....Even me????
You make it sound as though I am hard to please, I'm not actually, I just don't wanna see Spesh do any more fag dance routines
QUOTE]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I see you've seen that particular production as well!
Is Reunification still in the cards?
- Thread starter Baca Loco
- Start date
Chicago,
obviously your lens is distorted.
X-Ball IS USPL: people in the meeting at ProCaps when the announcement of NXL was made acknowledged that fact. People who are playing it now acknowledge that fact. People are NOT playing NXL because of that fact (not that I asked).
the franchise agreements were extremely reasonable; no licensing fees for the first year, exclusive territory with the right to sublicense, etc., etc.; built in support for farm teams so everyone could get a piece of the action. Go find a deal point, put it on here and show me where it was unreasonable...
The coke thing was the coke thing: I negotiated a relationship. I had the right to use that relationship for the benefit of my company. I offered a reasonable compromise to the world cup. Not only did they not accept the compromise, they didn't even offer to negotiate. I WOULD have settled for a booth and literature display.
As for paranoia - come on over, spend a week with me and we'll make some phone calls. After you've done that, THEN you can tell me whether I'm paranoid or not.
obviously your lens is distorted.
X-Ball IS USPL: people in the meeting at ProCaps when the announcement of NXL was made acknowledged that fact. People who are playing it now acknowledge that fact. People are NOT playing NXL because of that fact (not that I asked).
the franchise agreements were extremely reasonable; no licensing fees for the first year, exclusive territory with the right to sublicense, etc., etc.; built in support for farm teams so everyone could get a piece of the action. Go find a deal point, put it on here and show me where it was unreasonable...
The coke thing was the coke thing: I negotiated a relationship. I had the right to use that relationship for the benefit of my company. I offered a reasonable compromise to the world cup. Not only did they not accept the compromise, they didn't even offer to negotiate. I WOULD have settled for a booth and literature display.
As for paranoia - come on over, spend a week with me and we'll make some phone calls. After you've done that, THEN you can tell me whether I'm paranoid or not.
Steve, very simply:
Using the forrmat required signing over massive amounts of control of your facility to you. In particular, usin the ormat required that you get advertising space at every field using hte format. You also were issuing exclusive franchises, so if I had one, nobody near me could have one, which may have turned out OK for early adopters, but ultimately createsd an environment where mos people want your format to fail.
The BIGGEST problem you had is that your format wasn't worth anything. I'm not saying it wasn't a cool format, but nobody used it yet. And anybody can make up a new format. so, why would I give ANYTHING to help you make your format more popular, just so it then would have value, so you could charge me even more to use it later?
Contrast this to XBall. Anybody can use it, free of charge. That's how you get people to use a format.
That's why you were unreasonable - you were asking for compensation for a format that had no value, and expecting people to agree to both promote your format for you AND commit to compensating you later for the value they were creating for you. Now, I'm sure you still believe your format was valuable, but that's just another indication that you're a little disconnected from reality. It may be valuable to YOU, but you never positioned it to be valuable to anyone else, and THAT's why nobody used it.
And, I'm curious, name one person who is not playing XBall because of anything to do with USPL.
Using the forrmat required signing over massive amounts of control of your facility to you. In particular, usin the ormat required that you get advertising space at every field using hte format. You also were issuing exclusive franchises, so if I had one, nobody near me could have one, which may have turned out OK for early adopters, but ultimately createsd an environment where mos people want your format to fail.
The BIGGEST problem you had is that your format wasn't worth anything. I'm not saying it wasn't a cool format, but nobody used it yet. And anybody can make up a new format. so, why would I give ANYTHING to help you make your format more popular, just so it then would have value, so you could charge me even more to use it later?
Contrast this to XBall. Anybody can use it, free of charge. That's how you get people to use a format.
That's why you were unreasonable - you were asking for compensation for a format that had no value, and expecting people to agree to both promote your format for you AND commit to compensating you later for the value they were creating for you. Now, I'm sure you still believe your format was valuable, but that's just another indication that you're a little disconnected from reality. It may be valuable to YOU, but you never positioned it to be valuable to anyone else, and THAT's why nobody used it.
