So you're pretty much saying the NPPL are fcuked save an unlikely deal with the PSP?
Philly Americans out of the NPPL
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So you're pretty much saying the NPPL are fcuked save an unlikely deal with the PSP?
I think there are several 'main benefits' of dropping to 3 events.
The most obvious is that they can focus on filling, promoting, and filming 3 strong events instead of struggling to find venues every year, which is time consuming and a major distraction to the goal. In a 5 event season, 2 of those events, in either league, will be relatively weak. 3 events cuts overhead and allows more time and preparation. Its cheaper for the teams, and the sponsors. Its better for the vendors too. Players attending should see more for their money. More competition, more vendors, more promotion, more press coverage, and in 3 solid venues that are great to attend and play.
I think if we are oversimplifying anything, it is the PSP's strength and the comparable weakness of the NPPL. There has been a shift, no doubt, and I have actually found myself a small part of that shift, but I do not see the PSP as the success story it is being made out to be here. In giving Lane his head, they have allowed the league to be run in a non-partizan way, and that has reaped rewards - the guy is doing a great job.
If you judge success by not losing money, as it would seem above, then fine, you score.
The NPPL lost money for 2 years (03/04). Those years were the best ever for the NPPL and 2 of the years they were perceived as being the MOST successful. When the NPPL started breaking even, and making money, thats when the league started to be perceived as 'less successful'
The truth is, it is far more complex than that.
hris, I think if you're expecting the NPPL to roll over, hand over their jewel to the PSP, and retire gracefully, then you're either kidding yourself, or you're getting a little arrogant and over-confident, which ironically, was one of the problems with the original NPPL and a reason Pure Promotions split the leagues in the first place.
Missy, the reason i assign so much importance to their relative strengths is because the NPPL have been losing money for the past few years as we all know but that's not really important in itself, what is important however is the prognosis looks none too good mate.
I don't see anything on the immediate or mid-term horizons that suggests the situation can be turned around or stopped from getting worse in a sensible time-frame.
The PSP however can just trundle along doing what they are doing and stay in the game with no real need to make lots of money; strategically, all they have do is to break even each year and they can potentially win the game.
These are the reasons why I think we can draw a distinct dividing line between the two.
Missy,
It's not an oversimplification. PSP is making money for the second year in a row, NPPL is losing money (and NPPL has been losing money pretty much the whole time.) At some point a decision gets made to stop losing money.
The oversimplification is yours--in thinking that if only the NPPL does the same stuff it's always done but does it extra good (by going to 3 events) that that will somehow turn everything around. It won't.
I don't know how anybody in business can do anything but judge success by not losing money. Obviously you can start up an enterprise and expect/calculate/plan to operate in the red for a period of time but unless you're AIG or Fannie Mae with a cozy relationship to government printing presses you can't do it indefinitely. Seems to me the issue for the NPPL is twofold; what constitutes light at the end of the tunnel and how much more are they willing to spend.
Just goes to show you perception isn't reality.
Have you ever asked yourself why the external perception changed?
3 events won't save the NPPL. What they need to do is evaluate why the league's popularity has faltered and as a practical measure they ought to eliminate the XPSL yesterday.
and they are not bad reasons, if you assume that things will carry on the way they are.
If you're in the ring, in a fight scheduled for 13 rounds, and with 3 rounds left your corner has you down 7-3, they would tell you to change up your game-plan and knock the guy out. Its your only chance of winning.
I remember the NPPL thinking how easy it was to take on the PSP because their league was so fragmented, making them slow to react and almost impossible to agree on a direction that suited their differing agenda's. Well, that got changed...
I think if the NPPL goes to 3, one other thing they are doing is deciding not to go head to head. They would hope that the PSP stays with 5. Most teams (and Chicago can correct me on this as he would be an authority in this area) do not play 5 events. They play 2 or 3.
If I were behind the wheel, I would run 3, have the teams commit to 3 and market the fxck out of it. I would want 200 teams per event, and I would run the Pro's at night under lights an hour after the other games were over, with a load of food, booze and between-game entertainment on-offer. I'd just film the evening sessions plus the finals. I would run a free webcast for the regular games and charge $10 for the nightly pro matches, a % of which would go back to the Pro teams, who would therefore be expected to push the webcast to thier own fan-bases. I would get some celebrities down there (not difficult), but not put them on the field to make fools of themselves. All I would want are some nice shots of them sitting in the stands with a beer and thier latest squeeze, which I would circulate to the national press immediately afterwards together with a nice write-up of the event.
If you're in the ring, in a fight scheduled for 13 rounds, and with 3 rounds left your corner has you down 7-3, they would tell you to change up your game-plan and knock the guy out. Its your only chance of winning.
I remember the NPPL thinking how easy it was to take on the PSP because their league was so fragmented, making them slow to react and almost impossible to agree on a direction that suited their differing agenda's. Well, that got changed...
I think if the NPPL goes to 3, one other thing they are doing is deciding not to go head to head. They would hope that the PSP stays with 5. Most teams (and Chicago can correct me on this as he would be an authority in this area) do not play 5 events. They play 2 or 3.
