Jacksonville - What gives?
- Thread starter Chicago
- Start date
Lots of reasons!
There are actually a lot of reasons (in my opinion) that Jax is where it's at, team-wise.
First there's the aforementioned gas prices. I know us 'Mericans have always enjoyed low gas prices and comparatively they still are, but gas is hitting 4 bucks a gallon and diesel even more than that. Keep in mind that us southern redneck types that stereotypically populate the region in question all drive big trucks and big rear wheel drive cars that we pull our team trailers from event to event with and with gas and diesel being so expensive, less teams are traveling.
Even moving the event drastically closer to the CFOA region historically populated by teams and players didn't help much and I knew this wouldn't. Our players play five-man and XBall...not seven-man. That format has NEVER been strong here. I think what ended up happening, in actuality, was that the NPPL moved north looking for better accessibility to the southeastern teams (which didn't exist) and ended up moving AWAY from what has historically been a fairly strong southern Florida market.
Then there's that whole "paintball is off" thing. Lots of reasons behind that, but it boils down to the fact that there's a war on, gas prices are up, food prices are up and expendable extra income is way down in the US. Less people are playing and the NPPL also took their event to a city that what I'd think is somewhat between strong areas for paintball; the South and southern Florida. Our players don't play seven-man and the ones further south now have to drive a lot further than Tampa or Orlando to come up and play.
Lots of reasons for Jax being off, but look at it another way...PSP MAO just ended and I'm fairly certain that event either held-serve from last year or even grew by a handful of teams. The PSP is stronger than ever, with the best format, better reffing and marketing than ever. Yes XBall is expensive but per-player the cost is actually lower than that of any other format and let's face it, the kids of this paintball generation that watch DerDer and play XBox don't want to sit in the back and shoot 15 pods for ten minutes like Gary Noblett; they'd rather run around and be midgets with full-auto machine guns for two minutes at a time, ten times in a match.
Or not...
Just my thoughts. Opinions. Concepts. Paradigms.
Josh
There are actually a lot of reasons (in my opinion) that Jax is where it's at, team-wise.
First there's the aforementioned gas prices. I know us 'Mericans have always enjoyed low gas prices and comparatively they still are, but gas is hitting 4 bucks a gallon and diesel even more than that. Keep in mind that us southern redneck types that stereotypically populate the region in question all drive big trucks and big rear wheel drive cars that we pull our team trailers from event to event with and with gas and diesel being so expensive, less teams are traveling.
Even moving the event drastically closer to the CFOA region historically populated by teams and players didn't help much and I knew this wouldn't. Our players play five-man and XBall...not seven-man. That format has NEVER been strong here. I think what ended up happening, in actuality, was that the NPPL moved north looking for better accessibility to the southeastern teams (which didn't exist) and ended up moving AWAY from what has historically been a fairly strong southern Florida market.
Then there's that whole "paintball is off" thing. Lots of reasons behind that, but it boils down to the fact that there's a war on, gas prices are up, food prices are up and expendable extra income is way down in the US. Less people are playing and the NPPL also took their event to a city that what I'd think is somewhat between strong areas for paintball; the South and southern Florida. Our players don't play seven-man and the ones further south now have to drive a lot further than Tampa or Orlando to come up and play.
Lots of reasons for Jax being off, but look at it another way...PSP MAO just ended and I'm fairly certain that event either held-serve from last year or even grew by a handful of teams. The PSP is stronger than ever, with the best format, better reffing and marketing than ever. Yes XBall is expensive but per-player the cost is actually lower than that of any other format and let's face it, the kids of this paintball generation that watch DerDer and play XBox don't want to sit in the back and shoot 15 pods for ten minutes like Gary Noblett; they'd rather run around and be midgets with full-auto machine guns for two minutes at a time, ten times in a match.
Or not...
Just my thoughts. Opinions. Concepts. Paradigms.
Josh
I'll buy all that Josh but the numbers going back to 05 suggest an ongoing decline and not simply the convergence of some current factors.
And of course the real significant loss in numbers of teams is in the lower divisions which means soft sponsorship isn't the cause.
Personally I'm inclined to think the problems run deeper and are simply being exaserbated by the current situation.
What would be very instructive is to see--from both leagues--what vendor support is looking like and if the vendors are satisfied with the return they are getting.
PS--gonna be in Jax as I didn't get to talk to you much at MAO?
PSS--that was mighty subtle for you, Chitown.
And of course the real significant loss in numbers of teams is in the lower divisions which means soft sponsorship isn't the cause.
Personally I'm inclined to think the problems run deeper and are simply being exaserbated by the current situation.
What would be very instructive is to see--from both leagues--what vendor support is looking like and if the vendors are satisfied with the return they are getting.
PS--gonna be in Jax as I didn't get to talk to you much at MAO?
PSS--that was mighty subtle for you, Chitown.
All good points.
From what I've ever heard from vendors is the average player buys more at a PSP than an NPPL, but then why would everyone still be supporting any league they weren't making a return on? Plus I have no idea how much casual traffic actually turns into sales but I can't think it's a lot.
For this year Baca, what are the like-for-like trade shows in size/number etc? Other than Cup PSP have always struggled, and other than HB the NPPL have always stuggled, although Commanders has normally been a better "second best" event compared to Chicago in terms of vendor turn out (when I've been).
And Chi - very subtle. Heard the score blast was a success though, kudos.
