To participate in IFPA related ‘perks’, you need to have a registered IFPA profile. That’s been our rule for 10+ years. We’ve never banned anyone that hasn’t had complete control over their own ability to be eligible to participate.
Every player that has asked to be suppressed from the database has been given that warning of the IFPA rights they are forfeiting in the process. Outside of a player from Michigan many many years ago, nobody has had a problem with those rules.
Additionally, there’s no way of us ranking players properly with them not being listed. For example, in the Illinois SCS, if a player isn’t active in our database how are we supposed to rank them towards qualifying for the Illinois State Championship? The same goes for the SPC.
As someone who, as a member of a Stern design team, had to fight with Gary to even get the opportunity to buy a game at cost, I find the idea that he would give away 40 games the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all year.
For season one and two of the CS:GO league, which started in May 2016, Turner secured six sponsors, each paying $2 million for an advertising package that included media exclusivity on the broadcasts with logo appearances, product placements, and other forms of sponsor integration.
And 20 games at cost is too expensive? Really hope not…
Just from seeing how much money PAPA puts into everything (financial data publicly available) and to see Stern’s name on it I’m HOPING that the sponsorship from them is significantly increased… my speculation is that there has to be a reason that the PAPA or IFPA names aren’t on this
If Stern isn’t a major contributor to this, then I don’t see why they should have their name on it at all. PAPA and IFPA should be for promoting pinball, not a single pinball manufacturer.
[quote=“timballs, post:47, topic:2799, full:true”][quote]
For season one and two of the CS:GO league, which started in May 2016, Turner secured six sponsors, each paying $2 million for an advertising package that included media exclusivity on the broadcasts with logo appearances, product placements, and other forms of sponsor integration.[/quote]
And 20 games at cost is too expensive? Really hope not…
[/quote]
CS:GO also has something pinball doesnt: eyeballs
3 Orders of magnitude difference. We have a long way to go… but we’re going somewhere!
It’s a 2-way street in terms of viewership. If you’re going to say “ah look at how many viwers these other games have. Pinball doesn’t get that, therefore pinball can never grow to that level.” you have to ignore a lot of things that cause that. Major ones being marketing, production, and sponsorship. These are things that Valve is heavily invested in, and Stern (or any pinball manufacturer) isn’t yet (pending this announcement, maybe.) CS:GO gets nearly guaranteed front page advertising on twitch every day because its players can afford to play cs:go full time on twitch, and have built audiences that way. The ifpa world championship is broadcast on a different channel once a year that is all funded out-of-pocket by a hobbyist. Could you get more attention with a bigger budget? Absolutely. Would it be worth it to those investors? Unknown. Pinball gets a prime-time slot with Dead Flip on Tuesday Evenings because Jack spent 2+ years building his relationship with twitch and streaming thousands of hours to get to that point. On the media side, without the money, that’s the type of investment it takes.
As the leader of a pinball organization in the world trying to garner out-of-industry sponsorship, it’s very challenging to be taken seriously.
I’ve personally seen the success on the Big Buck Hunter front when the manufacturer of the game itself is the one doing the legwork trying to land those ‘bigger’ out-of-industry sponsorships. At Raw Thrills we have the opportunity to offer things related to the game itself that can motivate a potential partnership with a would be sponsor.
Having the industry leader of pinball manufacturing be the bus driver on trying to generate this sponsorship gives us much better odds to being taken seriously by the outside world, rather than a player’s organization doing that outreach.
Rather than going out with a generic email soliciting sponsorships, the BBH community is able to benefit from the manufacturer going after things in a more professional manner, being able to offer services that no BBH player organization could offer.
[quote=“timballs, post:53, topic:2799”]
It’s a 2-way street in terms of viewership. If you’re going to say “ah look at how many viwers these other games have. Pinball doesn’t get that, therefore pinball can never grow to that level.” you have to ignore a lot of things that cause that.[/quote]
Nowhere did I say that pinball couldn’t grow to that level. I just said that there are clear benefits for sponsors of CS:GO. The benefits for Stern giving away 40 pinball machines would be uncertain at best and nonexistent at worst.
This is the problem. What incentive does Stern have to give away 40 machines or drop thousands of dollars on increasing pinball prize pools or professionalizing streams? They don’t know what their return is going to be. It’s uncharted territory for them. This new circuit branding seems like a step in the right direction, and is most likely a test balloon for them to see what kind of effects a smallish investment will have. They’ll see what happens and reaccess.
I think it’s apples and oranges. BBH has had a presence in nearly every bar with a game room. Pinball doesn’t have that anymore. Instead of trying to grow something huge with one manufacturer. Shouldn’t the focus be in promoting location pinball and people who run their tournaments in those locations?
My initial point remains in either case, if a major manufacturer is putting their name exclusively on something that will most likely benefit them a large amount, and I’m assuming requiring their machines (because we haven’t gotten any real details about this yet, I’m going with this until officially corrected), they should be the majority funding partner of this project. Unless IFPA and PAPA want to be seen as advertizing extensions of Stern (and as the replay foundation is a non-profit, this seems very shady).
Or, this could have been announced when there were more details able to be shared.
If new pinball is to survive long term, I’m under the opinion that is has to remain a publicly operated coin-operated amusement device. To say that pinball doesn’t have a presence anymore in the bar scene I think isn’t true. With the recent barcade boom, I’m seeing more pinball on location today compared to 5 years or 10 years ago. At this point I would say BBH is lagging BEHIND pinball with respect to being able to make that sale to a location for operation.
We have a separate campaign in promoting location pinball, and that’s the Stern Army campaign (similar to the BBH Game Warden program). Both are designed to get more games on location, and more people to those locations playing the game, eating and drinking.
Stern is not requiring their machines to be used for any events on the Stern Pro Circuit. Events that are on the circuit will have no outside influence from Stern and will be able to continue operating exactly how they have in the past.
IFPA and PAPA are certainly lending what we do best to this campaign, and Stern is welcome to capitalize off that effort (hopefully they do and this can grow). In return, I fully expect the IFPA, PAPA and the competitive pinball player base as a whole to benefit with what Stern brings to the table in this relationship. Having the world’s largest company within the industry representing the sport in an official way to potential outside sponsors is a big deal IMO.
Thanks for the clarification! So, I take it that Bowen can still participate in open tournaments that do not use player rankings to determine entry eligibility?
