Lve paintball on ESPN yesterday

[vijil]

I subbed to ESPN for a month just to watch this. I was optimistic. I wanted to give it a chance. People worked hard on this.

But.

The game itself was... Ok. Too fast to understand. The non players I was watching with got bored quickly, but that was less about the game and more about the directing.

The #1 most important thing, when you're on ESPN.

The filming, direction and camera angle choice was straight up incompetent and nowhere close to ready for a national broadcast. Wasn't even up to the usual NXL standard - there were so many mistakes. It was completely amateur. Was there even a test event?

Hopefully they have a good reason and the choice of angles was out of their control.

Most of the graphics looked like they were made in MS Excel. I have more sympathy for that - stuff breaks sometimes.

Commentary was great. The actual action was good too - but you barely got to see it.

Overall 2 out of 5. I'm just really disappointed.

If this is the best paintball can offer after decades of trying... why bother.

What's frustrating is that yes, PB has certain limitations (focal point) that make it hard to film, but the issues were more basic that that.

The cringiest part was at the end when Tyler was super pumped and said paintball is coming for the Savannah bananas...

Like, no. Hellll no.

[iamthelazerviking]

Was this that uhh I think 3v3 pro thing?

[Daltech]

There’s allot of YouTube cowboy camera operators that suck. With high speed cameras, unlimited hardrive space, multiple competent camera operators, and multiple fixed robo cams. I don’t see how this can’t be awesome. They had to try to make it bad.

If they can make someone playing video games that has a million viewers, the how the Fart can we screw this up so badly. I mean, paintball is just a real life video game.

[vijil]

Yeah.

Honestly though if you're starting a video production company, paintball would be wayyyy down the list of things to film.

I've written a couple of manifestos on how to film it live. Just having more angles doesn't solve it. It's about 180 line positioning, framing, narrative flow, and crucially about feed delay.

They got literally all of that wrong and it's depressing. Of the maybe 3 cameras they had, all were badly positioned. It's like they're sleepwalking.

[uv_halo]

It's not real-life video games, except maybe in comparison to Greg Hasting's paintball (how many folks watch that being played?). Any current FPS video game is more visually interesting (explosions, flashes, etc) and, the playstyles are very different between different 'avatars', on top of who's actually playing them so, there's just like 10x more stuff going on. Even Splatoon has a comedic element to the gameplay even, that's more interesting to watch.

[Daltech]

I’d love to start a paintball video production company but I’d also like to not be poor. The industry doesn’t support itself or have the viewership to draw corporate sponsors. This has been beat to death with no tangible solutions. Anyone else notice there is not one single major sports corporation that makes or supports paintball gear. Nike, nope, Reebok, nope, not even under armour makes paintball specific gear.


Eh, I stand corrected. Ofcouse Greenspan. Of course.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rW-_iGil-UU

[The Last Snood]

I missed it but I assume it has the same problems as usual, and you did describe them. But I think 3v3, would be better for TV since there is less clutter on the screen.

But the game is fast and combine that you are in cover most of the time, most non-players will not be able to figure out what is going on. Even with hockey, non-players, potential new viewers, can't really keep up with what is going on and there are no bunkers to hide behind. There is a lot to keep track of at a high speed.



This was their first live event I think, but they did do some filming of a tournament last year and then they stitched together an episode. But the camera angles will always be an issue, because you need a standard view so you can watch the action in a predictable manner overall.

However, in paintball, to show the whole field the camera is zoomed pretty far out and you can't see much. And the action of 5v5 could be anywhere on the field thus getting wandering eyes to find where the action is. But also why I think a smaller field with less players could be better.

Even with the Major League Paintball broadcasts; they jump camera angles to where the action is happening but that also throws off all bearings of where you are at. What team side you just jumped behind, what is going on, etc.



Field HUD of players is a nice touch to help with broadcast, but that needs to be manually updated unless you spend the money on real time tracking for everyone. Also player cams for replays and such would be cool but also another expense that paintball can't (doesn't want to?) really afford.



The only big sponsors are Hertz for all the tournaments and I think New Balance does sponsor some teams, but overall really nothing. Paintball seems like it should draw in more (for the lack of a better word) "alternative" sponsors; such as Red Bull, Liquid Death water, and Liquid IV.. But Nike, Reebok, Under Armour don't need to make PB specific things because the cleets are already the same. Sure they can make some padded gear but is it worth rebranding their baseball slide shorts or cleets? And Daltech just said he doesn't want to be poor dabbling in PB, so what would top execs. be thinking.


