Major League Pickleball (MLP) Newport Beach – 5 Takeaways – Getting Iggy With It

📸 @ranchersmlp

Another weekend for MLP is in the books. While this may not be true for everyone, we find MLP to be the most compelling thing out there in pickleball right now. By adding the layer of transactions that occur between the events, it is easily most fun we have writing about pickleball. The fans can decide what they like best but all we are saying is that MLP is currently the most fun for us. We’re still not sure whether Rob Nunnery’s suggestion of trying to turn pickleball into a sports league instead of an individual sport is the way to go, but it is an interesting suggestion nonetheless. That’s something we can get into another time though because, as usual, we’re bringing the takeaways to the table on a Monday.

1. Getting Iggy With It (Slim) – While we were high on the Ranchers addition of Jackie Kawamoto, and high on the team’s overall talent level, we were down on their decision to drop Austin Gridley and pick up James Ignatowich. We did say that we thought the team could still win it all, but we felt like they had reached taking James, and that his game was not ready. Ranchers owner, Tim Klitch, owned up and took full responsibility for the move. If you are going to run/own any sports team, you should do things your way and not for others.

James, Tim Klitch and the Ranchers proved us wrong this weekend, as the Ranchers won it all and Ignatowich showed that he clearly belonged. He went undefeated in his mixed matches playing with Jackie Kawamoto and won his last 2 men’s matches with heat check specialist DJ Young.

It has always been clear that James has the talent, but it is now also very clear that he is putting in the work on his game, as he is improving rapidly. That improvement was most evident in mixed this weekend, as the men’s doubles game is still a work in progress, but he still more than held his own men’s doubles as well.

James is just the latest example of the fact that we are just on the cusp of a talent boom in pickleball and if you aren’t ready to put in the work you better be ready to get out. There are young, relatively successful tennis players who are now dedicating themselves to pickleball full time and they are improving at a rapid pace. Federico Staksrud is another guy who seems to be on a similar type path. What we thought we knew of the learning curve is totally different than it was even a year or two ago. One can only imagine where James’ game may be in a years time, if he continues on this trajectory.

2. Rule Controversy (Gritty) – In the final, loser leaves town match between the Bus and the 5s on Saturday morning, there was some major controversy that occurred. Prior to the Dreambreaker of this very crucial match, Nunnery, who had played all the doubles events prior to this for the 5s, was subbed out for Gabe Tardio to play the Dreambreaker. It appeared Kyle Yates was not aware of this rule and was visibly upset about the switch. Interestingly, Nunnery had talked publicly about this rule a couple of weeks ago saying that he was surprised more teams were not taking advantage of the ability to sub in an alternate for singles. The commentators also confirmed when the switch was made their understanding was Rob Nunnery could still play the next match should the 5s win and move on to the playoff round.

Neither of us were aware of this rule before I saw Nunnery on social media discussing this and sent a text to my co-founder of the blog. I described the rule as “insanity”. Insanity aside, that was clearly the rule going into the tournament and the 5s thought they had used itto their advantage. Tadio was very solid in the Dreambreaker and the 5s went on to win.

After the match, Nunnery announced on his social media that he was disqualified from playing the first playoff match for the 5s. Nunnery sent out this tweet below, which has since been deleted:

This is speculation on our part, but from an outside perspective it seems like what happened is that MLP realized they didn’t fully consider how the alternates could be taken advantage of. As a result, they made a change mid-event after getting pressure from players. This left Nunnery unable to compete in their first elimination match. 

Even though the 5s won and you could have a really good debate as to whether Tardio was a downgrade based Nunnery’s health, changing the rules in the middle of the game was a terrible move by MLP. If they were going to change the rule, they needed to tell the 5s before the Dreambreaker that Nunnery would be out for their next match. 

As much as we like MLP, there is still a lot of work to be done for them in terms of planning ahead and ensuring the public understands how things work. MLP is in its very early stages and trying to be innovative, which means that weird stuff will happen and considerations won’t be made. But there’s a fine line between being innovative and catering to the demands of loud voices when this weird stuff happens. Nunnery was not sneaky about this move. Someone should have seen him discussing it publicly and noticed that this could be a problem prior to the event. If you find out there’s a problem with a rule during an event, it seems obvious that you wait until after the event to deal with it. 

