Since 2003, the world of US pro tournaments has been split into two, the first being the PSP headed up by Dave Youngblood, Billy Ceranski [Kee], Lane Wright and a few more.
The other half of the US pro tourney scene is the NPPL, it has had a chequered past and has had more partners than Lindsey Lohan, let’s hope they’ve stabilized sufficiently to truly represent their fighting weight when it comes to the negotiation table.
I know most of the guys on the NPPL such as Chuck Hendsch, Junior Brown and Mike Peveral who are all friends of mine but I don’t know the guy called Trainer who seems to have positioned himself as primary bankroller for the league.
To rely on a single bankroller is a risky situation especially when you look at the reasons just why this guy is plugging his money into the NPPL.
I think I heard somewhere his son plays paintball in the NPPL which initially got him interested and then felt it somehow expedient to invest a lot of money in the NPPL … I also heard some cynics commenting upon the fact his son was then taken onto Dynasty’s playing roster which kinda provokes the idea amidst the more suspicious among us, there are grounds for thinking he bought his son a Dynasty spot.
Mind you, the PSP have long been reliant on Dave Youngblood’s money and so it seems both leagues have been in a precarious position.
The PSP however have a lot more teams and so is better placed financially if the sh!t hits the proverbial fan if and when one of these guys pull’s their money out.
I think though, the PSP under Lane Wright’s management have finally reached financial stability and not losing money as they surely once did.
Lane has done a cracking job in stabilizing the PSP especially when you look at it against the backdrop of our sport’s financial position.
But, whichever way you view these leagues, it still makes sense to join forces with the NPPL if only to have a single industry focal point to invest in.
At the moment, the industry money men have two pro leagues to select from and so each league is not maximising its income as a single league most certainly could.
When the NPPL was owned by a bunch of Brits, Pure Promotions, the WDP guys who used to manufacture the Angel, there were many initiatives to combine the two series [PSP and NPPL] ... but eventually, the two parties seemed like oil and water; whether it was down to ego or whatever, they never quite made it down the aisle together.
There are always two sides to any story and just recently there was yet another ‘head to head’ whereby the NPPL and PSP met with a view to considering the amalgamation of the two leagues but …is this attempt at joining hands still a lost cause or has common-sense made a welcome appearance on paintball’s stage?
I tend to think it’s not so much common-sense finally grabbing a hold of these people, more that it’s profound forces outside of the two leagues .. things like financial prospects and industry needs.
Well, long before these leagues bow to the pressure of these exterior forces, it might prove expedient to acknowledge the major hurdles involved. There are some fundamental differences between the two leagues and I think the most important are, the formats used and the ethos of their respective owners.
Basically, we have two entirely different philosophies at work and whether this is gonna prove to be insurmountable remains to be seen but these powerful forces at work behind the scenes may be what’s finally needed to get them into bed with each other.
Normally in paintball, leastwise in my 25 years’ experience of it, common-sense decisions certainly concerning this league union business are nearly always ignored in favour of some other lunatic initiative that seems to gain traction because of someone’s ego having too much effect.
Unfortunately, our sport has yet to shuffle off the coils of its infancy and mature sufficiently so as to negate the sometimes destructive effects just because of the inability of some people to see the bigger picture.
I’m kinda hoping, this recent initiative is not gonna follow this route and actually do something for the greater good .. the greater good in this case being the financial integrity and stability of a combined league.
With that stability comes the opportunity to make the necessary changes needed to move our sport forward leastwise on the tournament side of things.
The pro league, whether we like it or not is a powerful catalyst of our retail industry which is peculiar if you think about it because the rec and scenario scene is much larger than the tournament scene.
People like Richmond Italia, John Gregory [Ex owner of JT] and Dave Youngblood [Dye] are all individuals who realised [and utilised] the commercial expediency of product association inside of the pro leagues.
Basically, they would heavily support the pro teams, and in so doing, shore up the tournament scene but at the same time reap huge financial benefits of linking their products to whatever pro team they happened to get behind.
If we take a real good look at why or how that particular methodology worked, it seems ludicrous because to believe the rec/scenario market would be influenced by the tournament pro teams is an absurd idea on the face of it.
This is because although the two sets of players use the same basic hardware, their respective mentalities are soooo different and the rec/scenario guys have few kind words to say about the ‘prima donna’ pros and the rest of the tourney brigade.
Nevertheless, it worked, retail sales responded to this type marketing and made fools of a lot of us except I suppose Richmond, Dave and John Gregory.