And, I'm curious, name one person who is not playing XBall because of anything to do with USPL.
In my own personal estimation, no.
BUT, while that may be a snazzy retort, it's got nothing to do with what I'm talking about. The franchise fee was paid to be part of the NXL. The NXL happened to use the XBall format. The XBall format was made freely available to anyone who wanted to use it.
I don't know what, if any, franchise fee there was to have a USPL franchise. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying was the reason the format didn't go anywhere was that the USPL format was most certainly NOT free for anyone to use - if anybody wanted to play it at all, you had to agree to a host of conditions that it just didn't make sense to agree to.
Can you see why one was successful and the other was not? "I have a format that nobody plays, but I would like you to playit. Try it out and see if you like it." vs. "I have a format that nobody plays, but I would like you to play it. All you have to do is agree to let me advertise for free at your field, control what advertising you can have at your field, and then I won't let anyone near you use this format."
One charged to have an ownership interest in an exclusive effort at creating a profitable, professional paintball league. The other tried to get fields to popularize a format that would allow the format owner to siphon off revenue from the fields. Nobody is going to invest in promoting someone else's proprietary format when all that's going to do is make it even more expensive for them to use it later.
Thanks for the compliment. 
I beg to differ with your estimation that my 'snazzy retort' had nothing to do with what you were talking about, seeing as how you were going out of your way to grind it in that you felt Davidson was wrong in his estimation that he felt his new format was worth something...balancing your opinion with the outrageous buy-in of $250K really makes you look overly arrogant.
It's obvious that Davidson's format was indeed worth something, since the backers of what would become X-Ball and its' pinnacle league the NXL saw fit to 'borrow' freely from Davidson's USPL format and then turn around and charge people interested in a franchise a quarter-million dollars to participate. Given the return these people saw on their hefty investment, I'm guessing whatever Davidson was asking for seems a bit more reasonable now, eh?
And while I will concede that the NXL was successful for awhile, it's my opinion (and that's all it is) that the NXL is on its' last legs. I guess we'll never know how it would have worked out for the USPL, will we?
I beg to differ with your estimation that my 'snazzy retort' had nothing to do with what you were talking about, seeing as how you were going out of your way to grind it in that you felt Davidson was wrong in his estimation that he felt his new format was worth something...balancing your opinion with the outrageous buy-in of $250K really makes you look overly arrogant.
It's obvious that Davidson's format was indeed worth something, since the backers of what would become X-Ball and its' pinnacle league the NXL saw fit to 'borrow' freely from Davidson's USPL format and then turn around and charge people interested in a franchise a quarter-million dollars to participate. Given the return these people saw on their hefty investment, I'm guessing whatever Davidson was asking for seems a bit more reasonable now, eh?
And while I will concede that the NXL was successful for awhile, it's my opinion (and that's all it is) that the NXL is on its' last legs. I guess we'll never know how it would have worked out for the USPL, will we?
Again, people did not pay a $250k franchise fee for a format. They paid for OWNERSHIP of a LEAGUE. The NXL is not a format, and I don't see how you can confuse a SET OF RULES with a LEAGUE. They all paid in to own part of this league, and if it worked out, they would all profit from the league's future earnings.Thanks for the compliment.
I beg to differ with your estimation that my 'snazzy retort' had nothing to do with what you were talking about, seeing as how you were going out of your way to grind it in that you felt Davidson was wrong in his estimation that he felt his new format was worth something...balancing your opinion with the outrageous buy-in of $250K really makes you look overly arrogant.
It's obvious that Davidson's format was indeed worth something, since the backers of what would become X-Ball and its' pinnacle league the NXL saw fit to 'borrow' freely from Davidson's USPL format and then turn around and charge people interested in a franchise a quarter-million dollars to participate. Given the return these people saw on their hefty investment, I'm guessing whatever Davidson was asking for seems a bit more reasonable now, eh?
And while I will concede that the NXL was successful for awhile, it's my opinion (and that's all it is) that the NXL is on its' last legs. I guess we'll never know how it would have worked out for the USPL, will we?