Frankly, if you ever changing the rules between events or,*gulp*, during the event, you need to announce it publicly somewhere at a bare minimum. I’m pretty confident there was not one public announcement outside the broadcast that we saw about the Nunnery alternate situation. As another unrelated example, I’m also pretty sure there wasn’t one public announcement of the switch in scoring to freeze the losing team at 18 prior to the tournament. These things should be known because if we aren’t aware of it at NML, how is any casual fan supposed to know when they are tuning into a broadcast? 

There’s been a lot going on with MLP this year and changes happening on the fly. However, if you want the public to treat you as a professional sports league, you need to do business the way other pro sports leagues do. Public clarity on rules and changes to the format are a no brainer and need to be prioritized more by MLP going forward.

3. Free Agents (Slim) – It would seem that there are still a number of players that likely belong in MLP, that have not found their way there yet. We had Ben Newell as a player that should have been drafted initially, but he was not drafted and was not picked up subsequently – although he was used as an alternate in Austin and the Mad Drops made the top 6. Newell showed this weekend at the PPA event that he probably should have been drafted, as he reached the men’s doubles final with Tyson McGuffin, which they made with an impressive victory over Matt Wright and Collin Johns, exhibition tourney aside.

Gabe Tardio is another player who we have felt has been overlooked by teams, and when he got his shot this weekend with the 5’s as a substitute, it definitely looked like he belonged. It will be interesting to see if any teams look to add Tardio to their roster for the final stop of the year in Ohio.

Finally, watching a lot of the matches this weekend you could not help but feel like a lot of teams could have used Bobbi Oshiro in their number two women’s spot. Bobbi probably went a little high at number 8 in the original draft but her getting dropped completely by the Lions is still mystifying and there is little doubt that she could have significantly elevated a number of teams this weekend as their number two female.

There’s a lot of room for improvement for most teams. It’ll be fun to see who wants to take a leap kind of the way the Ranchers did with Ignatowich.

4. Highway Robbery (Gritty) – The headline for this takeaway isn’t quite fair as only the Jackie Kawamoto for Maggie Brascia trade was true highway robbery. However, there was a clear theme that cut across all 4 teams that made the semi-finals: each team had, in some fashion, reaped the benefits of getting really strong value for their 2nd female player.

We don’t need to re-hash the Jackie Kawamoto trade in too much depth again – we already did that at the time the trade was announced – but for the Ranchers to get a #1 female pick for a player they were probably dropping anyway had the exact impact that was anticipated. Kawamoto didn’t lose a single match the whole weekend playing women’s with Anna Bright and mixed with James Ignatowich. Kawamoto was the 10th female selected in the MLP draft and somehow the Ranchers with a top 5 female pick got the benefit of having Jackie as their 2nd female. 

Although Parris Todd’s injury really hurt the chances of BLQK to come through and Schneemann played lights out in the semi-finals, the Parris Todd selection as the 19th female has turned out to be the best value in the entire MLP draft. Susannah Barr, picked one spot ahead of Todd, was a steal as well. Finally, Padegimaite went as the 21st female drafted and is also a player we identified as a “steal” at the time. Lina didn’t have quite as good a performance in Newport as she did in Austin but she still proved her value. 

Let’s go through the exercise of setting out picks #11 through #21 – Michelle Esquivel, Maggie Remynse, Lee Whitwell, Regina Franco, Mary Brascia, Sarah Ansboury, Corrine Carr, Susannah Barr, Parris Todd, Maggie Brascia. Lina Padigemaite. Look at that list. The benefit the 4 semi-final teams got from value picks highlight the importance of stealing value to gain an edge. How many of those women would you trade straight up for any one of Barr, Todd or Padigemaite before the Ohio stop?  

Of course, the #2 females on the semi-final teams have the benefit of playing with stronger #1 women compared to a lot of those drafted ahead of them, but it doesn’t take away how important it is to not only make solid picks in the draft, but to make very good picks. 

Or just have a really good player handed to you on a silver platter.

5. MLP and PPA Stream Wars (Slim) – There is little doubt that the PPA created their Selkirk Showcase this weekend to compete against MLP and most likely to keep their players tied up from being tempted to jump into MLP and its prize money.

The PPA seemed to dominate the stream numbers this weekend, suggesting that the casual fans are still drawn by the biggest names in games – notably the PPA had signifcantly less than their usual public Youtube stream numbers. While it seemed that many of the more hardcore fans who watch week in and out were much more interested in MLP.

