Re: Re: Re: Re: Robbo/Nick/Steve
Originally posted by gaff
Robbo
lets get one thing straight.....i have not disagreed with what you are saying throughout the entire thread, all i have done is express my concern for decisions of this magnitude being enforced with but 2 months to prepare.
as you said if you had to horrible job of selecting the teams that deserve the invite then we would probably not be in that list.....i do not have a problem with that, in the context that we are discussing it. But.....i do have a problem with the fact that if we had known that this situation was occuring 6months ago we could and others could have stepped up their appearances and hopefully have finished higher in the final standings.
from STORM's point of view we were aiming to commit to all Millenniums and 3 maybe 4 NPPL's next season, but it looks like our plans are being changed on our behalf.
my explanation of the 'feeble' comment is, ifyou get your select 16 Pro teams and they commit to the entire series, but in doing so you get teams like us for instance either losing the huge deal we had lined up before any changes were mentioned, or just dont want to spend as much money because we have not been allowed to play at the level we want to. then you could in theory (it may or may not happen) end up with a tournament of 16 teams only, and that would not help the industry one little bit.
i know that the example above is a bit extreme but it is written around my feelings for this matter. At the end of the day i want to play paintball at the highest standard available, and if i am not allowed to spend my money as a sponsor and a player, and have the choice of where i am playing and at what standard that is, then the game has just become that little less interesting.
for example i have sponsored an F1 team for 3 seasons (very small amounts compaired to the big sponsors, but huge in teams of Paintball sponsorship) this team is very low in the final standings, and occasionally finishes races! but they are allowed to compete against Ferrari and Maclaren because thay choose to pay their maoney and enter their team. i dont see why we have to limit the number of Pro teams in this 'premier league' we should be encouraged to enter.
Ok Gaff, first things first, the inspiration for all this came some weeks back when Sergei asked a few people for a meeting where he was to propose a radical rethink in the way the Millennium and NPPL structured themselves and also for those two bodies to drastically rethink their emphasis.
The timing of this meeting was determined by many factors not least of which was the progress achieved by the NXL in securing their deal with Dick Clark and his production company.
So you see nobody knew of this 6 months ago so nobody could have possibly been told.
This is a recent development and a more recent initiative !
And why the hell would nebody need an initiative like this to provide sufficient initiative to better themselves ?
With no disrespect intended, if you could not find sufficient reason within the existing Millennium and NPPL circuits to improve then I'm afraid that's your problem you ain't done it by the time something new came along.
You guys have been around a long time, a lot longer than my team remember.
I'm afraid your justification of the use of 'feeble' is feeble, it's just too far fetched to use as a reason.
I think you have let your feelings on the subject cloud your judgment on that one mate.
The limiting of teams is only my opinion and is based upon my agreement with most of what Sergei proposed.
It basically comes down to this, if we are to market this sport to outside sponsors on the back of TV coverage then we need to have a coherent package on offer or they ain't gonna bother with some ad hoc arrangement of teams randomly turning up for tournaments.
The tourneys need to be set, the teams need to be locked in, the league needs to be formalised in terms of ownership and share allocations and so on.
The whole structure has to be professional before the sort of people we need to invest in the teams / leagues will even look at us.
The franchising of the teams won't happen, if at all, till year start 2005 which leaves us 2004 as a trial year.
My belief is that if we don't try to emulate what is gonna be on offer come 2005 as closely as possible then all we are gonna do is waste a year's paintball and put off any potential sponsors that might happen along.
And remember this year is already gonna be televised when Fox Sports cover the NPPL for 6 programmes.
The televising of the NPPL in such will inevitably generate outside interest in the sport. If some serious companies come knocking then the least we can do is organise ourselves into a serious league with some serious teams and not some free for all.
As I have said, we either do it right or we don't bother coz make no mistake about it, if we make a half hearted attempt where all we do is try and accommodate politics, disenchanted teams etc, then we are doomed to replicate the mistakes we have already made once before.
