'09 Year In Review: NPPL Venues

Before I get started on the USPL/NPPL 2.0 venues we need to have a talk. About what makes a major league event. The obvious priorities–and I say obvious even though some past events didn’t seem to find them all that obvious–are the officiating and the playing surface. You may not find those the obvious priorities. See where this is going? Yeah, there are probably about as many priorities are there are participants. (Okay, it’s not quite that bad but still.) Then there’s the issue of player priorities, sponsor priorities, league priorities, blah blah blah. And if you’ve been around for awhile you know that those competing priorities aren’t always compatible–at least not when there are a finite amount of resources available to make them all happen.

Go back and take another look at the Intro to Venues. I am of the mind that major league paintball needs to be more than jumped up local tournaments in order to be major league. To be the showcase for the sport side of the game. What exactly that means I’m not sure. I am sure it isn’t something achievable right now but my grades don’t reflect the limitations of the currently possible. While HB is probably the best location for an event–and even HB couldn’t draw an MLP turnout last year–the best place I’ve ever been to play was the indoor arena at the Mohegan Sun resort and casino in Connecticut. Locker rooms, indoors, decent carpet, giant scoreboard, 10K seat capacity. The downsides then were virtually no spectators and the place was wrapped in more plastic than your grandmother’s living room sofa but it was a brilliant place to play. The embodiment of big money big time paintball fulfilled. Sorta. And it isn’t going to happen again any time soon.

NPPL (They’re back and it’s official. USPL? Never heard of it)
Huntington Beach–undeniably the coolest venue location but proximity to the pier matters. I’m sorry but the cool factor and the vibe are directly affected by how close to the pier the event staging actually is. Great weather for most, quintessential California. Like visiting an old friend. Lousy surface to play on even with the carpets and slogging through the sand going to and from is not fun. Nor is getting sand in all your gear. Try to avoid it and see what happens. Nice try but you’re outta luck. If you can manage to fly into John Wayne it isn’t too bad but fly into LAX and accessibility is Cali-style, which sucks. But all the rest of less than perfect elements disappear on a Sunday when the boardwalk is packed and the sound of the surf and the ocean breeze are the backdrop for the finals. Grade B (Have I lost my mind? No, the officiating was barely tolerable and the rules are a joke and you already know I don’t like the sand.)

WCO (SC Village)
Hello 1996. If you’re a fan of dust, dirt and more dirt this is where you wanna be. The place is a dump. An isolated dump and a miserable excuse for a tournament venue–period. It stunk in the old days and it stinks today. Sure, it’s got cred as an historical paintball venue but that’s just a polite way of saying it’s a dump. I doubt the place has ever had a living blade of grass grow on it and the less said the better. Grade F

DC Challenge (Pev’s in Aldie VA)
The site is a very nice, up-to-date recreational field aimed at the airball/speedball (tourney-oriented) player. Nicely laid out with excellent playing surfaces and some amenities it would be (and is) a great place to play on a weekend. It’s not particularly close to the other event basics like restaurants and hotels or alternate entertainment but the event resort hotel was very nice. The question with a location like this is does the rest of the event measure up to a MLP standard and the answer in the case of the USPL/NPPL is, maybe, if you don’t look too closely. None of the events had much in the way of a vendors presence and this was probably the least well attended. Of course team attendance wasn’t exactly pushing the boundaries either. Another question that comes to mind is there a critical mass factor for an MLP? How much does the size of the event, the number of participants both playing and vending, the location, the duration, etc. have to do with that mysterious alchemical concoction that is a successful major league event. One that everyone involved can’t help but talk about after the fact. This was a decent event but like WCO and Vegas it was two fields and a relative handful of teams. Grade C-

Vegas Baby
Say hello to my parking lot. Across the street from the convention center and the Hilton. A block behind the Riviera and surrounded by fences with direct parking lot access available for ten bucks. The near Strip location was okay but the only spectators (other than a handful of dedicated local fans) are driving past because they made a wrong turn somewhere and are trying to find their way back to the Strip. Two fields, a few vendors, a concession stand or three, some bleachers and an upper deck VIP and the constant sound of generators and there you have it. The weather was great and Vegas can be a cool place to hang out. Our wing of the Riviera was the pre-Industrial portion but I heard there were nice rooms in the newer parts of the hotel. In any event it was cheap and one casino floor is much like the next and for those determined to lose some money it hardly matters. As a venue Vegas has lots of potential and (apparently) lots of appeal. Grade C+

'09 Year in Review: PSP Venues

At this rate it will take a year to do the Year in Review–and with absolutely no guarantees it will be worth the wait. (This is one of the problems with blogging. Some subjects require more thought and preparation than others while blogging generally encourages volume and brevity. And don’t get me started on tweeting. How incredibly gay is that? Twitter is the bastard stepchild of blogging and texting and carries the worst attributes of both. But I digress. Again.)