The rec/woodland guys did take notice and were influenced by the tourney scene even though their rhetoric might not have been so sympathetic.
Mind you, those days are long gone and been replaced with the harsh reality of a severely reduced disposable income the US paintball demographic is now suffering from.
Just to give you some sort of idea about how hard our industry has been hit; if we go back say 5 to ten years ago, there were three big companies who shared a 330 million dollar yearly turnover.
These companies were PMI, NPS and JT.
PMI and NPS were subsequently both bought out and then combined under a new name, Kee Action Sports.
Their combined turnover is now 120 million ….a reduction of over 200 million dollars …ouch!
When times were good, the total yearly turnover of everybody world-wide was about 750 million dollars.
The industry turnover is now about 250 million .. double ouch!
That kinda lets everyone know we have to be really careful otherwise you are gonna get your fingers burned if you overstep this somewhat fragile financial line we must all now negotiate.
This new position explains why the industry is now refocusing their promotional budgets toward the rec/scenario scene which is truly ironic if not a little late in coming.
The PSP are the larger event series and if it wasn’t for the Huntington Beach event, the jewel in the crown of the NPPL, I’m pretty sure they’d be out the game entirely .. a sobering thought indeed.
The PSP are undoubtedly the bigger of the two leagues and is seen as a more professionally run circuit. Certainly their infrastructure is rigorous enough as exampled by the recent Chicago event.
They had a frikkin tornado rip the ass out of all the fields and bunkers just prior to the event and within 36 hours, all was back up and running with no hiccups to the event itself.
There are some major differences not least of which is the NPPL 7-man format as against the PSP’s XBall format that has five on-field players.
I think there is some concern that if the PSP went back to 7-man and maybe to a 10 shot per sec format, they would begin to haemorrhage teams to the NPPL.
I’m not so sure this would happen but there’s not much chance of the PSP going down that road anyway.
This is not the first time the world of tournament paintball is faced with knowing deep down, a combined league makes perfect sense and would be good for all concerned especially giving a much-needed kick to the retail market place.
For the guys who have been around a long time in our sport, a lot of us have become way too cynical for our own good in that we never give these type integration initiatives any real chance of success but I suppose if you keep trying, you might just make it stick and so let’s hope this is one such occasion.
We need a single event series because it gives a more stable platform to invest in, both for the industry and the players.
All we can do is cross our fingers, throw the dice ………….and pray !
The other half of the US pro tourney scene is the NPPL, it has had a chequered past and has had more partners than Lindsey Lohan, let’s hope they’ve stabilized sufficiently to truly represent their fighting weight when it comes to the negotiation table.
I know most of the guys on the NPPL such as Chuck Hendsch, Junior Brown and Mike Peveral who are all friends of mine but I don’t know the guy called Trainer who seems to have positioned himself as primary bankroller for the league.
To rely on a single bankroller is a risky situation especially when you look at the reasons just why this guy is plugging his money into the NPPL.
I think I heard somewhere his son plays paintball in the NPPL which initially got him interested and then felt it somehow expedient to invest a lot of money in the NPPL … I also heard some cynics commenting upon the fact his son was then taken onto Dynasty’s playing roster which kinda provokes the idea amidst the more suspicious among us, there are grounds for thinking he bought his son a Dynasty spot.
Mind you, the PSP have long been reliant on Dave Youngblood’s money and so it seems both leagues have been in a precarious position.
The PSP however have a lot more teams and so is better placed financially if the sh!t hits the proverbial fan if and when one of these guys pull’s their money out.
I think though, the PSP under Lane Wright’s management have finally reached financial stability and not losing money as they surely once did.
Lane has done a cracking job in stabilizing the PSP especially when you look at it against the backdrop of our sport’s financial position.
But, whichever way you view these leagues, it still makes sense to join forces with the NPPL if only to have a single industry focal point to invest in.
At the moment, the industry money men have two pro leagues to select from and so each league is not maximising its income as a single league most certainly could.
When the NPPL was owned by a bunch of Brits, Pure Promotions, the WDP guys who used to manufacture the Angel, there were many initiatives to combine the two series [PSP and NPPL] ... but eventually, the two parties seemed like oil and water; whether it was down to ego or whatever, they never quite made it down the aisle together.
There are always two sides to any story and just recently there was yet another ‘head to head’ whereby the NPPL and PSP met with a view to considering the amalgamation of the two leagues but …is this attempt at joining hands still a lost cause or has common-sense made a welcome appearance on paintball’s stage?