From what I've ever heard from vendors is the average player buys more at a PSP than an NPPL, but then why would everyone still be supporting any league they weren't making a return on? Plus I have no idea how much casual traffic actually turns into sales but I can't think it's a lot.
For this year Baca, what are the like-for-like trade shows in size/number etc? Other than Cup PSP have always struggled, and other than HB the NPPL have always stuggled, although Commanders has normally been a better "second best" event compared to Chicago in terms of vendor turn out (when I've been).
And Chi - very subtle
. Heard the score blast was a success though, kudos.
Also, one thing with numbers of teams, aren't a lot of the PSP 5-man ones from Xball teams that didn't make the cut? Or is that just Cup?
I don't know when you've been, but the vendor turnout for Chicago has 'always' been better than the vendor turnout for San Diego - and by 'always' I mean the past two years when I've been to both.
Also worth noting that at this point, the only people actually paying for big vendor spots are JT and Spyder (Angel and KEE get free plat sponsorships as a result of earlier deals).
As to the topic at hand..
I think both leagues suffer from geography a bit. There is not a whole lot of XBall being played on the west coast, and there's minimal 7-man being played on the east coast. So when PSP moved from LA to Phoenix, they lost 15% of teams - pretty much all the SoCal teams that would play that one event who didn't take the trip over to Phoenix. But the rest of PSP's events are out east, where XBall and 5-man are strong, and they'll continue to do well, as they did at MAO, which was basically the same as last year.
NPPL on the other hand has a strong 7-man feeder league on the west coast (XPSL), but not so much on the east coast. There's NEPL and GPL, but they don't just do straight 7-man, and there's also AXBL and CXBL in that area feeding XBall. So NPPL is stuck with 3 7-man events that are not near many 7-man teams.
On top of that, I've always felt that PSP's teams are more die-hard, competitive, live-eat-breathe paintball teams, while NPPL teams are less "I must play paintball to live" teams and more "paintball is a cool vacation" teams. I think both the historic marketing of the two leagues (PSP has none) and the formats contribute to this. There's a lot more 'variableness' in 7-man, so any team can win a game, where as with XBall the better team is almost always going to win the match. (PSP also has a tournament structure that's much less random - when you're taking one team out of a bracket of 4, you're really applying a lot of luck to who wins)
The consequence of that is that when times get tough, the paintball vacation teams will just decide to not take the vacation, whereas the live-eat-breathe paintball teams will work longer hours, drink less beer, donate more plasma, or whatever it takes. So I think the 'tough times' has a greater impact on NPPL attendance.
I think NPPL has had two to three years of providing a sub-par product and that's having its toll as well. I was at HB and a lot of the issues of last year seemed to be improved, particularly on the referee front, but it's going to take more than one event to convince people they've made lasting improvements. Although it'll be easier for them to continue to put on a good product if they only have to deal with 126 teams at a time.
But there are other issues NPPL has not fixed - having events in stadium parking lots might help them get some out-of-industry sponsorship, but I think the players are over the whole stadium thing at this point. Players are sick of turf on pavement. NPPL still doesn't have a real ID system (PSP's has been going for 5 years) - DESPITE (and I know this for a fact) there being an ID system available for them to use at a price less than what they're paying to get it done now.
In '03 and '04, NPPL had a product that kicked PSP's butt. They got a bunch of good will off of that even as the quality of product slipped, and NPPL has always had a great promotions story. But I think thats all starting to wear out. It's been 5 years and the promotions story has not delivered. The players don't care anymore - they want to pay for good events. And PSP is better than NPPL in every aspect of the event - better format, better playing surfaces, better reffing, better registration and classification.
At the end of the day, NPPL's failure is not having respect for the game. There is no one over at Pacific Paintball, with the possible exception of Camille, who places a priority on the paintball itself. It's all business guys focused on what kind of media value they can get from the audience. They simply don't seem to think tournaments are a core product that they need to focus on.
PSP's failure is the reverse. It's full of people who have extreme respect for the game, but no vision/willingness/ability/something to get the media value to let them do even more for the sport.
Neither of those is going to get us anywhere, but only one of those is going to get people to open their wallets to pay entry fees.
Don't know. We'll see what's at Jax.
Overall I'm curious about the "value". Vendors have always done the big events often for many of the same reasons, or so it seems to me, that Big Paintball passed out sponsorship deals--they didn't really have any better ideas for how to market and promote themselves. But over the last couple of years lots of smaller vendors simply stopped coming because they can't absorb losses at the events in exchange for some profile and I'm more or less convinced the way events are run now the big vendors are taking losses too and at some point they won't do it anymore either.
Can the national series function without the present levels of vendor support?
Of course there are ways to potentially improve value to the vendors but I don't know enough about what either league is planning to know if they're considering making any such changes or additions.
I agree totally. However, PSP does its best to reduce the price that you pay out of your wallet with events near cheap hotel, food, etc.
RCO last year was around a bunch of hotels, food, and entertainment that was about as cheap as a hobo pays for a pint.
Although NPPL has new events near buffalo, jax, and houston, how much does that stuff cost in HB and San Diego?
quite a bit if you ask me.
Although they aren't promoting the vision/willingness/ability/media as you call it, The PSP is promoting the sport to make it the best experience possible for the people that actually pay to attend it, allowing the people that live for this sport to have a good time and get what they pay for at an event.
thats my 2 cents.
-Kurt