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Episode 251: And now a word from our Presidents
PodcastAnalysis updated yesterday24 min listen
Your IFPA Presidents, default Josh Sharpe and The People's (voted) President Jeff Teolis discuss the current state of the IFPA and its future. Today they stand united. Even with social distancing...
Highlights
- IFPA will not sanction pinball events from now until end of March 2020, with date potentially moving forward based on CDC guidance
- Stern Pro Circuit events will not penalize organizers with zero points for missed 2020 calendar year; events not run get hall pass to 2021 season
- IFPA 17 (end of May in Fort Myers) has not been canceled but discussions on contingency plans are underway as of March 18
- Stern Army program encompasses approximately 200 location-based pinball venues globally
- Early feedback showed tournament organizers were relieved by IFPA's decision to suspend events, as it removed pressure from having to make the call themselves
- Some players attempted to gain ranking points by playing in tournaments while others had suspended play due to pandemic concerns
Notable quotes
“Zach had posed this. We have a Slack channel that Zach and Adam Becker and myself are in, along with the Women's Advisory Board. and we just hashed it out for it must have been a couple of days of just not knowing you know what kind of statement we wanted to make as a global organization”
“The tournament directors are sort of the ones in power for running events. You know, we sanction their events, but they're still in charge.”
“The entire Stern Army program, that's whatever, 200 locations globally that are all about location pinball, bringing groups of people. Pretty much all the do not list for this virus is really what the Stern Army is all about.”
“If you have a group of players that don't agree with you, you know, it makes for just really bad situations. So it was nice for us... to make this decision because for every organizer that really didn't want to do it, if you have a group of players that really do want to do it, you start like, oh man, I mean, it's like, am I here to serve them?”
“How much money do they have to earn before they start buying new equipment again? You know what I mean? I mean, at some point, a place that has a Dave & Buster's location that has 100 games in it, their first action might be, let's sell 30 of these games to raise a bunch of money to continue operations.”
“I would bet it's going to be canceled just based on how things are trending as I'm watching the news right now on mute while we're talking that, you know, we're up 30% day over day of people being diagnosed.”
“You used the word cancel, not postponed? Oh, yeah, postponed, not canceled.”
“For us it definitely you know we pretty spooked right now about how long it going to last and what the other side of it going to look like”
Entities
- Dave & Buster's· company
- Raw Thrills· company
- IFPA 17· event
- Stern Pro Circuit· event
- Pinball Profile· media
- IFPA· organization
- IFPA Women's Advisory Board· organization
- Stern Army· organization
- Adam Becker· person
- Amanda· person
- Carl· person
- Jeff Teolis· person
- Josh Sharp· person
- Zach Sharpe· person
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