Paintball Magazine June 2018 | Page 21

The biggest and best professional paintball league in the U.S. officially just became the biggest and best professional paintball league in Europe as the National Xball League (NXL) Europe held its inaugural event in Chartres, France this past April. In what seemed like the longest off-season in paintball history in Europe, the doubts, fears and anxieties of this new-to-Europe American paintball league replacing the Millennium Series, a staple in European paintball, were quickly eased as it was now time for the league to deliver on its promises. And by any measure the NXL lived up to its American standards and hopefully team participation will increase in future events now that the first event has proven successful. Gone are the CPL, SPPL, Division 1, and Division 2, etc. designations, now replaced with the American standard Pro Xball, Semipro Xball, Division Two Xball and so on. And this is likely just the first step to a standardization of the rules, nomenclature and methods of top level paintball on both sides of the Atlantic. In keeping with standardization, GoSports was here in France after missing all of last season’s European play. Last year’s live coverage was only found on Facebook. It was well done but not comparable to GoSports’ top level coverage. The NXL Europe format was not significantly different from the Millennium Series of year’s www.paintball.media 021