Steve was asking FIELD OPERATORS for compensation. No field operator has ever paid a cent to run XBall. No field operator has ever been asked to pay a cent, or give any other compensation, for the rights to play XBall. On top of that, Steve was NOT giving field operators an ownership interest. Field owners would back Steve's new format, and as a reward for making his format popular, they would just be putting Steve in a position to ask for even more from them later. If someone comes to me, and they want me to invest my resources in helping them make money, I expect that there will be some avenue whereby if we are successful, I will share in that success, in an amount consistent with my contribution. Steve did not provide field owners with that opportunity.
So yes, Steve's format was worthless, because anybody else could come up with some other new format that wasn't Steve's format. And that's exactly what the NXL did. And, by the way, when Richmond came up with XBall, THAT format was ALSO worthless. XBall became worth something after Draxxus dumped a bunch of money into having the Nations Cup, and the College event, and the Pro XBall division at the 2002 World Cup. Only THEN, after considerable, no-strings, try it and see if you like it investment by Richmond/Draxxus, did XBall have some value.
See how that works? Get people to play the format, encourage anyone who wants to play the format to do so, then sell franchises to a league that uses the format. Not, get people to finance your new format, then let them play it. That's silly. IF you're going to finance a format, you might as well finance your own format.
Once again, I am talking about the conditions Steve required field operators to meet in order to use a format that had not been played. You are talking about a franchise fee paid to own part of a professional paintball league, using a format that had already been played and publicised. They are absolutely not comparable. USPL format is a format. XBall is a format. NXL is a LEAGUE (not free) that plays the format of XBall (free). What you're saying is like saying an engine is worth $20,000 because someone else sold a car for $20,000.
I see what you're saying, and I fully understand where you're coming from, but my hypothesis still stands. Seems to me that Davidson's proposal was the more reasonable of the two given how things appear to be working out.
$250,000 for OWNERSHIP of a now worthless (IMO) league? Great investment!
$250,000 for OWNERSHIP of a now worthless (IMO) league? Great investment!
It's not like paintball has any shortage of those kinds of investments. How much money has WDP put into the NPPL/PP thing? The NXL and NPPL Pro leagues appear to be in pretty much the same spot valuewise at the moment. Richmond just spread the investment (losses) around a little more. How much money is invested in sponsoring Pro paintball teams each year? What do we get for that investment?
As for reasonableness of proposal, for owning a franchise in a Pro league, maybe Steve's was more reasonable than the NXL's. I don't know, as I don't know what the USPL franchise agreement was. But in terms of having a format to play, the XBall arrangement was definitely more reasonable. Can't get much more reasonable than free, and XBall is free.
Thought bout it a bit more - I never had one of the USPL franchise agreemetns, but I would expect that the USPL franchise deal was probably much less expensive than the NXL deal, based on who ended up having franchises in USPL. So that makes the question, was there a reason to pay $250k anyway? Did that money get pooled to do something useful? Did having the money make the Dick Clark effort possible? I don't know the answer to that.
I would also like to point out that of all the paintball formats I've seen or read about, I think the USPL format when evaluating playability and telivisability alone, has the most to offer. I don't know that I agree with the penalty structure, but the system for advancing flags is unique and, I think, effective.
Now, Steve can continue to claim that XBall is the same as his format, but I disagree - I think Steve's format is better*, and Steve is selling himself short when he compares his format to the XBall format which is lacking the key feature that makes the USPL format special.
* Presently, could be better. The first incarnation of USPL format was better than the first incarnation of the XBall format, but USPL format needs some more refinement to take the 'best' crown again - for starters, it played way too long in the first time around.
I would also like to point out that of all the paintball formats I've seen or read about, I think the USPL format when evaluating playability and telivisability alone, has the most to offer. I don't know that I agree with the penalty structure, but the system for advancing flags is unique and, I think, effective.
Now, Steve can continue to claim that XBall is the same as his format, but I disagree - I think Steve's format is better*, and Steve is selling himself short when he compares his format to the XBall format which is lacking the key feature that makes the USPL format special.
* Presently, could be better. The first incarnation of USPL format was better than the first incarnation of the XBall format, but USPL format needs some more refinement to take the 'best' crown again - for starters, it played way too long in the first time around.