start of this, I thought it would be great to get 50k. What did we actually get? 90,408 votes. That is more than three times the participation as last year. Kudos!

•  With the exception of the Elite Eight, voting was up in every round:

• Top ten vote getters:

What about other brands you might want to pay attention to that did not make the cut? Here are some additional ones if you still want to learn more (in no particular order):

• Praesidus

• Gavox

• Van Doren

• Elka

• Arken

• Charles Barret

• Novo

• March La.b

Those are my initial thoughts. I reserve the right to edit and add to this, but I would rather hear from you; What did you think? Are we still having fun? What brand did you discover? Did you buy a watch as a result? Would love any thoughts on next year.

To answer a question I often get: Can we do more? Simple answer: No.

I already have guilt for monopolizing the top spots for two weeks. I also want this to feel special. Anything more than one and it loses that. Also, I have to commit from 10-11 every night to prep, update polls, post etc. I am not sure about you, but it is a lot to do and not miss a beat. One early night in bed and the tournament just does not work. Also, I REALLY like going to late movies. This was two weeks with no movies. I have to now catch up on Ghostbusters and Kong Vs. Godzilla.

Another item I had not anticipated, 95K+ phone notifications is an odd side effect. I thought I could ignore them, but it was hard. If we run this next year, I will have to turn that off. I usually get two days of life on my phone. During this tournament, I was lucky to make it a day.

That is all I have for now and just like last year. 

If you are still interested in more data, here is the 2023 Recap.