Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Weekly Update

PSP staff were putting the finishing touches on field setup and the like today. Despite the brutal heat back home Chicagoland isn't a pleasant alternative. In fact, it's unpleasantly familiar--but that's too close to whining for comfort so I'll knock it off. They have moved things around quite a bit this year--or so it seemed in wandering around looking for our field. None of the area close to the houses at the back of the property is in use this year (I've heard it's been raining a lot lately and that it's kinda swampy over there but I didn't check.) Anyway, for regular reports and probably some pics check with our friends over at ProPaintball for the daily gossip and on scene info.
Final team totals for the Chicago Open are 195 paid (not including the Young Guns) so the numbers are actually down slightly over what it looked like last week. Must have been a few dropouts because I know there were also a few late registrations and payments.. Those numbers put the drop from last year at something above 15%.
On second thought I may take a closer look around the venue for signs of economizing. Also, there will be some new camera angles on the webcast as they were setting up to be able to shoot some closer action shots that should provide visible streams of paint and sight lines between opposing players, particularly on the snake side. (That isn't the word from Pat or Matty, just my interpretation of what will be in some of the shots given the new camera positions.) One other thing you'll see is the Doritos logo and trademark on the dorito bunkers on the Pro field. I don't know if we're seeing the first sign of an outside industry sponsor or if the league is using the Doritos tie-in to help sell the concept. I'll ask and let y'all know.

Over in the USPL (soon to be the NPPL) numbers for the West Coast Open remain sluggish with total registrations at 67 teams and just above half paid and ready to play. Even though I couldn't access DC Challenge registration thru the USPL website you can check it out (or register) thru APPA directly. DC has 70 teams registered for the end of August event. I know Camille and the gang are working hard but the USPL (NPPL) seems to still be in the same wait and see with fingers crossed position we've seen for a while now.

The Millennium Kids recently announced on their website that rosters for the open event in Paris would be unrestricted so I'm assuming anybody and everybody can beef up their team if they'd like to compete for the Cup without it impacting the regular series rosters or event results. By my count the MS still has 13 slots available in the open but they say it's only 11. That means at least 12 and perhaps 14 D2 teams have registered (though only 12 are listed on the website.) D3 (M5) registration is up to 27 and the MS announced they will playing Race 2-2 (if I read it correctly.)

If you Google 'Grand Tour' without including the modifier "paintball" you will get pages and pages of Grand Tours that aren't THE Grand Tour. That's probably unfair but I think I'd have a hard time justifying including the Grand Tour in the weekly update if they didn't have a Pro division. In fact I'm sure I wouldn't give it a second thought. The Lviv event took place last weekend and if you go to their site there are links to pictures. But no link to pblivescores even though that's where the scores and results can be seen.

Lastly I'd like to take a moment to recommend you check out the comments to the post, There Was No Paintball Bust, and read Houdini's second comment in particular. The whole major league paintball held hostage angle is (usually) at least partly tongue-in-cheek [meaning kinda unserious] but Houdini has a take from personal experience that I think is interesting, valid and worth paying heed to. So check it out.