It doesn't really matter who it is because apart from one team (RL), that sort of usage is gonna cripple in some cases and in others, severely hurt, the other teams.
Remember for every XBall game you play in a tournament environment, you would have to think any serious XBall team is gonna have that game underpinned with at least 3 training games......
We are ******* lucky on Nexus in that we can weather this storm without recourse to dipping our hands in our pockets but for a lot of the guys out there in EXL land, this is gonna be one costly exercise.
The only thing that holds this all together is the promise of TV (Dick Clark's proposed deal) and the eventual franchising of each team.
The franchising of the teams enables the respective owners of the teams to consolidate their investment and provide a framework to develop an income stream.
But make no mistake about it, it's this Dick Clark deal that provides the glue that binds disparate parties like SP, Dye, Gino, Ren, Richmond and so on all together and therefore the EXL hangs upon the same thread.
And we ain't talking about just any deal here, the deal has to be that of a formalised league structure that enables the playing of teams like Oakland Assassins v Philly Americans (with some obvious end of year room being made for the likes of its European counterparts such as Legion and Joy etc).
There is absolutely no future in it for any of us if it goes down the route of a Pro - Celebrity format, all bets off are off if it starts to meander down this route believe me.
Dick Clark, I doubt, doesn't give a sh!t whether it's one or the other, he ain't in it for the love of paintball, his god is green and flat and if he thinks a Pro - Celebrity format is gonna run and a league format isn't, then we already know which way it's gonna go.
At the moment we have some confusing signs coming out and I can't make much sense of them other than to say, we need to see something substantial coming from Clark and I fear just because we (Paintball) need something doesn't mean Dick Clark is gonna oblige us until he's ready, if at all.
Chicago is a crossroads for a few reasons not least of which is because some influential people have to make some difficult decisions by then, maybe things will become clearer after that because if the NXL sneezes, the EXL is gonna get the flu believe me.
The fate of Paintball hangs upon a knife-edge but ironically, that fate is gonna be decided by somebody outside of the industry....all we can do as teams and players is to wait... and position ourselves in the best way we can and as well as our respective pockets allow us.