We anticipated this would be the case in our MLP 5 Big Questions so it was no surprise it came out in the wash this way. The fact is that pickleball stream numbers are still tiny relative to the amount of money being poured into the sport at the pro level. MLP appeared to cut back on their budget in Newport as they had no announcers for Grandstand Court and the quality of the stream was lacking in crispness – not to mention the terrible late and choppy streaming on Friday. The PPA appeared to win this round based on the Youtube numbers, timeliness and quality of the dtream, but this is a very small battle in the grand scheme of things.

Also, I don’t know if anyone watched it but the Gamma Classic in Pittsburgh had the best quality stream of all the pickleball events this weekend. They may not be the flashiest, but Boxcar Productions has to have the most consistent streams in the business.

Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com.

32 thoughts on “Major League Pickleball (MLP) Newport Beach – 5 Takeaways – Getting Iggy With It

  • August 8, 2022 at 8:57 pm
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    #1 James and Federico progress has been amazing. And James keeps talking about his friend Dave that may or may not get into the tournament scene. But if he does, James says to watch out! James and Federico have the advantage of practicing, learning, playing with high level pros: Simone, JW, Dylan, Anna. That has got to help their progress tremendously. And the time in California gave them lots of practice too. So it might be that not everyone will have that route available to them to rapidly improve. But certainly the learning curve is shorter than we would have thought and got to be scary for the current top pros. Tyson seems to be paying attention because I thought his athleticism had gone up some this week-end.

    #2 How can you say you didn’t know about the loser’s freeze at 18 when I commented on it at Beer City blog? ha, ha. But seriously they did use it at the MLP exhibition at Beer City and someone high up kinda did “announce” it. I don’t remember the details. But James even talked about it on his podcast interview with The Picklr before Newport Beach. As far as any “rule change”, I think it was fine for them to work out some “details” on the fly. They adjusted/responded quickly so a player couldn’t exploit a loophole. From what I’ve read about player agreements, I think MLP reserves the right to make those type of adjustments. No player’s union to defend their side.

    #5 Well I am one of the “hard-core” fans but didn’t watch MLP. I watched some of the Showdown and enjoyed the matches. I think MLP has a long-long-long-long ways to go to grab and retain the interest of viewing public. Their website updates are awful. You get about 50% or less of the details. If you miss a morning, it is hard to catch-up. If I missed some of the Showdown, I could go look up what happened and quickly find where the players were in the flow. Can’t do that with MLP web site. Also for Showdown, I could see brackets that led into finals. Again, I can’t tell that with MLP. And honestly 12 teams is a lot to track. I found 8 teams much easier to follow. But I might could follow 12 teams if MLP would make it easy! They seem to assume you are following minute by minute and have no need to catch-up. I only checked in on MLP a few times. As you said, they had some streaming problems on Friday so didn’t watch then. On Saturday, I just got frustrated not knowing how to catch-up with what had happened. I know everyone thinks the Showdown was just an exhibition. But it did give some of the players a chance to do a “trial-run” in case someone is scoping out a new partner for 2023.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:06 pm
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      1 – Good point about Fed and James having access to high level players. That is key. It used to be for tennis players they come in and just are good, but now the tennis guys are doing the same with the addition of legitimate hard work.

      2 – You did clue us into that! We didn’t know if it was an absolute. What you are saying highlights our point, which is if you didn’t watch the Beer City thing or listen to an obscure pickleball podcast, you wouldn’t know. The rules should be clear on their website through both an announcement and rules section. They should also have put it out on social media

      5 – you are 100% right about following MLP too. Although, they did add a results section to their website by Saturday that made it easier to catch up. Otherwise, we were going through live stream to figure it out. They need to have constant updates on all their social channels. That should be a given in 2022 but for some reason it is not. Makes it very difficult to follow and can’t imagine how casual fans would bother to figure it out

