Originally posted by Gyroscope
Leaving aside the cheating guns for a moment, Robbo, you said that if you had saved money from travel to NPPLs last year, you'd have had greater funds for training, and perhaps for retaining a player or two.
My question is this: would you have that money if not for your NPPL position/ participation?
I don't know how contingent NPPL showings are, and I don't know which sponsors bring the biggest wheelbarrows full of money. I just wonder whether you would be able to market as effectively for your sponsors without an American presence. Would PGI provide enough profile for Nexus if Nexus were only entered in Milleniums? I am not questioning PGI's exposure, I am questioning the relative value of that exposure. I doubt Consillium Dei (with all respect to CD) sells a lot of product in So Cal.
If Europe is regarded by Big Paintball Inc as the next growth market, right or wrong, then this is the time for you to shift focus to the Millenium.
Good point Gyro and you need to look at a few considerations, firstly, the sponsors we (Nexus) have, Planet, Dye, PGi, PMI, Halo and so on, all have big presences in the US already with other teams.
Nexus are hugely lucky in that we have PGi to underscore any promo bandwagon our sponsors might wish to jump on.
PGi as you know sells huge numbers of the magazine in the US as well as Europe and so the branding / marketing of Nexus will still be apparent even if we did refocus in Europe though I fear the effectiveness of such marketing and sposnor affiliations to the aspiring US player would be somewhat diminished if any pics were solely of Nexus playing in the Millennium.
Playing in the US is a bonus for any marketing strategy either we have as a team or any of our sponsors has but it isn't essential for Nexus to have a US participation locked into any contract.
Other Euro teams though do not have the luxury of this PGi partnership and so must address this problem differently.
Next year, sponsor deals are gonna contract as I said in a previous post and only those teams who can begin to deliver are gonna be considered and even a lot of the top team deals will have to be reassessed in the light of changing market conditions in the US.
But at the back of my mind, even though common sense is screaming that all the top Euro teams should refocus homeward and begin to create our own destiny, I can't quite let go of the idea that we (Nexus) have to maintain some sort of US presence.
As Ledz mentioned in another post, the reception and support we get over there from the Americans is something we just don't get over here and with that support comes sponsor recognition and association, that won't go unnoticed.
So to answer your questions, I got no idea what to do yet
We really need to sit down and talk to the people at the NPPL and see how seriously they need any European involvement in the US tourney circuit because at the moment, they are earning significant monies from us pro teams and all we get are bills.