P.S. Why doesn't Doritos sponsor...like I guess were already free publicity but come on haha. Then we could do the Snake sponsored by Fritos too /s

[vijil]

I just watched the archery tag for comparison

They had more and better camera angles and much better directing. The whole thing was more professional.

Their sport sucks though. You think paintball is hard to watch, at least we have some kind of a narrative and cool moments. Archery tag is just endless shooting at each other, no eliminations, the tactical situation never changes, the field layout is standardized... just an unbelievably boring sport to watch.

But at least it felt like they were making a real effort with the production.

[Trbo323]

Currently watching this. If any of you have access to Disney+ it's on there. Just search for 3v3

My impressions so far (only like halfway in right now)

1) it's too fast. They can't even have replays because there's only 30 seconds between points.

2) I think it's great that they are only playing 2 teams at a time rather than the traditional 4 teams trading back and forth

3) matty Marshall I still think does a good job, this format is really restricting him from talking basics to a non-paintball audience though because it's so fast

4) I really like that the primary camera angle is overhead. Since there's only 3 players on each team you can really follow what everyone is doing

5) limited paint! Finally, no more full cases on everyone's backs, the players are limited to a hopper and 2 pods per point

6) is on a baseball field, that's pretty cool

7) you can tell they are making an effort to talk to non-paintball people I just think it doesn't feel that planned out

















Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[vijil]

Here's a reaction roundup...

PBRML:

Ryan Greenspan (long):

Verbhal (brutal lol and fair enough)

Overall summary of takes:

The cameras weren't great, mostly because ESPNs own crew did it and barely knew PB.
The game was too fast.
- TV couldn't keep up
- minimal room for tactics, every point was just a car crash
the commentary needs work, it was boring. See esports for comparison.
Paintball should be broadcast more like esports and less like trad sports. Makes sense to me, esports have largely solved the focal point problem.

But it was good to see it live on TV
H+1 totally worked, nobody even reloaded hardly
A running clock is a great idea (almost like old school xball)
Not having a split deck is way better
The field was good, if a little small
The Ocho is the right place for it - there's more tolerance for mistakes in the broadcast
The actual event itself in person was great fun and people loved it

Other takes I've seen elsewhere:
Tom Cole has got to go (I agree, but that is more about Kore than Tom personally)

My overall take is that it's weird people are so excited about playing in front of a crowd. How much our expectations have fallen since the days of Huntington Beach and Skyball.

[RPP]

I saw similar comments about Tom Cole needing to go, and it makes me laugh. He is not the president of paintball... he runs a traveling circus and puts on a good show/event for people who like playing speedball. O yeah, he is also negotiating huge publicity projects for paintball exposure because he wants to grow his circuit and you can tell he loves paintball when he interviews.

[fullofpaint]

I started watching it and making notes but honestly it was so boring I turned it off halfway through. Some of my notes as I was watching it:

• The commentator camera is either a lower res or there's something going on with the lighting/noise level cause it looks noticeably worse than the rest. The framing is kind of weird too.
• The script/transitions are bad. Matty talks into camera about how you need to know the rules and format, sounding like he's setting it up for a toss to an explainer pretape, instead just turns back and keeps talking to Todd, THEN they jump to the taped explainer. Maybe some behind the scene issue and he had to stretch but super awkward.
• The graphics look AWFUL, like high school intern level bad, the team logos aren't even a PNG so the white background runs over the rest of the box design. Russian Legion logo isn't size the same so it's cut off.
• They need a 3rd commentator to do the taped bits or some way to break up the transition from live to tape better. It's a super awkward transition from taped Matty back to live Matty.
• There's no energy to this setup, especially with the music. Matty is fine for play by play but a little stale these days IMO, Todd was useless for color.
• This stock music is terrible, so generic and lifeless.
• No graphics for penalties? No graphics for really anything??
• The camera work is AWFUL. Like even for paintball bad. All of the stuff shot from the sideline is at best soft, if not outright out of focus. Where are the fixed sideline cameras? Handheld everything is a terrible idea.
• WANT TO PLAY PAINTBALL? God that is the most awkward voiceover ever.
• Why is the camera not actually centered on the 50???
• Why are the stands empty? Hire a bunch of seat fillers if you have to, make it look like people care, not this half empty thing.

Overall just felt pretty bad production wise, I work in the film world not live TV but everything about the production-side of it screams low-budget rush job. Everything about this felt worse than a GoSports stream, why waste time with this?

[BLachance75]

Was it actually live or was it pre-recorded.

[vijil]

It was the first ever actually live paintball on national TV.

[MullerTime]

Oh wow I didn't know it was live, that makes it more impressive and softens my take. It's not easy to shoot paintball action live.

