Major League Paintball on Suicide Watch

The not so Grand Tour's Lviv event is less than 3 weeks away with 20 teams currently registered. At this rate they may reach two dozen. Fingers crossed. Whatever else can be said it's excellent practice for cross over Millennium teams as they will be competing on the MS Campaign Cup layout.

Having released the Campaign layout and getting the scores and results up to date on their website the league is back in wait and see mode for open division registrations for London the weekend of July 4th.
It also seems as if there may be more to the curious announcement commented on briefly last week tying the MS to a new league in Asia. A press release from the new league was denied within hours and the presser pulled but some follow-up from VFTD contacts in Euroland indicate there may be more to this than has reached the paintballing public. It seems there was some sort of contingent deal as long as certain conditions were met and the Asian side jumped the gun. As time permits further inquiries will be made.
It also recently occurred to VFTD that no word was coming from Euroland regarding televising this year's Millennium action. Despite the approach taken in the 2010 sponsorship package that offered space on tent flaps and cardboard trash cans--visible to cameras that might, just might, pan across the venue to segue into the next high voltage match. To say nothing of branded field opportunities etc. Far as I can tell there is no Mill TV this year.

The NPPL Chicago event occurred last weekend and I will have more on the event itself in separate upcoming posts. Until then I have a question and a comment. The question is--Does anybody know what the dealio was with the more or less topless painted chicks? Was that a NPPL thing, a CPX thing, a Living Legends event thing? Granted, the grandstand wasn't filled with 12 year olds but it struck me as inconsistent with the notion of being "family-friendly." (Not that I complained to management you understand.) Without knowing anything about the bottom line for this event it is clear to me, and has been thru 2 or 3 versions of the NPPL, that every not HB event suffers by comparison particularly when you're selling an experience and not a competition.

Final registration and payment deadline is (an early) June 11th for the PSP Chicago event at Badlandz. That is 13 days prior to the start of the event. As usual I imagine a few teams will be allowed to squeak in past the deadline but I'm also guessing the league may have pushed the deadline back a bit in order to help them pin down the logistics more precisely. Or maybe not. In the past the logistics have been planned on the basis of projected numbers but given the location it may be the league can avoid unnecessary efforts with more lead time built in. There are currently 107 Race 2-X teams registered and it looks like a couple of Phoenix's semi-pro participants will drop down to D1 while as many as 3 others may bump up to pro. Perhaps not an ideal solution--what will happen at World Cup?--but if the numbers aren't there the PSP almost certainly don't want to risk damaging D1 turnout by pushing legit Semi-pro teams and players down even if there is some resistance to pulling them up into the pro bracket. And does this mean pro will be back to a four game prelim? 3 games sucks and there's no good reason not to if the schedule will work, right? (And it will easily with the extra day in Chicago.) Race 2-2 team registrations is up to 68 for a total of 175 teams registered. Seems unlikely that the league will break the 200 barrier but the Race 2-X numbers are solid and a few more Race 2-2 teams should make for a successful event.