Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Weekly Update

This week's update is a little thin on everything except numbers but I'm doing a little digging--or, more accurately, I've asked some peeps I know to dig a little for me--otherwise, it would be like work and that's out of the question. I'm mostly interested in the MS, their locked divisions and how sponsorships deals will really shake out this year.

Over in Euroland Joy has finally appeared on the CPL list putting the top division at 13 teams, 3 short of capacity. But why worry, or ask questions, the event is still 10 days away. (Got a separate post on Team USA coming today related to this.) If any of VFTD's Swedish readers--and at last count there are quite a few--would be willing to give me some more background on the Joy situation I would be eternally grateful, and uh, well, that's about it. The SPL and D1 remain at 26 teams out of a division max of 32. As noted last week, not ideal for structuring the prelim brackets. At this point I will go out on a limb and suggest whoever shows up at this late date worked some kind of deal with the league, and that includes Joy and maybe some prior registrants. Can I prove it? Not at the moment and of course everyone will deny it so you'll just have to trust me. Or not. But back room dealing is hardly unknown on either side of the Atlantic. Just saying.

The PSP has 166 teams registered for the MAO with 78 paid, including 7 pros. (I still don't understand how any of the pros can appear as registered but unpaid when they were all supposed to have ponied up for the year in advance. This is something the raehl faction actually knows--but will he talk?) Semi-pro has 8 registered though I find DB's Ironmen to be suspect and kinda expect 7 teams will pay and play. D1 is stuck at 10 and again, I'm not convinced all will pay and the league will be back where it's been with a sadly deficient D1 despite their effort to pump D2 teams into the division. As Yogi Berra was reputed to have said, It's deja vu all over again. Time continues to trickle away as the clock runs out on registration and the paid team numbers hover in the danger zone. With a season reduced to 4 events are the teams that might have played the fourth event gonna jump in someplace else or skip it altogether?

Registration for the USPL's first conference event, the DC Challenge, is at 22 teams, including 4 of the conference's 8 Pro teams, with 0 paid. 1 5-man team and 17 7-man teams across three divisions have registered. The event is approximately one month away given it's scheduled for the weekend of the 15th - 18th of May. Realistically the league has around two weeks at the very latest to see things turn around before they have to make final decisions and spend money.