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  • August 8, 2022 at 11:35 pm
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    Thank you for your time and posting. Great job as always. For me, subbing out a player is BS unless injured. But to change the rules in mid-tournament reminds me of banning a paddle in mid-tournament. Both decisions were horrible and Nunnery got screwed… For knowing the rules. And it’s not a “loophole”. It was just a crappy rule. MLPs streaming on Friday was a complete fail. Saturday was a bit better, but not all that great, and Sunday was good. I remember looking at viewer numbers, MLP about 700, PPA 1800 plus. And that was when MLP streaming was at its best. But to be spending so much money and have horrible, yes, horrible video quality is just so negligent and incompetent, and there are NO excuses. But MLP has NEVER had very good quality streaming, period. I would have watched more of PPA but the red glow of death was blinding me. I wonder what the players thought? It will be interesting to see who is traded now as for some teams, if they don’t trade, they will stay at the bottom. And finally, I think MLP is making the game so complicated, that they are losing viewers. As nobody can figure things out, so why watch? Thank you for your time.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:07 pm
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      You have to add the 2nd court for MLP too for views but that seems about right. And agree that MLP may be losing out by making things too complicated for regular fans to follow. They need to be better about announcing transactions too as the transactions are almost the best part

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  • August 9, 2022 at 4:15 am
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    The PPA had a fantastic show down. The level of play was off the charts. AL was outstanding. She looked fit and ready to rumble. I did not see a player there who acted like this was a throw away game. As for MLP they lost me the first day. The stream was horrendous and when faced with which to watch it was a no brainer. I am a pickleball junkie and love all three (PPA, APP and MLP) but the stream left me with no choice but to watch PPA. I think you guys are wrong in not taking the show down seriously, the players there certainly left it all on the court.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 7:05 am
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      I agree. The PPA Selkirk Showdown offered a refreshing new mix of PPA players competing at a high level. Just watch the Johns/Irvine vs Wright/Callie Final, it is hard to not say this is some of the best mixed dbls play you can find here in August of 2022 in any League. MPL is a fun idea, but lacks the STAR POWER of the PPA line up. Additionally, production values were high on the PPA feed – except
      the choice of music during the down times. Not a fan.

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      • August 9, 2022 at 1:09 pm
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        That is what the PPA is banking on. The star power. The question is how long their stars stay that way for and when that shifts, will they keep exclusivity for new players

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        • August 10, 2022 at 12:36 pm
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          Really liked the camera movement from the PPA this weekend. The MLP had the baseline camera to far behind the players.

          Still don’t understand why there are not cameras on every line.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:08 pm
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      The showdown clearly had more intensity than we anticipated from what we saw but still minimal interest on our end other than for non typical PPA players, which is why we didn’t cover it. The streaming probably lost a lot of people for MLP unfortunately

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    • August 9, 2022 at 2:52 pm
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      I watch everything too and I thought the show down was much better as well. There just isn’t enough talent at the bottom of these MLP rosters, I have no idea why they went with so many teams when they lost 80% of the players drafted last season. I don’t understand NML’s “exhibition” take either. I don’t think people took this any less serious than any other ppa tournament, honestly I think many might have had more of a chip on their shoulder to prove that they can put up results if you put them on a level playing field.

      I totally understand not wanting to support the PPA event since it was specifically designed to undercut the MLP, but the talent disparity is massive at the moment, and MLP had a really bad weekend with terrible streams and every playoff matchup was very lopsided. If I’m going to watch second tier talent The games better be good and they weren’t this weekend.

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      • August 9, 2022 at 5:44 pm
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        The 12 team move was unnecessary in our view too. In terms of exhibition, we will say that clearly the players cared more about it than an exhibition. From a viewers standpoint, it’s hard for us to get invested with nothing on the line.

        We don’t pick and choose what we write about based on things like undercutting MLP. We write about what we are interested in seeing. MLP felt like they took a step back this weekend but we would still take that over a no stakes event any day of the week

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        • August 10, 2022 at 12:24 am
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          Didn’t mean to imply you guys covered it for those reasons, MLP is objectively the better format. I think a large percentage of the pickleball “fan base”, myself included, are competitive tournament players who got into watching the sport to see what the best players are doing to put pressure on their opponents, and entertaining formats are nice but mostly a bonus. The few players in MLP that are top tier players rarely see the ball.

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  • August 9, 2022 at 5:02 am
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    Fans…. ? How many fans are you talking about?

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  • August 9, 2022 at 9:17 am
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    NML – Thanks for the props. I felt like I made a high risk high return decision and it paid off this time. I couldn’t believe how well all of our team played. Keep up the good coverage!!