I tend to think it’s not so much common-sense finally grabbing a hold of these people, more that it’s profound forces outside of the two leagues .. things like financial prospects and industry needs.
Well, long before these leagues bow to the pressure of these exterior forces, it might prove expedient to acknowledge the major hurdles involved. There are some fundamental differences between the two leagues and I think the most important are, the formats used and the ethos of their respective owners.
Basically, we have two entirely different philosophies at work and whether this is gonna prove to be insurmountable remains to be seen but these powerful forces at work behind the scenes may be what’s finally needed to get them into bed with each other.
Normally in paintball, leastwise in my 25 years’ experience of it, common-sense decisions certainly concerning this league union business are nearly always ignored in favour of some other lunatic initiative that seems to gain traction because of someone’s ego having too much effect.
Unfortunately, our sport has yet to shuffle off the coils of its infancy and mature sufficiently so as to negate the sometimes destructive effects just because of the inability of some people to see the bigger picture.
I’m kinda hoping, this recent initiative is not gonna follow this route and actually do something for the greater good .. the greater good in this case being the financial integrity and stability of a combined league.
With that stability comes the opportunity to make the necessary changes needed to move our sport forward leastwise on the tournament side of things.
The pro league, whether we like it or not is a powerful catalyst of our retail industry which is peculiar if you think about it because the rec and scenario scene is much larger than the tournament scene.
People like Richmond Italia, John Gregory [Ex owner of JT] and Dave Youngblood [Dye] are all individuals who realised [and utilised] the commercial expediency of product association inside of the pro leagues.
Basically, they would heavily support the pro teams, and in so doing, shore up the tournament scene but at the same time reap huge financial benefits of linking their products to whatever pro team they happened to get behind.
If we take a real good look at why or how that particular methodology worked, it seems ludicrous because to believe the rec/scenario market would be influenced by the tournament pro teams is an absurd idea on the face of it.
This is because although the two sets of players use the same basic hardware, their respective mentalities are soooo different and the rec/scenario guys have few kind words to say about the ‘prima donna’ pros and the rest of the tourney brigade.
Nevertheless, it worked, retail sales responded to this type marketing and made fools of a lot of us except I suppose Richmond, Dave and John Gregory.
The rec/woodland guys did take notice and were influenced by the tourney scene even though their rhetoric might not have been so sympathetic.
Mind you, those days are long gone and been replaced with the harsh reality of a severely reduced disposable income the US paintball demographic is now suffering from.
Just to give you some sort of idea about how hard our industry has been hit; if we go back say 5 to ten years ago, there were three big companies who shared a 330 million dollar yearly turnover.
These companies were PMI, NPS and JT.
PMI and NPS were subsequently both bought out and then combined under a new name, Kee Action Sports.
Their combined turnover is now 120 million ….a reduction of over 200 million dollars …ouch!
When times were good, the total yearly turnover of everybody world-wide was about 750 million dollars.
The industry turnover is now about 250 million .. double ouch!
That kinda lets everyone know we have to be really careful otherwise you are gonna get your fingers burned if you overstep this somewhat fragile financial line we must all now negotiate.
This new position explains why the industry is now refocusing their promotional budgets toward the rec/scenario scene which is truly ironic if not a little late in coming.
The PSP are the larger event series and if it wasn’t for the Huntington Beach event, the jewel in the crown of the NPPL, I’m pretty sure they’d be out the game entirely .. a sobering thought indeed.
The PSP are undoubtedly the bigger of the two leagues and is seen as a more professionally run circuit. Certainly their infrastructure is rigorous enough as exampled by the recent Chicago event.
They had a frikkin tornado rip the ass out of all the fields and bunkers just prior to the event and within 36 hours, all was back up and running with no hiccups to the event itself.
There are some major differences not least of which is the NPPL 7-man format as against the PSP’s XBall format that has five on-field players.
I think there is some concern that if the PSP went back to 7-man and maybe to a 10 shot per sec format, they would begin to haemorrhage teams to the NPPL.
I’m not so sure this would happen but there’s not much chance of the PSP going down that road anyway.
This is not the first time the world of tournament paintball is faced with knowing deep down, a combined league makes perfect sense and would be good for all concerned especially giving a much-needed kick to the retail market place.
For the guys who have been around a long time in our sport, a lot of us have become way too cynical for our own good in that we never give these type integration initiatives any real chance of success but I suppose if you keep trying, you might just make it stick and so let’s hope this is one such occasion.
We need a single event series because it gives a more stable platform to invest in, both for the industry and the players.
All we can do is cross our fingers, throw the dice ………….and pray !
