Stern Pro Circuit - starts in 2018

Stern can just take their “Pro” code and inject some advertisements and have a home and commercial version. The commercial version might just be available for Stern Army locations? Offer the sites another $100 or so off new Stern pins etc…

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We have about 20 months to plan something for that week/weekend to make it an appealing trip for those 40 individuals. I’m sure between the PAPA team and IFPA team being at our home base in Chicago we can figure something out.

My experience with Nationals (similar event) has been that the prestige of the event itself has been the biggest draw in people maKing the choice to attend. Pin-Masters helps for sure, but I don’t see a ton of people travelling in for just that.

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true though the more standalone events there are the less travel budget is left to attend more… Currently I am only able to afford (and justify to the Mrs.) 2x cross country travel events a year for pinball :slight_smile:

How many cross country trips can you justify to your understanding wife @pinwizj? :slight_smile:

I get Pittsburgh twice and wherever IFPA WC is.

I’m pretty sure I still have her convinced that Nationals/Pin-Masters doesn’t actually exist and that I’m in meetings for work as part of Amusement Expo weekend that entire time :slight_smile:

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Please don’t misunderstand my intent. I really hope this turns out to be an amazing thing for competitive pinball and having a NIB game is a great thing for the winner. I’m just wondering why I shouldn’t temper my expectations based on the available resources.

Does that mean FarSight also gets a cut of the sponsorship revenue?

Ultimately, I do think corporate sponsorship is the way to go. It’s the reason other sports are successful. I’m simply curious about how the sponsorships will work because there a quite a few unanswered questions on that front. I used to do sports sponsorships and marketing for a living, so I have a vested interest.

I’m all for setting your expectation level at whatever anyone feels is appropriate. I personally go into everything the IFPA chooses to do with no expectations of how things will go, but with aspirations that it will be something positive to push the sport forward.

That would be a discussion between Stern and Farsight. The SPC team has the benefit that I’ve worked closely with Farsight for over 8 years on table approvals for both Williams and Stern content, and know their upper management very well.

There seems to be this rush on where this additional money is coming from, how it’s going to be paid out, and I want to remind everyone that this HASN’T STARTED YET :slight_smile:

At least in the BBH world we’ve worked closely with sponsors to create a custom plan of action for those specific partnerships. We’ll be asked of the sponsor if we can do X, Y and/or Z . . . let them know we can’t do Z, but how about X, Y, and this ‘other option’ that we present.

Ultimately for BBH we have a line on our P&L that represents income generated from sponsorships, and that goes towards the overall budget of the Big Buck World Championship. I’m hopeful that there will be some conversations in the future between the SPC parties that we have some income to work with, and the best way of incorporating that into the budget. Do we just pay it all back to 40 players? Do we put more resources into increasing the production value of the stream? What’s the best use of those funds to push the sport forward, which hopefully leads to landing more outside sponsorship easier? These are all questions I’m hoping we will have to tackle with the understanding that it might be 3, 5, 10 years before we have to answer them.

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Wait. Isn’t the circuit finals for this year also in Chicago? I am confused.

The “PAPA” Circuit Finals are . . . my comments were specifically regarding the “Stern” Circuit :slight_smile:

I’m committed to making sure the Stern Circuit weekend has other activity here in Chicago for players. I’ll do my best to help make sure there’s something for PAPA Circuit weekend as well.

I’m pondering opening up the basement for the IFPA HQ Open. Thinking about some high stakes Semi-unlimited Herb action. 9 qualifying games (3 old, 3 mid, 3 new), pay $100, get 10 tickets (so Euro style play each game once plus a ‘joker’). We’ll then offer unlimited additional games that players can buy for $100 per game. PAPA style finals the next morning. I’ll know more once I actually have my basement set up, see what kind of space I have for guests, etc.

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^Sponsored by Stouffer’s Lasagna

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high stakes on your own games, good plan sir! :smiley:

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Anyone see the Jack Danger stream? Stern Pro circuit proof of concept looked pretty darn cool. Like pinball done quick, head 2 head

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definitely looked great. Only thing needed now is some sort of direct feed from the game scores to the livestream :slight_smile:

Which one? link?

Doesn’t look like it’s on the twitch archives Colin, but it should be on the dead_flip youtube page at some point

Here is a bit of it!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/155639178

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I’m already pondering our next logo to rip off … :slight_smile:

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This is awesome! I love the concept and implementation from Jack Danger and the Sharpe Bros.

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I’ll get the designs going. :wink:

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haha I thought it was @Smack847 but not sure until he popped out. Interesting concept for sure :slight_smile: