Registration for the PSP's Chicago Open is up to 136 with about a month to go. That looks pretty good but realistically another 80 or so teams need to sign up and play. I also hear the league is working hard to encourage small PBIndustry types to fill up the vendor's village but I don't think they have a prayer of making that happen. For the small guy it simply isn't cost effective (or even cost neutral) to attend anything but WC. In looking over the registered teams it appears that 4 of the 8 registered in Semi-pro are there by mistake. And the ranks of D1 teams continues to swell. Not. Last year Chicago had 8 D1 teams. Despite efforts by the PSP to pack the division like a Tammany Hall boss it ain't working and the net result is this year's crop of D1 ranked former players.
Keep an eye on the numbers as both Phoenix and MAO looked a little thin until the final week so I expect Chicago will pull it together too.
Registration for the USPL's West Coast Open is at 51 (including the 16 pro teams.) FYI--I make a distinction for the pro teams because they are all pre-confirmed and pre-paid as joint owners of the league and consequently shouldn't be counted the same as every other team signing up to play. That puts registration at 35 teams 3 paid. The May discount is available for a few more days and it will interesting to see how many teams take advantage of it. June payment will also offer a discount but not nearly as much. The event is scheduled for mid-July.
Registration in the unlocked divisions for this week's Millennium Series Bitburg event really did swell--perhaps on the good news regarding the German paintball ban (it ain't happening after all)--to 23 teams in M5 and 22 teams in D2 which nearly doubled each division over last week. Those may not be the kind of numbers the MS was hoping for but in light of all the recent troubles it doesn't look too bad.
Registration for next month's Eastern Conference Grand Tour event in Lviv, Ukraine, is at 30 teams. The recent Warsaw event saw 40 teams participate. VFTD recently was offered another explanation (besides poor promotion) for the fall off in competing teams. It was suggested by our regular correspondent that currency exchange rates had also caused, in effect, a steep price increase and that could very easily be putting teams off. I think there was more to it but I must have dozed off.
Lastly, I have made noises before about expanding the coverage of the weekly update and y'all have responded like the lazy slackers you are. But I now have something a little more specific to suggest so maybe it will help motivate a slacker or three. I would like to add regional series in the U.S. like the CFOA and AXBL (and I'm open to their suggestions). I would also like to add series from around the world that draw teams from multiple countries or are currently the largest series of events in their region or country. But saying that there's no way I can go hunting for all the info myself so here's the deal. If you want your league in the weekly update you need to send me relevant info about what's happening and websites where peeps can follow-up on the goings on of the various leagues around the world. Btw, I'm not holding my breath but do have my fingers crossed.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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2 comments:
From what I hear Chicago is the event that provides almost as much sales as WC for some vendors. So it's probably cost effective in that sense.
Of course generally it's probably not cost effective to be in the paintball industry as opposed to something more exciting like toothpicks...
I find that highly unlikely tho the fallback is "some" vendors.
I know a few small vendors (and have been a small vendor my own self) and while Chicago was good to me and it is bigger than everything but WC the comments hoping it may prove worthwile at some point far outweigh the made a buck or two variety in my recent experience.
Flavored and scented toothpicks. Get on board while you still can.
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