A lot of discussion has been going on all over the internet with the rule changes PSP announced recently. While the initial reactions were strongly against all the changes, positive opinions of the changes have also started to come up across the internet. Mikko Huttunen posted some well-formulated thoughts on the positive side, and those are difficult to refute. I personally do love the current (MS) version of the format, so I am leaning a bit against the changes still… But then again, we will need to wait and see what (if anything) comes over the pond to the MS. And this is what leads me to the actual point of this post: How will the changes actually carry over and to what extent?
Just last year, with a lot of fanfare it was announced that there will be a Unified National and Regional RaceTo Format with the PSP having an array of Regional Affiliate series offering the official PSP format. We felt, and I don’t think we were the only ones, that it would be a great move for the sport in general. If we look at the outcome that the development had for this year, the Regional Affiliates were actually benefitting over the PSP in terms of registration numbers. So the national level was getting less teams as the regional tournaments offered the same format with less mandatory travel and cheaper participation fees. Sure, there are not too many PRO teams to watch, but let’s face it – most of us would rather play anyway.
I still do think that the introduction of a strong local affiliate network was the right thing to do for the sport, not necessarily for PSP itself. Offering high(er) quality regional tournaments is the best way to introduce more people to the sport of competitive paintball, as they are more widely accessible to beginners and the less affluent. The costs of playing a National, or in our case Pan-European series is prohibitive to a vast majority of the tournament players. And that is exactly what may prove to be detrimental about the announced format changes when looked from the PSP’s perspective. It’s not so much the individual players and their opinions, but the communication to and commitment of the regional tournament series that can make or break the process, and eventually even decide the future of the PSP.
Yes I know that’s dramatically put, but when you look at the demographics of Major League Paintball players, especially in the US, the majority does lie on the younger side of about 28. Us Europeans seem to have the cutoff age somewhere a bit higher, say 33-34, and I’d be inclined to think that it has to do with the lower amount of points per game, as even the CPL plays only to 5 points, not 7. That makes the overall match just a bit less demanding and allows the older guys to hang in there. Yes, a game with a final score of 4-5 is still tough, but it’s not as extreme as a match scoring 6-7, which will be a lot for an older guy. On the downside, we do not get the chance of trying different plays as much and makes the European style a bit more cautious and risk-averse. Yes, those are generalisations, no I did not calculate the stats and I am not advocating that less points would save everything. No. I’m just saying that there is more to the problem than just making it in the bunkers off the break.
That’s all what I have to say about the content of the changes, because I feel the changes themselves are not all that important, It’s how they’re delivered. Since the problem is the lack of older and bigger guys on the national tournament level, I’m feeling that this is done the wrong way around. Yes, some changes are necessary to re-open the doors for a wider range of players. The thing is that by announcing the rule changes more or less “out of the blue”, the league has generated a rift in the Unified National Front of RaceTo, as WCPPL and the VICIOUS Series of the 2010 affiliates have announced that they will not be instituting the format changes for the 2011 season (announcements linked). Now this is the burning question: How will the teams that are playing those affiliate series feel about even bothering with the PSP events? Will the teams just participate to the one closest to home, or will they be willing to travel? Yes, for the PRO teams this is irrelevant, but the original problem of the PSP was not the lack of old PRO guys, It’s the fat divisional wallets they were after. Will the rule changes create a lemming rush of older guys getting back on the national scene? Highly doubt that. Now the overall result of the changes seems to be a crack in the union, and at least these local series are back to promoting “the good old” PSP format, possibly alienating the lower divisions (from the two regions) even more from the PSP. The thing is, that I don’t think that the PSP changes can attract sufficient amounts of new wallets to from the other regions to keep the level of divisional players unchanged. And that may, at worst, become a crucial blow to the already struggling league.
The Millennium Series has also been struggling with low attendance numbers for a few years, and I do think that too has something to do with the regional (for us it’s national, and the higher level is European 
) leagues and what they offer. Consider the German teams. The German DPL is a huge venture, with 250 teams, 2000 players on 7 levels of competition, their own webcasts and so on. Now look at the Millennium Series attendance: 3 German teams in the CPL, then ZERO (!) in either of the other “locked” divisions SPL or d1, two teams in d2 and three in d3. It’s not that there would be a lack of teams, It’s just that they see little point in attending the Millennium tournaments. The overall outlook of teh german scene regarding the PSP changes was pretty much indifferent from what I understood. The Brits on p8ntballer.com forums seem quite positive on the changes, as do quite many of the Finns on the web. Maybe that’s because Euroball is not as fast, agressive and demanding as the US format and thus the changes might seem to have a bit smaller impact. A lot of teams have been vocal about their discontent for the MS and how it is run and organized, and I know the board will have a hard time figuring out what to do. Then there is the EPC – or the Grand Tour that is a smaller league, but will be watching closely to what the MS does, and actually a good bet for them would be to go the opposite direction… Thus far the European leagues have obediently followed the MS format decisions and I think they will follow suit once again. The question is, is there actually a true need for the MS to follow PSP in the first place?
Personally, I think that in the current state of things increasing the diversity in the formats played will not make life easier for any of the Major League Tournaments. The major flaw of the PSP announcement was that it was by nature one that would surely create a commotion, and as such the league should have obtained more support from the regional leagues and build a demand for the change. In all business the most crucial part of a successful transformation effort is transfering the sense of urgency to all levels of the organization. The PSP excluded the grass-roots level from the message, and as the goal of the change is to attract more grass-roots players to trickle upwards to the national level, that feels off target. It will be interesting to see if the PSP will live to see the actual results and if the “stubborn” regional series will follow the PSP format eventually.
