Yeah, it's rhetorical
I agree about formats, but you can't run a "premier" league with 130 odd teams, not all of which have paid full whack.
Why not?
This actually may work out better for NPPL. They can't handle running 250 team events. 130-odd teams means you can get rid of a field's worth of your worst refs, run a tighter schedule, less people to check in, and in general have an easier time running the event.
And if the whole purpose of running the league is so that you can use it as the 'showcase' of a portfolio of marketing opportunities you're selling to out-of-industry sponsors, that may work. The only place it doesn't help you is keeping vendors - but if you're willing to give up vendor revenue and entry fee revenue, a 50 team event looks just as good on television and in the magazines as a 250 team event.
It's becoming clear to me that PSP and NPPL are diverging fast. PSP is in the paintball tournament business - their decisions are based on making money by putting on good tournaments for players to play in and good trade shows for vendors to vend in.
NPPL is in the marketing to paintball business. That's why they're buying up magazines and fields. They are definitely not focused on running good events. The question is, how long are the players, vendors, and media going to go along with sub-standard events while NPPL tries to get big out-of-industry money?
And if NPPL succeeds in doing that, does that help anyone other than Pacific Paintball?
People keep wanting to evaluate NPPL based on how we've always evaluated paintball events. But that doesn't work, because Pacific Paintball isn't playing that game. Old NPPL and PSP were/are controlled/run by people who played tournaments, and people who were involved in those organizations to run tournaments. Pacific Paintball is not. Pacific Paintball is involved to make money, and are only interested in running tournaments to the point that it allows them to make money.
Bruce didn't invest $6 million because he likes paintball tournaments. He invested $6 million to make $60 million.