A Secret Meeting & Patents Rising

VFTD would like to congratulate the ProPaintball guys on their merger talk meeting story. Nice job. Because it was indeed a secret meeting despite the fact VFTD aluded to the fact it was happening a couple of weeks ago. Which reminds me: Almost any time some sort of sensitive info leaks into the public this site is assumed to be involved. Au contraire. If VFTD burned sources and/or broke promises Mr. Curious would quickly be out of business. And to prove it to y'all I'ma tell you something about the meeting you don't know.
WHAT'S HE GONNA SAY!?! OMG!
Rumor has it that everyone involved signed a non-disclosure up front and if that is true then whoever passed information on to ProPaintball should oughta be mighty red-faced right about now assuming the details published by ProPaintball are accurate--something VFTD can neither confirm or deny. Next time some beans get spilled y'all might want to look a little closer to home.

As sensitive as the secret meeting was Mr. Curious has stumbled onto a rumor buried so deep in the industry's basement it was surely intended to never see the light of day. Assuming it's accurate. It is, in fact, so sensitive that VFTD isn't going to identify the company--but those of you not hopelessly out of the loop should know who is being referenced--and further no mention will be made of specific numbers.
Remember back in the day when Smart Parts was involved in one litigation after another mostly revolving around their ability to enforce certain patents? And the upshot was some sort of cross deal was made between SP & Dye & Angel (more or less) and everybody else ended up having to come to terms with SP and pay licensing fees in order to manufacture and sell electronic paintball markers. Or get out of the gun biz. Do you remember what happened to those patents? And do you remember a press release made regarding those patents?
Rumor has it that some gun makers have been approached and informed they will be required to pay a lump sum upfront plus a per gun licensing fee that is approx. 40% - 50% greater than SP ever demanded. (Inflation, I guess.) While the company is perfectly within its legal right to do so that would appear to contradict past public statements of intent. VFTD does not know how or if this rumor may affect any company that had agreed to terms previously with SP. In looking for additional and related info it seems that the duration of active patent protection (in this category) is twenty years which leaves a goodly number of years that the patents will remain in force--assuming annual maintenance fees are kept up to date.

Divided We Fail

No, no, no. This is not about reunification. How often do I have to say it? On that front I remain an obstructionist.
It does NOT follow that reunification does anything but institutionalize the same old problems. For example, when exactly before the league split was cooperation, unity and foresight part of the program? Working for the greater good? And after the split which league stepped up to lead Paintball? Was it the guys beggaring themselves making the play for the TV cheese? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And in the meantime PBIndustry has been fast-tracking cooperative standards and practices and pressing forward where common ground exists. Oh, wait. That’s just what everybody says they want when they aren’t whimpering about the coming calamity while sitting on their hands.
This post is about the failure to cooperate where common ground exists. Or even acknowledge any common ground. Everybody wrings their hands over the present state of affairs but everybody also wants what they want and so far short-sighted ambition has prevailed over anything and everything that might be called vision.
To date swinging for the fences and aiming for walk off victory hasn’t produced any unequivocal advances much less success. So how ‘bout a longer look at a different strategy? One where PBIndustry finds whatever common ground exists and begins at that point. Sure, continue to compete but also lay a foundation that all of Paintball can build on. And yeah, I know, it’s been tried before (sorta) and part of the general chatter forever but that remains a far cry from actually doing something.
Here’s a freebie, just so it can’t be said all I do is criticize (it’s just mostly what I do)–if PBIndustry would like to get away from the status quo (and reduce the influence of the major leagues) form a competition committee for standards and practices, stand behind it, and make the leagues deal with a unified front (or thereabouts) on issues where unity is possible. Of course I realize the likelihood of certain key PBIndustry holdouts but that's okay. Taking the first steps offers an "answer" and also, incidentally, applies pressure to the holdouts. And, yes, I know about the lawsuits and animosity and all the rest of the crap that makes the course I'm suggesting about as likely as snow cones in hell but one of these days one of y'all are gonna decide enough is enough--hopefully before there's nothing left to fight over.
And just in case you're not getting it here's how it plays out, simplified. A PBIndustry supported Comp Committee doesn't need the leagues for leadership, they need the leagues for enforcement. Like checks and balances. Industry individuals can't be relied on, a lesson already learned, but if they make the rules (not game rules but standards & practices) and use the leagues to assure uniformity there is a chance to lay a useful foundation of consistency, integrity and some measure of unity. The formulation is sure to be much more complex and there has to be something in it for everyone but those are solvable problems, not road blocks.