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:10 pm
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      Undoubtedly. It paid off. Gotta do things your way even if it doesn’t pay off

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  • August 9, 2022 at 10:17 am
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    Boxcar as always does a fine job on live coverage. Great replays, good player closeups and they chose the best court angle for full court viewing. PPA is not nearly as polished or professional. MLP seems amateur by comparison. Nice that you called this out, it’s only one reason that APP is so well liked by fans.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:10 pm
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      Boxcar does a really good job, particularly when you consider budget comparison too

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  • August 9, 2022 at 11:45 am
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    the ppa event felt like a cobbled together exhibition, with very little player energy or motivation. many of the players in the event did not qualify for MLP participation. So they were available to fill out the PPA slots. The red court experience was painful. I have no idea what the format was or what the purpose of the event was, other than to show pro pickleball players mixing it up for no real stakes, other than appearance fees. Yes PPA streaming had higher numbers. They have more subscribers. But the live numbers for Pro Pickleball are terrible. Really low for the amount of hype the tours attempt to generate.

    You know one thing about being go to sources for cutting edge opinions on PB is that analysis has to be Forward thinking and nuanced. I believe there are too many mea culpas and not enough “this is why we got it right” takes from PB thought leaders. Perhaps the JI “pickup” will be instructive, not just for what happened at Newport, but what happens down the road as the sport of Pro Pickleball evolves. I don’t think there was nearly enough analysis why The Ranchers ownership did what they did with that swap.

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    • August 9, 2022 at 1:38 pm
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      At the end of day, PPA was just an exhibition with zero stakes even if players were trying hard. It is something to note that PPA and APP have similar number of subscribers so it’s hard to explain their discrepancy in viewership. It seems odd that many casual, non-subscribers are tuning in compared to APP but maybe not

      Not sure what exactly you’re referring to but fo address reasons for JI pickup you can go to Tim Klitch’s comments on our post – the Dreambreaker seemed to be the main factor from his comment. If you want another perspective, it did sound like Anna was a driving force in convincing ownership that he was the right player and there may not be much more to it than that. They only needed one Dreambreaker. Part of that is James did his part and another is they just had a strong team.

      From our perspective, a takeaway is looking at these newer players differently in the time it takes to get good. Differentiating between who is putting in work and who is just talented. James is putting in the work if you listen to his recent podcast appearance and is obviously talented.

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  • August 9, 2022 at 1:44 pm
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    I watched a majority of both events. There is no denying that the level of play at the PPA event was higher, especially in the finals. However, the format of MLP: playing as teams, rally scoring, and having real money on the line was more interesting and exciting as a viewer. The PPA has really done a disservice to the pickleball community and fans. MLP with the real top level pros in my opinion has the ability to bring the most eyes and attention to pro pickleball.

    As much as I love Rob Nunnery…he just didn’t have it last weekend. His level of play has dropped considerably with a combination of his injury and a lack of high level practice. I thought Gabe played better than Rob and the 5’s should have stuck with Gabe in the playoffs.

    One other thought, one of the things that I think is holding Pickleball back from being viewed by more people is that the pace of the game and the quality of the shots being made doesn’t translate well currently. The angles and placement of the cameras just doesn’t seem to be accurately depicting what is happening on the court. But the crane camera that the PPA used (I assume it was the tennis channel’s) did a much better job. I noticed it in the mixed final the most, but you could see the true arch of the ball, how low the shots were, and the true pace of the play. It was really enjoyable to watch (other than the red court of course 🥴).

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    • August 9, 2022 at 2:39 pm
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      Agree on your first comment.

      Agree to a certain degree on your second comment. Rob had gone 3-0 with Erik and looked solid until the BLQK match. I think the Gabe thing is one of those questions that is a real question but they were never going to do it in reality. They definitely could have considered going with Gabe in mixed as Rob physically couldn’t do it there

      The viewership thing is tough. I am generally of mindset there’s not much that can ever be done for a casual viewer. People want this so badly to be a spectator sport cuz of how much fun it is but we both have questions if that can ever happen based on the nature of the sport

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  • August 9, 2022 at 7:57 pm
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    Just watched the Jigsaw Tuesday night Pickleball and actually REALLY ENJOYED IT. It was a fun exhibition, players were relaxed and it was such an insane high level of play. The crowd atmosphere was awesome as well. 🙌🏼 Made me want to be there in person.
    We’ll done PPA 👍

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    • August 9, 2022 at 7:58 pm
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      I believe they had roughly 3.5k live viewers at one point which for a Tuesday night exhibition is great đź‘Ť

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    • August 9, 2022 at 8:02 pm
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      It was the most dressed up crowd I’ve ever seen for pickleball. Some of the women were wearing nice dresses and jewelry and the men had shirts with collars. Classy for sure but you don’t really think of pickleball that way (or I don’t). The commentator said they were “movers and shakers” crowd. Hmmm.