This installment of Year in Review is rating the venues, the logistics, the vendors and the vibe of the PSP. (Tomorrow the USPL/NPPL 2.0) I'm gonna be bad at this. I'm tired of the traveling road show and as long as my field is in order when we walk it it's all good. I don’t care about anything but winning and I tend to be single-minded so the only things that get my attention pertain to winning. The last time I made the rounds of the vendors actually interested in new gear WC was still at Paintball World. Most of the time I only pass any vendor because I have no other option. I’ll drop by a booth or display here and there but I’m looking up people and not gear or goodies. I usually hate whatever music is playing because it’s usually garbage. I enjoy the girl parade as much as the next guy but I tend to grind my teeth to avoid rolling my eyes when they start talking. (That, by the way, isn’t a chauvinist comment. My consternation has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with inane yammering. Show me the booth babe who knows who Yeats and Renoir were and trust me, I’ll be fascinated.) And beyond all that there is a huge gulf between how somebody experiences an MLP event for the first time or the forty first time. Keeping that in mind; here goes.

PSP
Phoenix--suitable location, hotels, restaurants, etc. Good accessibility and good grass. The facilities on site provide a sense of permanence and indoor plumbing. The latest theme (or scheme) logistically is to lay out the vendors in such a way as to force all the players to walk past them repeatedly. Unfortunately it did not result in waves of impulse buying (pun intended) but the number of vendors was generally so small this past season as to not be a major inconvenience--until World Cup. The mood is always good here because it's the start of the new year. Everyone is hopeful and happy to be competing again. And win or lose there remains something to play for after Phoenix. Grade B-

MAO--is the archetype of the PSP's back-to-basics it's all about the competition formulation. (It's a dedicated paintball site and cheaper.) Normally a part of the Paintball Central family of fields and stores the MAO site routinely hosts other tournament events the year round. It's a compact venue, which is a plus, but as a full time field the grass isn't always the best. Parking can get muddy and the gravel is a pain but still an improvement over more mud should it rain during an event. The Rock Hill area has good accessibility, hotels and the rest but isn't exactly party central after sundown and downtown Charlotte is at least 45 minutes away. This is a taking care of business event. Grade C-

Chicago--in recent years this has been held in the distant suburb of Bolingbrook on property adjoining a small water park. All the essential amenities are readily accessible here as well although things are perhaps a bit more spread out. (Our hotel of choice the last couple years has been a solid twenty minutes away but there are others that are closer.) Parking in a church lot is preferable to parking in the city's cornfield across the street and the layout in Chicago is particularly annoying as it compels you to drag your bags thru a virtual maze to reach your playing field. Even so, it's not horrible, just less convenient than Phoenix or MAO. Chicago does have a unique quality as it is usually the second largest event and gets the big Midwest turnout with a lot of partisan fans and the energy they bring. On the downside the ground is hard and the grass is thin but it plays well enough. It’s frequently really hot in late June and overall the venue is a bit cramped. Grade C-

World Cup--the Fantasy of Flight location was out in the sticks a bit but still only 25 minutes or so from Disney, Kissimmee and Old Town. Besides the location (that some didn't like much) the major complaints centered on the long and winding path through the vendors to get to the fields and the cross country hike to the registration area located in one of FoF's buildings well apart from the venue itself. (Reaching your field wasn't nearly as bad if you simply parked where you weren't supposed to. Fortune favors the bold.) With the lifting of the vendor restrictions by the league the turnout for Cup was the largest, by far, of the year (as Cup has traditionally been anyway) with lots of new gear lines and products being introduced to the public during the event. That, and the access restrictions that are part of the routine security measures created the unwelcome walks. However, for a first time in a new place the logistics were adequate. Cup is necessarily big and more spread out. Some of the fields were uneven and perhaps less than ideal but certainly, on the whole, no worse than the Disney fields. Grade C

MLP '09: Year In Review

Intro to Venues Review
Venues, vendor villages and the general event experience separate from the competition are the subjects of today's review. The commentary on the MS will, of necessity, be limited since I didn't attend any of them. However, in following the MS this season and talking to players and others present at various events I think it's fair to say offered the best locations even if the German venue is well isolated and there were (mostly homegrown) some complaints about Campaign's location in (not in) Basildon. Otherwise it's hard to argue against Malaga, Antalya and EuroDisney outside Paris. Oh, I know, there's still plenty to find fault with and it doesn't begin or end with the MS. NPPL 2.0 had HB and Vegas baby but it also had SC Village--looking like the outdoor set of a direct to video post-apocalyptic zombie movie and Pev's place (a nice weekend rec field and/or local tourney practice facility) in rural Virginia. The PSP had ... um, generally pretty decent grass everywhere they played. And that's the issue in a nutshell.

