I've been called away from the endless task of photoshopping out the UK ballers from every picture and blackballing all attempts at UK publicity to come on here - so it had better be good
Anyway, as for bigging up the UK, we do actually put in more than the fair share of pictures in the mag, plus there have been several little mentions over the past few months - more than say Germany has and they have a vastly bigger scene than us. I can think of the Stealers pic in the big Madrid intro, Kellys had two page spread in Robbo's article just the other month, Shock and Method have featured in every Millennium article this year I think.
As for editorial content, Robbo's right it's ultimately my call to decide from all the ideas that are put forward what we run with. He puts stuff forward but you can't bag on him for the final say, hate me instead
. When making the ultimate choice I look at markets and what our readers can't get elsewhere.
I view several things as PGi key "selling points"
1) We have access to the biggest stories first - case in point the "Olly to Ironmen" issue that happened on the Sunday and went to press on the Wednesday, no one can get things out faster than us.
2) Controversy - Arsenal break up, XSV meltdown, who cheated who and how - we will print more risqué articles than anyone else.
3) Humour - Hopefully there is a level of humour in the mag. We enjoy writing it and we want the mag to have an attitude.
4) Knowledge - All our writers on techniques are from top teams. Micah on XSV, Ryan from Dynasty, Rocky etc etc. They know their sh*t when it comes to ball and personally I'd listen to them over an unknown any day.
5) Gear - I'm a nerd and proud. I've upped the gear content of the mag and still have more things in the pipeline. I also feel we print the most honest reviews of any mag.
However, I do not consider PGi to be a mag that relies on event reports. That's why we only cover the NPPL, PSP and Millennium - three internationally known series. We cover the CFOA because it's probably the fourth biggest series in the world - they regularly get over 120 teams at an event - how many were at PA & NSPL? If we print a CFOA report how many more people are likely to pick up the mag as they were at the CFOA than if we print something on a 20 team UK event?
I'm afraid past the big three events it's a matter of numbers. I think PBUK, Paintball Kit all have their place for coverage of the local scene in the UK just as Paintball 7 does in Germany and Portal Paintball in Spain.
I don't want to become regionalised, and honestly if we did the mag (as Robbo's said) wouldn't be financially viable. You can go into WHSmith and buy PGi, you can't do that with any UK mag because (bluntly) they aren't making enough money to pay the costs involved in being in Smiths - it's not worth it for them.
I feel the majority of the mag is relevant to the majority of ballers: Tactics, Gear, Techniques are all universally applicable regardless of the country you live in.
Now if we were to up our coverage of anything, in terms of marketplace we should embrace the rec scene... oh look, a report on the D-Day scenario's landed on my desk....
