X-Ball. Disney and World Cup

[Baca Loco]

-----[As most of you know, Disney has chosen to let tournament style paintball take place on it property this year.

This is a start of something that could have tremendous positive impact on tournament paintballs reputation within corporate America. This type scenario is the way huge outside sponsorship begins. If Disney is impressed with tournament paintball as a viable marketing tool to increase their business revenues, they are in quite the position to make HUGE financial contributions to the tournament scene, and lead the way for other companies to follow suit.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the people from Disney will have a list of things they are looking for in regards to whether tournament paintball is a sport they wish to continue involvement in.

No one should be fooled. Their chief concern will be whether their involvement will in the end add money to their company. Simply put - can Disney gain more money through sales of tickets to their parks, movies, etc by putting money/efforts into tournament paintball?

Obviously their long-term plans will be much more involved than this. But for short term, first step evaluation they are certainly looking at the number of tickets they feel they sell based on their participation with this years event. Specifically, they are monitoring the 888-WDW-DREAM phone number to see if "paintball related" sales are coming in.

They are offering "specially priced" ticket packages to players and family members who are participating in the 2002 World Cup.

For some "legal" reason they do no want me to post prices on the Internet. There is a list of the package and the phone number at www.paintballworldcup.com

I am trying to let you all know that we are possibly on the verge of getting a huge company interested in the sport that we play. This could mean bigger prizes, better sponsorship for teams, more "outside money for tournament promoters and thus lower entry fees for players, and the list goes on.

But it is absolutely based on whether tournament paintball is a viable way to market their product. I seriously doubt that I will have time to attend any Disney Parks while in Orlando. But I will do my part and buy a "2-DAY Value Ticket" simply to show some support for a company who is interested in supporting paintball. I know a lot of you are in the same situation with your time in Florida being taken up by the tournament. But you may have family coming. You may be able to use the tickets at some other time. You may simply have the extra cash to buy a ticket just because. However you can justify it, please try to. If everyone finds a way to buy these tickets, it will almost assuredly lead to something we all want in tournament paintball, a big company looking at us as a legitimate source for their sponsor/marketing dollars. And once one comes on board, others always follow.]-----

The above text is the complete posting put up by Lane Wright on another site except for the link to purchase tickets.

I have a few questions that perhaps Lane or someone else can respond to:
What exactly is tournament style paintball? (Why not just say PSP or NPPL tourney ball unless you don't really mean that and are only implying it?)
If the purpose is to promote "tournament-style" paintball why was the WC schedule changed and an X-Ball exhibition plugged in to the available time and space?
Is it the PSP or the NPPL position that X-Ball format will be the official tourney style in the future?
If not then isn't the point to attract big outside interest in supporting X-Ball (which may or may not have anything to do with the tournament style paintball the vast majority of us play?)
So, first the World Cup schedule is re-scheduled and now we're supposed to spend money on Disney cus it might prove beneficial at some point in time to the "tournament scene"? Perhaps you or someone else involved could be a little more forthcoming on what your hopes, expectations and/or goals for the "tournament scene" are so we have a better idea just what we're supposed to be supporting.

 

[Mark]

Baca I can see you are wielding that big spoon again you really think Lane is gonna respond to your questions when "normally" his postings are restricted to annoucements of the kind you replicated. I certainly won't have time to attend the Disney Parks but then I have never felt the "need" in the several years I have attended the World Cup when time was available to me.
Disney are sticking a toe in the water and to be honest although the schedule changes have come so late in the day, to now include Disney in my visit time is to be honest a non-starter. there is enough of an uproar coming from the Am teams about lack of time to play the event so that the people Disney are hoping to visit them has been diminshed already. Had the entire event X-Ball or whatever Format been slotted into play at Disney in the beginning then perhaps the increased revenue Disney are hoping for would appear. Next year as I have said in another post the whole event "will ??" be at Disney. But to hope for it this year...nope. All this rescheduling has moved the goalposts in many different ways for the PSP/NPPL/Disney how it will pan out for this years event is anyones guess as it is the last event in the tournament calender, it is a 12 month plan, a good plan but a slightly rushed one

 

[Baca Loco]

Mark,
Lane has in fact responded to similar questions in another forum so perhaps he might.
As to holding all of WC at Disney I could care less. However, if you are promoting one thing to a "new" audience why are you going out of your way to show them something else? What are Disney (potentially) gonna want to support? What they've just seen or oh, yeah, it's kinda like the event we just showed you but different.

 

[rancid]

Originally posted by Baca Loco
-----[As most of you know, Disney has chosen to let tournament style paintball take place on it property this year.

This is a start of something that could have tremendous positive impact on tournament paintballs reputation within corporate America. This type scenario is the way huge outside sponsorship begins. If Disney is impressed with tournament paintball as a viable marketing tool to increase their business revenues, they are in quite the position to make HUGE financial contributions to the tournament scene, and lead the way for other companies to follow suit.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the people from Disney will have a list of things they are looking for in regards to whether tournament paintball is a sport they wish to continue involvement in.

No one should be fooled. Their chief concern will be whether their involvement will in the end add money to their company. Simply put - can Disney gain more money through sales of tickets to their parks, movies, etc by putting money/efforts into tournament paintball?