What distinguishes a national (or international) event from a local or regional event? Or what should? In the early years of this decade venues were more than venues. There were markers in the competition between leagues and they were symbols that the dream was coming true. At least some thought they were. Instead they proved to be cries for attention. Now some of us are disillusioned, others have never known different and the big time paintball universe is changing again. Does a national (international) event need to be more than a large scale local tourney? If so, in what ways?

I was never a fan of the NPPL's stadium parking lot tour approach because I felt they were giving too little consideration to the playing surface and besides, it never worked--either to attract "fans" or investors. (That said, the first time looking out over the fields and taking in Mile High and the Denver skyline it was easy to believe paintball was oh so close.) But it did change the status quo and every one's expectations. Now there seems to be two distinct options when it comes to venues. One choice is to make the venue part of the draw while the other has focused on the utility of the venue in terms of the competitive environment. I don't think it needs to be one or the other but that seems to be the way things have evolved--at least with respect to U.S. based MLP.

Oops. Running long so the actual venue breakdown will have to wait for next time.

2009 Major League Paintball (MLP): Year In Review

This is a rather daunting project as it requires I remember what happened, mostly, during the '09 season and while I can recount--in minute (positively excruciating) detail--dozens and dozens of games played over the years there are (I'm sure) innumerable things that occur at events of which I'm blissfully unaware. Mostly 'cus I couldn't care less. For example I know I walked through a vendor village or three this past season--because the layout forced me to--but I can't, from clear memory, recount who was or wasn't present at any particular event because I don't pay any attention. It's not that vendor presence is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, just that it's unimportant to me in the moment. All that means is that the VFTD Year in Review will tend to be rather eclectic and necessarily incomplete. Otherwise I have no idea how this is gonna work out.

The review begins with the '08 off season and the moves made by the MLP leagues in preparation for the '09 season. Last December I knew enough (or thought I did) to begin speculating on how the '09 season would unfold. The month began with the New World Order and closed out with Dreamworld which nicely bookended the PSP/MS and the emerging USPL. VFTD introduced Major League Paintball Held Hostage Day 1 on January 2 to illustrate the plight of the tourney baller and competitive paintball generally. VFTD graded the initial announced changes to the PSP in PSP Under Fire and followed up throughout the month as info became available. As you might recall the big changes were ROF, revised penalties in the lower divisions and Race 2 and match time changes as well as some Classification changes and the introduction of the UCP. VFTD went on an extended, multi-post rant about the Classification system and was generally uneasy about the appearance of the PSP moving to a standard that more closely resembled the MS. (A concern retained to this day as the Eurotrash continue to promote the idea and the PSP, for whatever reasons, continues to move in that direction.) VFTD closed out the month with some more piling on of the Classification system. The big news was a growing certainty that the USPL would actually begin operations in '09 and begin their season with a Huntington Beach event. The other big news--besides the PSP's myriad of wholesale changes both big and small in the move to Race 2--was the MS touting a TV deal with Eurosport and introducing some restrictive sponsorship regs they claimed "protected" sponsors but did so after a fashion easily recognized by a Sicilian enforcer. Whereupon the PSP introduced a similar measure which failed miserably and was rescinded at World Cup.

2009 began with the MS trying to enforce use restrictions on non-sponsored products among players--in the upper divisions--(which could extend to the lower divisions this year?) even as they charged licensing fees for locked divisions teams (whose total numbers were reduced from 2007) using their TV deal as justification. The PSP made extensive rules and other game changes on the basis of economic necessity (teams & league) but also introduced the prior year's state-of-the-art WC webcast as a regular event feature. The USPL revived the 7-man national series (sorta) with the original 16 pro teams as equal share owners and proceeded to buy up some equipment and rights to the NPPL name & logos and announced a split schedule of national and regional events beginning at HB.

That's the set-up for everything that happened later. (For the six of you who noticed, yes, sadly I've left the The Grand Tour out the review because I don't know a lot of details and because, in the end, it wasn't so grand after all.) The continuing Review will be much more of a hodge-podge I suspect as VFTD begins breaking the leagues and events down--probably tomorrow--as I rate the venues.

Hey, if I left anything good (important) out feel free to give me grief in the comments.