It's Vegas Baby! : 2013 NPPL Championships

While the tourist board for the city of Las Vegas promises that 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more) the NPPL is surely hoping  that doesn't prove true of their upcoming event. Registration closed "officially" last Friday and the event begins this coming Friday and the team list indicates 73 teams are on board including a handful of 3-man teams. It's hard to tell if the list is accurate as to the actual turnout given that rosters are missing in many cases and it isn't clear if inclusion in the registration list means their entry was paid. An accurate count will come when the schedules are posted.
'Pro' has 12 teams for Vegas and includes 3 new teams (although TCP Machine played their prelims last event in a combined pro/semi-pro bracket.) The big move came in the semi-pro (D1) division as 11 teams have joined the fray this time around. At a guess I'd say they were largely motivated by the limited competition and the opportunity to play the Race To variant of 7-man. D2 is very thin again with only 4 teams but that's an improvement over the Chicago event. The biggest numbers, as is the norm, come from D3 & D4. Although given that D4 also offers a 5-man Race To format there is a certain irony in the fact that less than half the teams signed up to play are competing in the traditional 7-man format.
It will be interesting to see how the league handles the logistics of the set-up. While the fields are fixed they will still need to deal with paint and a few vendors as well as staging, etc.
If you've been to the NPPL website you may have noticed the league has "partnered" with UStream to provide their latest webcast. UStream also provided the bandwidth for the Valken Cup broadcast if you happened to catch of any of that. UStream is a delivery system. It delivers whatever content its partner (customer?) provides. In the case of Valken Cup it was two camera angles showing two out of sync halves (more or less) of the same field with ambient sound. If you want to see what the NPPL delivers you'll have to tune in and check it out. I'ma try to catch some of the action but like many of y'all I'll be on the grind getting ready for PSP World Cup.