[uv_halo]

I think the production value was reflective of the investment that ESPN was willing to make on the program, and that's probably heavily influenced on all of the previous showings of paintball on their service. The key thing that most folks (aside from Vijil) aren't dwelling on is how are non-players feeling about it? The paintball playing community isn't probably big enough to sustain ESPN's efforts on this. So, it has to be something that will bring in new viewers, which in an ideal world would feedback into more players. I think the problem is that speedball (and it's variants) isn't that interesting to nearly as many people as those interested in watching a CoD match. Then, there's the whole thing of how ESPN sees it as a sport, probably why wouldn't see a live action (but safe) CoD match on there.

An alternative take on 'paintball as a televised game' but, not necessarily a sport, could be Discovery channel's "Special Ops Mission". For those not familiar, it featured Wil Willis as a special operator, essentially completing a milsim scenario (hostage rescue, exfil sensitive data, sabotage, etc) in a given episode. The biggest difference is that they were using simunitions which, isn't recreationally available (I don't think it should be). The show was largely centered on the main character (he was essentially taking the audience along with him on the mission) but, they had helmet and weapon cams, he had a 'selfie' cam on his rifle, his objectives were never simply the elimination of the opposition. Change the format to account for teams with helmet and gun cams, drone-based overview footage, and pre-post game briefs, and I think this would pull more folks than a speedball match but, not necessarily live.

[SPSheep]

If recent happenings in the WNBA are any indication, we could increase viewership by throwing certain..."objects" onto the field during play. Perhaps grant bonus points by having a player capture said "object"?

[The Last Snood]

Shellda had Tom Cole on his podcast this week, and he talks a bit about the event in the begining as well as other TV plans or at least his vision on going forward.

Always interesting when these guys can get Tom Cole on their various podcasts to interview him. The episode.

[vijil]

I'm not very impressed by Tom Cole.

He just doesn't DO anything. He's pretty much just reactive. No real vision.

Much love to the guy but I think he needs to move on.

But maybe Tom isn't the issue. Kore are basically an ultra low risk asset management company at this point, so he's probably hamstrung by them too. But then he's probably their kind of guy.

[The Last Snood]

I get that, it seems like a circle of ideas throughout the decades.

I do appreciate that he is pretty transparent, at least willing to put himself out there to be interviewed and talk about the backside logistics of everything.

And I don't know too much to have an opinion on a new commish, nor do I have answer on how to fix their TV problems. But I do wish something could click to get those more viewers, and thus players so the sport can keep going.

[vijil]

The way they are running things only makes sense if they've actually given up on the sport and are just trying to extract what they can while it dies.

Unfortunately I have a feeling that's exactly why Kore exists. It's a fairly common tactic in dying industries - "sell" to a low risk VC company through a bankruptcy play, and then they go into caretaker mode - quit trying to actively grow, just do the minimum to keep the lights on, zero risk, extract what you can, rely on the real estate and other assets to generate a postive return when you eventually sell up for real. Obviously part of this is to buy up as many potential competitors as possible and become too big to effectively disrupt. It doesn't work in a growth industry.

*Everything* about Kore, from their marketing hires and efforts to their portfolio and leadership and ownership, *screams* that this um... I'll call it Vampire Capital, is their business model. When head of marketing for the biggest company in PB is a player with zero marketing background, you know it's all BS.

ESPN was an abberation driven by the fact ESPN came calling and not the other way around.

Unfortunately I get the impression Tom is just a cog in that machine. I can't see him proving me wrong. He'll be very comfortable right where he is.

Actually I could be wrong - it may be that they're in such a dominant position that they see no need to take any risks. It's their ownership structure and history that convinces me they're more in the vampire model. When things fall into their lap they'll take it (like the new heads of video production), but otherwise they're super hands off.

[RPP]

Take 1: I watched the whole thing and think they made a valent effort with the time and resources they had.
Take 2: Paintball is for playing.

[MullerTime]

Bumping this thread to remind everyone that paintball is back on ESPN 2 this Saturday at 8:30pm eastern time as part of the Ocho.

I enjoyed the coverage last year and will watch again this year. Hopefully this becomes a regular thing.

[vijil]

Oh cool. Will be interesting to see how they do it this year - looks like just one match instead of an elimination format. Good idea to slow things down after last year's chaos.

[The Hobbit]

I’ll believe this will be more like the 2024 event. A post produced showing of the Dover finals.

I will say, it is promising that the NXL is getting consistent new spots on ESPN. While I don’t think it is the end all be all to reinvigorate the sport, it can’t hurt.