Signs of Trouble?

[Baca Loco]

All year long (and even before) we've all heard the dire warnings, Chicken Little fear-mongering and bandwagon doomcrying over the state of tourney paintball--heck, I've even done my fair share of the same--but nobody really believed it, at least among the majority of players.
However, I was looking at OC registration for the NPPL--the big, end of season, settle the championships event, intro next year's gear--and less than 3 weeks out non-Pro registration is around 75 teams, total!
Is this a sign of the coming Paintball Apocalypse or just poor scheduling or maybe the luster wearing off the party league?

 

[Chicago]

When you get down to it, the 'volume' of attendence at events is really local teams, within driving distance. I think NPPL may just be seeing the effects of being the last event in a series of five (if you count Vegas, 4 hours away) in the same area. Teams can only come up with so much money every year, and I'd imagine the LA/SD teams are pretty tapped out at this point. That leaves you with teams that will fly, and just like it's hard for PSP to compete with HB, it's hard for NPPL to compete with Cup.

I also think you'll see that list pick up quite a bit as the registration deadline gets closer. Once you get past the "this event will sell out in minutes" point and people see that there's room left, you've lost the urgency of paying right away and people just won't do it. Happens pretty regularly with PSP registration - people will pay 'at their leisure', then when a division gets close to filling up the last spots will go quickly as people scramble to make sure they're in.

Barring some jarring circumstance, I'd expect HB to sell out in hours again next year.

 

[Chicago]

Tangentally...

I think there is one very key factor that is causing a bit of a downward pressure on overall national-level event attendence that has really been under the radar.

It used to be thatmost anybody who owned a paintball field had aspirations of having a national paintball team, and one of the big ways a paint vendor would win business was to do the "If you buy my paint, I'll give your team free paint at NPPL/PSP events". Of course, this just got factored into the paint price.

There are now a lot more paintball fields out there run by folks who have no interest in national-level teams, and nowadays, starting in particular I think with Procaps Direct at the end of 2004, paint vendors just quote a lower price and don't give out free paint. "I'll sell you paint at $1/$2 per case cheaper" has won out over "I'll give you free paint at events".

"Back in the day", part of getting that field sponsorship used to be getting some/all of their allotment of free paint at the events. So it's (comparatively) more expensive for teams to play, and fields don't have big 'free paint' credits giving them an incentive to send teams to events.

 

[Furby]

When you get down to it, the 'volume' of attendence at events is really local teams, within driving distance. I think NPPL may just be seeing the effects of being the last event in a series of five (if you count Vegas, 4 hours away) in the same area. Teams can only come up with so much money every year, and I'd imagine the LA/SD teams are pretty tapped out at this point. That leaves you with teams that will fly, and just like it's hard for PSP to compete with HB, it's hard for NPPL to compete with Cup.

I also think you'll see that list pick up quite a bit as the registration deadline gets closer. Once you get past the "this event will sell out in minutes" point and people see that there's room left, you've lost the urgency of paying right away and people just won't do it. Happens pretty regularly with PSP registration - people will pay 'at their leisure', then when a division gets close to filling up the last spots will go quickly as people scramble to make sure they're in.

Barring some jarring circumstance, I'd expect HB to sell out in hours again next year.

For once I think I agree totally with Chicago...

Having several events in SoCal isn't helping the NPPL's cause in my estimation...personally I think they should have 2-3 events in FL, but I'm a little biased.

 

[Booya39]

The whole free paint thing could be a part of the problem but I agree with the 2 previous posters in that spreading out the events has it's benefits. I do think that if next season they spread out the events more they'll have more turnouts like Boston - great turnout for the vendors and the league.

 

[Baca Loco]

I'm not convinced the numbers add up on the theory proposed so far as a quick perusal of attendance this season may indicate.
Semi-Pro: 26 teams have competed and only 2 were one timers so far.
D1: 54 teams have competed and 14 were one timers.
D2: 104 with 37 one timers.
D3: 156 with 98 one timers.

Now plainly the lower division teams are most likely to have local participation so it all looks more or less as one might expect but if you look at the event numbers ...
HB--209 teams
Tampa--178 teams
Boston-- 171 teams
SD-- 131 teams
OC-- ??

It seems reasonable to think that having 3 events in Cali could/would impact the participation in D2/D3 but the numbers are down across the board event to event.

Still????

 

[Chicago]

Well...

I think demand this year is the same as last year.

But, PRICE is definitely not - NPPL is significantly more expensive than last year. And I think that's a GOOD thing - far ebtter to not quite sell out at a good entry fee than sell out fast when you could have charged more money.

So I think you start the year in a position where you don't have an overwhelming demand for the spots available due to an artificially low price.

Once you factor that, the drop from HB to 'the rest' of the events is predictable/expected in the same way that the pickup in numbers for World Cup is expected. HB is "THE" event of the NPPL series, one of the best two events on the planet every year.

I also think attendence at Boston was PHENOMONAL, given that it's in New England, not exactly your paintball hotspot, essentially surrounded by ocean and canada, where there are no teams at all.

SD - well, it's a 4th event, and they've never done particularly well, and it was also the 4th major event in CA, making it worse. So I think there's some 4th event stuff going on there and some SoCal event fatigue as well.



As for your numbers - I think your definition of 'local' as 'teams who only played one event' is misleading. I'd like to know how many local teams you have if local means "Teams who played one event, or teams who only played the two CA events, or teams who played one event and HB."

 

[Baca Loco]

Thank goodness you opened with your own unique brand of capitalism, squeeze until they squeal and then you know the price is right.
Otherwise I would have thought Missy had gained control of your account as the rest of your post is the conventional wisdom gussied up a bit.

Since your basic premise was local teams equal the majority of participants it seemed not unreasonable shorthand to examine participation by the number of teams that play once as opposed to those playing multiple events as multiple participation suggests something different from we'll play 'cus it's close by. However you wish to look at it declining numbers are declining numbers and with registration well under a 100 with less than 3 weeks left you are still going to see an overall continuing decline across the season--whatever you wish to attribute it to. Beyond that I think you must say the NPPL/PP certainly expected the Cali based events to mitigate decline and/or else it was an economically motivated logistical decision. In either regard it doesn't look good.

 

[Chicago]

I guess I'm just not sure why you would think declining numbers over the course of the season is surprising. Numbers ALWAYS decline over the course of the season. They decline in CFOA, they decline in PSP (the only reason it isn't obvious is Cup), they decline in every single local/regional series I have ever seen, played, reffed or run. It's just the nature of the beast; teams have more money at the start.

The only reason this is new to NPPL is NPPL's price was too low the past few years. Demand for the later events was lower, but you just didn't see it because they sold out anyway. And if NPPL was charging the same entry fee this year as they were last year, then I have no doubt they'd still be selling out all their events.


As for what I want to call local, I think it makes sense to count teams playing events local to them as local teams. Counting teams that only play once is counting something different. They'd be very similar if each of the events was in a different area, but they're not.

 

[Beaker]

But, PRICE is definitely not - NPPL is significantly more expensive than last year. And I think that's a GOOD thing - far ebtter to not quite sell out at a good entry fee than sell out fast when you could have charged more money.

What are the comparative prices?

i.e. what income would they had for the 4th event this year as opposed to last.