Paintball Magazine Paintball Magazine March 2019 Issue | Page 82

interested in the presentation of the sport
and fan interaction. Very early on, I came
to the conclusion that split-deck had to go
in order to tell the story of a tournament
effectively. Shortly thereafter I was on the
phone with Carl Markowski (who became
a co-founder at the league) and I told him
“I think we need to start a league.”
It was the only way to make the format
changes we felt were necessary. I
attended Startup School by YCombinator
in September of 2018 and incorporated
National Paintball League Advanced
Media, inc. a few weeks into that.
JA: What is your history in paintball?
There’s been a lot of talk about a new
possible pro paintball league for 2019.
The league is called the NPL (National
Paintball League) and it’s headed up by
Matt Watkajtys. We recently caught up
with Matt to get the story.
I started playing in the early 2000s in
Upstate NY at a field called Hyperson
Paintball. I fell in love with the sport. I
reffed for two years and played as often
as I could. I wasn’t particularly good at it.
I just had a lot of fun doing it. I broke my
wrist in my third season in an unrelated
John Amodea: Matt, how long has the accident. I traded my Angel Speed ‘04
NPL been in the works?
for a camera and started to produce
paintball DVDs of regional events around
I’ve started thinking about the National New York. Life got in the way and I went
Paintball League two years ago. I was to college for film and cinema after the
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