Thursday, July 18, 2013

Should the PSP Bring the All*Star Game Back?

It's not a trick question. It's a simple question. Unless perhaps you witnessed some of the past All*Star games. On a practical note it would be a good way to drive traffic at the PBA site during the slow summer months--if fans could vote for their favorites--and keep track of the latest results.
Look at the Millennium kids. No All*Star game but they have a whole secondary series of co-events featuring national teams. The first was an all-female event. Despite (or maybe because) a number of all girl teams already play in the Millennium. The second event featured national teams made up of players under 19 (years of age.) And at the last event it was (Open) national teams. That's a whole lotta extra paintball--and a clever way to expand the Millennium's base appeal and European [at least] legitimacy. But that's really another story for another day. I just wanted to point out that with no All*Star game or something like it the PSP is being left in the dust when it comes to specialty/unique paintball challenges. Even WCA now features the Intercontinental Cup. Of course one might also say the PSP doesn't need any gimmicks to validate its position either.
If the PSP were to bring back the All*Star game it would raise a lot of questions too. When and where is it to be held? How are the teams chosen? By PBA stats or popular vote, or a mix of both? How does it fit into a very tight webcast schedule--and as a consequence who gets left out? Or maybe it happens Thursday afternoon in Chicago or at Cup? It probably wouldn't be easy to organize but now that the pros feature both Champs and Challengers and for the first time ever the game has some meaningful stats shouldn't we have some special event that celebrates our sport?
Well, what do you think? Should the PSP bring the All*Star game back?

12 comments:

Ken said...

No.
I don't care about all star games in the big time espn sports, why would I care about it in the small timey ones.

Grant said...

PSP and paintball would be better served if they organized a celebrity paintball match. The sport needs a wider fan base and always needs more publicity and an All Star match just doesn't create much hype to a wider audience.

Sure it's probably not something the hardcore paintball fan would like to watch but getting well known celebs involved would certainly give PSP leverage to get more media coverage and get a wider audience knowing that paintball is broadcast via PBAccess.

Heck make it a charity match and you can wave the carrot in front of some corporate donators and make it easier to get celebrities to participate.

Nick Brockdorff said...

Don't you think the PSP has enough gimmicks already, with various formats besides Race-to? ;)

TJ said...

Waste of resources on a match that nobody cares about.

Anonymous said...

Bring back All Star game, and copy the individual skill competitions from major sport All Star games. I'd like to see target shooting, 1-on-1's, break out speed competition (break out -> dive to snake -> crawl to the other end -> sprint to the end line) etc. And make it mandatory for pro teams so "superstars" can't chicken out. Would be fun to see this at the WC.

Anonymous said...

Do it. I love watching drunken paintball.

Anonymous said...

Actually it would be more fun if the all star match was played in the UWL!
There were lots of people watching the UWL in Chicago.

Nick Brockdorff said...

Oh, I changed my mind... the individual skills competition thing sounds cool actually - that I'd watch..... not an all-star game though :)

Pete said...

Oh, Celebrity paintball might really help get some new people to try out the sport.

Anonymous said...

I like Grant's idea. Can we do something that involves a charitable contribution? Something the PSP could write off at the end of the year.

With companies like Budweiser taking an active interest in the PSP, charitable events could reflect positively on the league and put the hook in some outside investors thinking about getting involved.

As far as the Allstar game goes, my question is do the players really want it? Do the teams really want it?

Competition this season has been fierce, and the margin for error at the pro level is very small. I think this may dissuade some of the top level teams from allowing their players to compete in a match that has no bearing on the outcome of the event.

Just my two cents.




EC Lil Baller said...

A skills competition leading into a celebrity/pro-am game would be really fun to watch. Who wouldn't want to see Federov, Lang, JRab, etc... duke it out in 1-1s? I'd definitely pay for grandstand tickets/PBAccess HiDef for that!

4leaf4life said...

I'd like to see something between the top 10 ranked pros in a skills sense.