@pickleball_jim@QueenPickle13@Johnny5pointOH “Credit to PPA for the huge investment”? This is something that they could have (and should have) done a long time ago! they got quotes from vendors years ago and decided that they don’t care enough about line calls to the spend the money.
@azetice PPA is too cheap (well, too cash-starved) to invest in video line call systems. They could have done it years ago. The integrity of the sport is not their priority - money is. (And they’re losing money hand over fist, hoping and praying for broadcast tv to bail them out)
@NmlPickleball@OfficialAPPTour great piece! My take is that the lack of an exclusivity clause means that the APP is able to pay players less than PPA. Also: PPA is just going to pay less and less as time goes on - and they’re going to struggle to sign players at these lower pay levels
@NmlPickleball@MajorLeaguePB the answer is incompetence and mis-management, mostly stemming from cash flow problems. they just can’t justify putting resources into MLP because it’s a money pit and always will be. so everything is half-baked. the problem is that people love it, so they can’t kill it.
@NmlPickleball having gotten to 5% is amazing to me
No one really said “10%” out loud, but many people point to the growth rate (which is impressive) and imply that that it’ll continue for years, so i’m basically stating their implication - which i agree is unrealistic
@NmlPickleball the actual number of players in the US is hard to estimate, and it’s even hard to define “a player” (does playing once a year count?) but consensus seems to be that about 20 million (5% of the country) have at least a loose understanding of the kitchen rule and have hit a ball
@franklyunaware I give them a 50% chance of actually raising the money - interest rates are high right now, most venture dollars are going into AI, and a lot of casual investors got burned by unprofitable MLP teams
@NmlPickleball the original gamble was that once 10% of Americans are 3.0 level players who understand the game, they will *of course* want to watch the pros on tv. while that was certainly true for me and my friends, the disappointing truth is that most 3.0s don’t care about the pro game.
@NmlPickleball I’m not seeing anything in the numbers that remotely makes sense in terms of being both profitable and scalable. MLP is a money pit and the franchises lose money. Amateur tourneys are a drop in the bucket. DUPR will always lose money. Etc.
@NmlPickleball the PPA needs to invest gobs more to make the broadcasts palatable to TV networks - where’s that money gonna come from? Sponsors are hoping that growth happens so that they got in cheap with three year deals - when the growth doesn’t come, neither will renewals