Obviously their long-term plans will be much more involved than this. But for short term, first step evaluation they are certainly looking at the number of tickets they feel they sell based on their participation with this years event. Specifically, they are monitoring the 888-WDW-DREAM phone number to see if "paintball related" sales are coming in.

They are offering "specially priced" ticket packages to players and family members who are participating in the 2002 World Cup.

For some "legal" reason they do no want me to post prices on the Internet. There is a list of the package and the phone number at www.paintballworldcup.com

I am trying to let you all know that we are possibly on the verge of getting a huge company interested in the sport that we play. This could mean bigger prizes, better sponsorship for teams, more "outside money for tournament promoters and thus lower entry fees for players, and the list goes on.

But it is absolutely based on whether tournament paintball is a viable way to market their product. I seriously doubt that I will have time to attend any Disney Parks while in Orlando. But I will do my part and buy a "2-DAY Value Ticket" simply to show some support for a company who is interested in supporting paintball. I know a lot of you are in the same situation with your time in Florida being taken up by the tournament. But you may have family coming. You may be able to use the tickets at some other time. You may simply have the extra cash to buy a ticket just because. However you can justify it, please try to. If everyone finds a way to buy these tickets, it will almost assuredly lead to something we all want in tournament paintball, a big company looking at us as a legitimate source for their sponsor/marketing dollars. And once one comes on board, others always follow.]-----

The above text is the complete posting put up by Lane Wright on another site except for the link to purchase tickets.

Haven't we got enough Mickey Mouse tournaments?

 

[Billy No Mates]

rancid trust you to come out with some really constructive comments.

 

[Mark]

Originally posted by Baca Loco
Mark,
Lane has in fact responded to similar questions in another forum so perhaps he might.
As to holding all of WC at Disney I could care less. However, if you are promoting one thing to a "new" audience why are you going out of your way to show them something else? What are Disney (potentially) gonna want to support? What they've just seen or oh, yeah, it's kinda like the event we just showed you but different.

Well maybe he will answer then...unlike answering his phone !!!

MMMM promote one then show another...difficult...sounds like your signature.....but then as all this has happened (in the form it is now) very late, what would you take as an easier option?
Perhaps they didn't understand the usual way of the game but the "other" one was easier to understand..timeouts/penalty boxes etc, all Greek to me anyhow as I don't understand a great many American "sports" (and I'm sure I am not alone in that lack of understanding).

 

[rancid]

awww c'mon Billy. We can't all be as well informed as you.

 

[Tyger]

Originally posted by Mark
Disney are sticking a toe in the water

This isn't the first time that the mouse has looked at paintball.

Back in '94 I think, Fred Schultz helped to organise a filmed game on the MGM Studios "Main Street" at Disneyworld MGM.

Also, ESPN is owned by the mouse too, and ESPN has aired paintball before. There is a working relationship in place already. (It's scary when you know all that the Mouse owns, actually...)

I guess my point is that it's not as radical as you may think, becasue the Mouse will host anyone with enough money to rent their place out. I won't be impressed until they comp the players with rooms at the very least. X-ball or no, we're still hosting an infomercial until we get some green with it.

-Tyger

 

[raehl]

The future of paintball...

At least, commercially supported paintball...

Is not anything that looks like a NPPL/PSP event, or most of any of our other tournaments. The idea of an athletic league composed of whoever wants to pay the entry fee is simply ridiculous. If paintball wants to have a league that is supported by out-of-industry advertising and other revenue sources (like ticket sales and merchandising), you have to move to a league with a set number of geographically located teams with schedules set at least a year if not more in advance.

Building team and player identity is essential to sports marketing, and events with 100+ teams with an assortment of unfamiliar team names and too-fluid rosters makes that impossible. 90 of those teams are the athletic equivalent of spam.


X-Ball solves a lot of this - you have head to head competition that lasts 2-3 hours in a format that works very well with 8 teams. You can build identity with those 8 teams. Hopefully developing a league like that will lead to some more attention for our sport, more players, and consequently, another half cent per ball drop in paint prices. That's the benefit the VAST majority of paintball players will see, plus not getting so many strange looks when people think you've just told them you're a ping-pong player.


So, is X-Ball the future of tournament paintball? I dunno. It's an option for the future of COMMERCIALLY SUPPORTED tournament paintball. It's not the first option to come around, it probably won't be the last, but I think it's a sound concept backed by people with a good handle on what needs to be done to make it work (unlike the proponents of some earlier concepts that did not have the same comprehension.)


I will say that the way most of us play tournament paintball now will never be commercially supported. Doesn't mean you should stop playing it, but expect that you'll have to migrate to something a little different if you ever want a salary for playing. Of course, people arn't going to have X-Ball fields in the woods in their back yards or at most of their local fields either - but neither do they have football goal posts or a full-size basketball court in their driveway. Nor does every snow boarder start on half pipe or skate boarder on a 20ft ramp.

The top levels of paintball competition moving to a form that's slightly different (basically repeated centerflag) than the rest of the sport is really quite in line with the rest of athletics. We'll still have things like NPPL/PSP for Am level play for quite some time I'd imagine, but the people getting paid to play will be playing something different.


- Chris

 

[Billy No Mates]

what can i say, when the mans right the man IS right.