The Pro Dilemma

I've been here and done this before but the first time or two around this issue teams weren't already dead or dying. I'm hoping the rotting corpses of dead pro teams past might have made an impression on some folks in the meantime.
The status quo is not sustainable. NPPL has 17 teams today instead of 18 and the NXL has 11 instead of 12 and started the year with 12 instead of the previous year's 16. One might argue that the higher numbers were always impractical but that doesn't alter the body count.
The NPPL pro division is in better shape simply because it's cheaper to compete, to maintain a team, to practice, etc. than the NXL. However, the format and promotion that showcases NPPL pro paintball is in trouble. So it seems likely some formulation of the NPPL pro division will still be playing while the Super 7 tournament ship sinks but viable teams with no place to go are still out of luck.
The NXL problem is trickier. It's grossly expensive to run a pro xball team (compared to any other form of tourney paintball) and the competing teams are NOT operating on a level playing field. Franchise teams have a voice and a stake in what comes next and how it is organized (although that is really more a function of PSP ownership vs. non-ownership. Just ask Sergey.) Non-franchise teams are customers like everybody else. The PSP is in the black while the NXL struggles.
One league has a tournament series in danger of going belly up and one tournament series has a pro division in danger of shrinking into irrelevance. Let me be clear here for those willing to see the NXL shrink to 6 or 8 teams. STOP BEING MORONS! (Did I type that?) At some point the NXL stops being a pro division and devolves into a gigantic circle jerk and everybody stops paying attention because the league is suddenly no longer relevant.
And now for a short history break: the original NPPL was a response by the then pro teams to control their own destiny and they set-up a tourney structure that in essence used other teams to pay for the events and those teams showed up in order to have an opportunity to play the big name teams. We continue to use the same basic structure today. One incentive today is the opportunity to see the pro teams play. However, somewhere in there most of the pro teams turned into customers again. (Btw, I'm not suggesting that supporting the pro teams on the backs of the lower divisions was the ideal tournament model. In fact, something of the opposite.)
In the early period of sponsorship contraction the 'answer' was to tell pro teams to suck it up and go find some new sponsors. Which is, as far as it goes, a perfectly acceptable answer. Except when it doesn't work. Now it may be that Paintball can only afford so many pro teams which is also fair enough...
But then the question that needs to be asked: At what cost?
What if anything do the pro teams contribute to Paintball? If it's something important then maybe it isn't just the teams' problem, maybe it's the leagues' and paintball's problem, too.
One problem the teams have is that most of them are beholden to sponsors who have their own priorities which may or may not coincide with the team.
Meanwhile there are whispers and hints that peeps are talking about reducing the numbers of events in both leagues. Hmm, a 3 event "series". Is that really an answer? Let's see, this isn't working out so well so let's just do less of it. If that's such a good idea why don't we skip it altogether. Problem solved.
Realistically the pro teams can't unite in any meaningful way so the notion floated in Buffalo is a non-starter. And all the Buffalo Initiative would have meant anyway was that the teams choose to be the customers of one league instead of two (and a few of them have already made that choice.)
If the pro teams matter to either of the leagues or to paintball generally there needs to be another answer. Reunification might work but it isn't guaranteed to solve any of the core problems and the process could easily outlast any number of bubble teams. With reunification today's version of NXL Xball kills a few teams but any mixed format that doesn't offer the PSP and Xball a flagship league isn't gonna fly either. Or does reunification tie itself to a faltering format (or at least a faltering promotion)? All reunification would really do is cull the herd of pro teams all the sooner.
Seems pretty bleak, doesn't it?

Yeah, I know I promised to post up some alternatives, some possible answers and I haven't done it yet and I still haven't figured out how to archive dead tree material here either. Not to worry, it's coming, but between you and me what's the point?