If I were behind the wheel, I would run 3, have the teams commit to 3 and market the fxck out of it. I would want 200 teams per event, and I would run the Pro's at night under lights an hour after the other games were over, with a load of food, booze and between-game entertainment on-offer. I'd just film the evening sessions plus the finals. I would run a free webcast for the regular games and charge $10 for the nightly pro matches, a % of which would go back to the Pro teams, who would therefore be expected to push the webcast to thier own fan-bases. I would get some celebrities down there (not difficult), but not put them on the field to make fools of themselves. All I would want are some nice shots of them sitting in the stands with a beer and thier latest squeeze, which I would circulate to the national press immediately afterwards together with a nice write-up of the event.
If it were true that the NPPL always lost money, then your argument would stand up.
Also, for either league, if they dropped the 2 poorest events, they would expect to make more money. It is often (if not always) those 1 or 2 events that drag a league from the black into the red.
I also did not suggest that the NPPL do things as they always have done. In fact I don't think they do things now the way they did them 2-3 years ago, which would mean that they are already not doing what they always have done, but in a bad way...
The underlying point of my post is that perception is not reality, and in that at least we appear to agree, or we at least give the temporary perception that we agree.
As for the XPSL, that shouldn't really have any bearing IMO, and if Shawn makes way for Scott, that league may just revert back to him anyway.
I'm not an advocate of national series anyway--at least not the way either league is currently doing it so I won't argue with you, Missy--except on a couple of points.
If Pacific owns XPSL then it ought to disband it to avoid the direct competition in an identical format in the region of the country most committed to 7-man play. The ability to attract leisure dollars isn't going to get easier any time soon. And if you think the NPPL isn't in competition with the XPSL for teams you are radically misjudging the situation.
Regardless the books for PP once upon a time may have been occasionally in the black that was neither the history nor the trend else PP wouldn't have chosen to get out while they could with something left of their shirt and Pacific wouldn't be looking down the barrel. (And yes, it's easy for me to be critical but it doesn't make me wrong and I'm even trying not to be too offensive which is why I've left out the usual sarcasm.)
A 3 event "season" in which teams "commit" to playing all 3? Sounds like watered down MS. Now all you need is an MS-style fee structure to pay for your committment and the league will be dead inside a year. [While I'm making friends and influencing people let me add gratuitously if the Eurokids had any balls they wouldn't put up with the current MS for a second.]
Let me try a different tack. Why is the PSP working while the NPPL isn't? (And I don't mean to suggest PSP is hunky-dory cause they have issues as well but they aren't [presently] bleeding money.)
Well my guess would be the answer lies within the realms of a preffered format ....
I would say it is because they are doing the basics, and well. The NPPL have been less focused on the basics and more on the peripheries.I'm not an advocate of national series anyway--at least not the way either league is currently doing it so I won't argue with you, Missy--except on a couple of points.
If Pacific owns XPSL then it ought to disband it to avoid the direct competition in an identical format in the region of the country most committed to 7-man play. The ability to attract leisure dollars isn't going to get easier any time soon. And if you think the NPPL isn't in competition with the XPSL for teams you are radically misjudging the situation.
Regardless the books for PP once upon a time may have been occasionally in the black that was neither the history nor the trend else PP wouldn't have chosen to get out while they could with something left of their shirt and Pacific wouldn't be looking down the barrel. (And yes, it's easy for me to be critical but it doesn't make me wrong and I'm even trying not to be too offensive which is why I've left out the usual sarcasm.)
A 3 event "season" in which teams "commit" to playing all 3? Sounds like watered down MS. Now all you need is an MS-style fee structure to pay for your committment and the league will be dead inside a year. [While I'm making friends and influencing people let me add gratuitously if the Eurokids had any balls they wouldn't put up with the current MS for a second.]
Let me try a different tack. Why is the PSP working while the NPPL isn't? (And I don't mean to suggest PSP is hunky-dory cause they have issues as well but they aren't [presently] bleeding money.)
I think format would come 2nd to that.
I should be clear that I have no problem with you being critical, or wrong for that matter. However, my intel shows me that the XPSL and the NPPL have both had a drop in teams. I don't really see those teams showing up in the PSP either, so that would suggest a lack of general interest or perhaps funding, rather than downturn as a product of competing leagues, or even formats. That would indicate that west-coast teams are hurting more than teams from the US heartland, which makes sense, at least to a point.
I'm not too familiar with the MS format these days, I kinda lost track, and even after having it explained to me I'm none the wiser, but I can assure you that my suggestions are not meant to emulate a format I can't fathom, thats for sure.
On to your feelings that a promotion and relegation system don't work. I think thats a US thing. People in Europe have no problem understanding that your place in the league is determined by how well you play, and your results, not on how long you can afford to pay your franchise fees for. I have a better understanding of what you mean though, after having lived stateside for a few years, but I still don't think its a better way of doing things. We would not have the Edmonton Impact story without promotion and relegation. Thyose guys rose through the ranks, and for me thats more exciting that a team that borrows another teams spot.
As for formats. I have changed my position on this in recent years, and more so since I was in Chicago this year and got a better understanding of the Xball format. Now that I understand it properly, I like it and think its probably the better format for Pro paintball, however, that statement itself highlights part of the problem with the X-ball format, if you catch my drift.
When i consider what both series do and don't do, i can come to no other conclusion than the basics as you call them, come a long way back in 2nd place to that of a preffered format ..a long way back.
Just my less than humble opinion you understand
But apart from that, I pretty much agree with the rest of your post.