MWAXL brings X Ball™ to the Midwest

[MWAXL]

What do you get when you add together one grassy field, inflatable bunkers, the best officials, two teams and 90 minutes on the game clock? You get a MWAXL X Ball™ match.

The Midwest Amateur Xtreme League is pleased to present an X Ball™ league for paintball players who want to experience the latest and greatest way to play the game without the time, travel and expense of competing at the national level.

The MWAXL recognizes the importance of quality locations and officials. All MWAXL events will be held on green grass at fairground locations around the Midwest. The MWAXL will field only the most qualified officials, compensated accordingly to the tune of $300 per day.

The MWAXL will be split into two divisions of five teams, one Novice and one Amateur. Each team will play one match against each other team in their division over the course of the season. Each match will last 90 minutes, split into two 45-minute halves. While Novice teams will compete for glory, the top Amateur team at the end of the season will go home with $15,000 in cold, hard cash.

Want to play? Pricing for the season is extremely reasonable: $5,000 per team for Novice and $8,000 per team for Amateur. All events are BYOP. The MWAXL wants to provide its teams the maximum opportunity to recoup their expenses, so in addition to the best locations and officials, each team’s entry fee also includes on-field banner space, advertising space on the MWAXL website, a team website, and a share of the league’s profits, amongst other benefits.

The MWAXL schedule is: (Each team plays four of the five dates)

March 30, Louisville, KY, Bullitt County Fairgrounds
June 1, Springfield, OH, Clark County Fairgrounds
July 20, Lansing, MI, TBA
September 7, Springfield, IL, Illinois State Fairgrounds
October 5, Indianapolis, IN, Hamilton County Fairgrounds

Interested teams or officials should contact Chris Raehl at info@mwaxl.com or (715) 720-9131. More information is available at www.mwaxl.com.

The MWAXL is brought to you by Chris Raehl, President of the National Collegiate Paintball Association, and Chris Herring, President of the Indiana Captain’s Council.

X Ball™ is a trademark of Procaps Encapsulation Inc., Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Visit
the official X Ball™ website at www.xballpaintball.com.

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by MWAXL
The MWAXL will be split into two divisions of five teams

Each team will play one match against each other team in their division over the course of the season. Each match will last 90 minutes, split into two 45-minute halves. While Novice teams will compete for glory

Conceptually, why not? Sounds good but---
If I'm reading this correctly how do five teams play each once over 5 events?

And if, at each event they are playing one match then the Novice teams are paying $1,000 a match while competing "for the glory."
Gonna have a hard time getting 5 teams to do it seems to me particularly when you add in travel expenses, paint, etc.

You get a better deal and likely better quality of competition playing Div 1 or Div 2 X-Ball with the PSP.

 

[MWAXL]

You play 4 of the five events, which works out to $1250/match/team.

Div 1 and Div 2 matches are only 40 minutes each, and your first two are on Thursday and Friday. If you make your third match, then you're probably at break-even point cost wise as far as entry goes. ($1750 for 120 minutes vs. $1250 for 90)

Or, put another way, there are 15 players on an X Ball roster. That's $83/player/event. That's under half of PSP 10-man, and under MGO, Skyball, etc, plus you're paying half price for paint. And that's before you factor in not having to miss work Thursday, Friday and maybe Wednesday and Monday, buying airfare, renting a car, getting a hotel room for 4 nights, etc.


As for the feel, the only place we may be different is the scoring, opting for lots of TVs instead of one big $20k scoreboard. We may still go the scoreboard route if I can work out decent leasing arrangements with the manufacturer or get other folks in the Midwest who would pay to use it wen we're not.

It looks like at least half of our officials will be NXL officials (I think we may be paying more than the NXL does) and the rest will definitely know what they're doing and be paid accordingly.

The events will all be promoted locally, and you will be *THE* teams on the field - there won't be NXL games going on elsewhere. It's your sponsors banners on the field, your players' pictures on the websites, your sponsors logos, etc.


So I don't think the cost is significantly more, especially in light of what you receive. We've built in plenty of ways to recoup your expenses. The real obstacle is going to be seeing how many teams are willing to make a season commitment at the beginning of the season.


As for Novice/Am - if nobody wants to play Novice, we'll do two Am divisions, have the top team from each division play each other at the end of the season, give $20k for first and $10k for second. Or I suppose we could do one $30k cash prize... $2k/player, that'd be pretty sweet - with only 9 other teams to beat to get it.

But I think it's important to have the $5k option for folks who just want to play X Ball without worrying about winning X Ball.

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by MWAXL
1--You play 4 of the five events, which works out to $1250/match/team.

2--Div 1 and Div 2 matches are only 40 minutes each, and your first two are on Thursday and Friday. If you make your third match, then you're probably at break-even point cost wise as far as entry goes. ($1750 for 120 minutes vs. $1250 for 90)

3--As for the feel,

4--The events will all be promoted locally, and you will be *THE* teams on the field - there won't be NXL games going on elsewhere. It's your sponsors banners on the field, your players' pictures on the websites, your sponsors logos, etc.

5--So I don't think the cost is significantly more, especially in light of what you receive. We've built in plenty of ways to recoup your expenses.

1--ooh, worse than implied.
2--So, I get to go to Springfield to play one match or I go to Chicago and maybe play, what, 4?
3--never mentioned it.
4--and let's see, who will do more for their sponsors, a successful Div X ball team or your winner? C'mon.
5--Like?

BTW, Chris, if I were you I'd make sure all my MWAXL postings were related only to the subject at hand.

 

[MWAXL]

2 -- No more than one match per event.
3 -- Feel was in reference to your "quality" comment.
4 -- Depends on the sponsor. We're going to be promoting the events locally. If you're a field near Springfield IL, what's a better payoff, a Div 2 team playing in LA, or a MWAXL team playing to an audience near you? Even if you're not a field, the MWAXL is run in conjunction with a 7-man league (their prelims are Sat, finals Sun, our events on Sun) - better to sponsor a Div. 2 team at an event everyone is watching NXL teams, or a MWAXL team at an event where everyone is watching them? I'm certainly not going to say PSP X Ball doesn't make more sense for a lot of sponsors, but MWAXL definitely still makes sense - and when you take airfare and lost work out of the equation, there's a lot less expense to get sponsored in the first place.

5 -- Profit sharing - every team gets 6%. All of the advertising space that is usually sold by the league with revenue kept by the league is given to the teams. Team identities will be built into the league - you're not one team name on a list of 16, you're a team name with a city with a roster with pictures on the site. With any luck we can charge a minimal fee for spectators, teams will get a cut of that.


If it doesn't work, it's all Steve's fault. I could hire 6 $70/day refs, save myself $13k on the year, and charge under $4k/team - but he insists people will pay for quality officials. So yeah, it's all Steve's fault if it doesn't work.


The way I look at it is this. Our competition isn't PSP X Ball. If you've got the time and money to fly around the country, you're probably not going to play MWAXL. But if buying airplane tickets and taking 2-4 days off work 5 times a year is something you can't do, then MWAXL X Ball is something you might want to try. In that case, our competition is other local tournaments.

If you're a 5-man team, and you go play a tournament, you probably spend about $150-200 per player per event after entry, air, paint, etc is all paid for. Pool together $150 amongst 15 players, that's $2250 - take that money and come play some X Ball.

And this isn't 5-man at the local paintball field. This is green grass, fully netted fields, paved parking, fairgrounds locations.



As for your last comment, getting banned has worked wonders on my productivity. No harm, no foul.