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  • August 9, 2022 at 7:59 pm
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    Tuesday Night Pickleball(tm) must have read your blog. They made the rules crystal clear by posting them on the screen then reading them to the viewers. The most fun was watching the singles where they switched to rally scoring – first to 11 with freeze at 10. The clock format was okay – didn’t really matter in game 1. If it mattered in game 2 that was closer score, I couldn’t tell.

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    • August 10, 2022 at 7:11 am
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      Haha they did a good job overall! It seems like people really enjoyed it

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  • August 9, 2022 at 10:12 pm
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    We can all agree that Fri stream from mlp had issues b/c of internet strength of the venue. But did you watch Sat and Sunday’s streams at MLP?

    It was a real broadcast at a high level. The Cbs broadcast was also a stellar performance.

    PPA had problems all weekend.
    There was a hiss in their audio all weekend and they use dslr 3 thousand dollar cameras with very low level tripods?

    You can not compare that vs a true production truck that MLP had on site.

    Boxcar uses the same low level gear that PPA uses on streams.
    A 5 thousand computer with very low level cameras that don’t match and can’t be shaded or corrected on the fly.
    They are Unsteady shots with Best Buy cameras. Trying to cover close up of players was like and always is like watching an earthquake. They don’t even have enough zoom on their lenses to get tight shots.

    The issue I see is that everyone blogs about streams and opinions are created because of Internet strength. The streams are effected by the power of the internet and how good or bad the house internet is.

    Two ways to judge this!
    One, is the internet cutting out or strength.
    Two, is the level of broadcast.

    In my opinion, it is sad that the people who blog do not know anything about real tv Production or how it works.

    You can not compare the dedicated of the MLP bringing in a million dollars worth of equipment vs the rest.
    One camera lens on the MLP is worth more money then both PPA and boxcar’s whole equipment package together.

    #s of Viewers is a result of marketing and marketing only.

    The more people know about where to watch it, and where to find it, Will.

    I have read so many blogs about production level and I just needed to set record straight on how it works.

    Mlp is putting the investment into it way more then any other tour. Hands down.

    I personally know television production and streaming production at the highest level and I really think that anybody who writes a blog should really do the research before they put it out to the masses.

    The question you have to ask yourself before you write a blog about quality of production is …
    Can the PPA stream which is an internal group that are employees of the Ppa or boxcar Productions qualify for any network to do a linear broadcast.

    The answer is no!
    Neither one of them will be excepted by any national networks to do a national linear broadcast!
    There is limitations on what you’re allowed to use equipment wise and neither one of them qualify!

    Let me leave by saying this I think they do a an okay job with what they do have. To make crappy Inexpensive equipment work is not an easy job! Kudos to them for that.

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    • August 10, 2022 at 4:32 am
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      It’s more about what you do with the equipment that matters to me. I like to get close-in views of the action without sacrificing the overall view of where players are on the court. Some broadcasts have been so distant that the players seemed small and you could barely see the ball. I’ve seen this from all the broadcasts so not specific to PPA, APP, USAP, or MLP. The post from Denise mentions what she likes to see to get the “real feel” of the game. I agree with her that Tennis Channel seems to do a good job. Fox Sports sometimes gets it right but not always. I usually don’t like what CBS Sports does but I didn’t watch what they did past week-end. It’ll be interesting to see what the regular CBS Sports does this coming week-end for Sketchers Invitational – and contrast if there’s any change when it switches over to CBS Sports Network.

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  • August 10, 2022 at 5:30 am
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    The one thing that nobody knows is that up until now the same production company has been doing all the Ppa stuff on the broadcast level as well as the Mlp and the USOpen.

    So everybody who’s comparing the lot, are comparing the same coverage by the same company That is what is so funny about reading these blogs.

    The only thing different about the coverage right now that the tennis channel started to do was to have a jib camera as their kitchen game. And there are many opinions about that, too much movement getting dizzy….

    The keystoning and the unmeasured distance were a result of using 360 cameras as a game camera. When those cameras have constraints like distance because of Set up., that is when the court looks like it is 100 yards.
    From what I saw that was addressed in Newport and they didn’t have that issue.

    Right now everybody is trying everything to be different and to be the next innovator on how to cover the sport. That is why you have a lot of trial and error.

    Reply

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