Paintball Magazine Paintball.Media Magazine May 2016 | Page 127

valued at 150 million bucks at one time. They were one of our industry’s most established companies who catered mainly for the site markets across the world with their range of site markers. When the dust had settled on all the rumors concerning Tippmann, Richmond emerged from the clouds of speculation, and was standing there with a big check in one hand, and Tippmann lined up on his chopping block in the other. His acquisition of Tippmann surprised a lot of people. As I saw it, it didn’t seem to be a good fit with his own company. I’ve learned many valuable lessons in my 30 years in paintball and this is one of them, if someone like Richmond does something which doesn’t make sense, then the problem lies with my sense, not his. I was therefore at a loss as to the reasons underwriting his buyout of Tippmann. When I ended up seeing him again, I asked him why he had bought Tippmann. His answer was as oblique as it was revealing. He said, ‘Pete, I needed Tippmann because it allows me to go in a direction I want to go and I couldn’t go there without them’. At first, I thought he’d avoided my question with a somewhat ambiguous reply but Richmond isn’t the sort who does that. If he doesn’t want to answer a specific question, he’ll tell you to your face and not indulge himself with a dollop of BS. However, I’m now looking back with 20-20 hindsight and I can see exactly what he meant then, but I’m no businessman and so the truth between the lines evaded me at that time. But I have to say, I still couldn’t appreciate all the reasons for his Tippmann acquisition as a means to an end as he was suggesting. But last year, the veil was lifted and the full extent of Richmond’s plan was revealed. Our industry is always playing host to rumours and it was no different last year when a rumour began to drift around our industry that someone was interested in buying Kee Action Sports. Rumours are commonplace in our industry/sport and unless you can nail it down with an admission of guilt, you have to take them with a pinch of salt. So I’m gonna mix my metaphors and suggest, there was no smoke without fire. And just to set the stage on this, over the last years or so, our industry’s thousand pound gorilla had been Kee, it was originally created as a combine company when an investment group bought out the two biggest industry concerns at that time, National Paintball Supply, owned by Gino Postorivo, and PMI, owned by Jeff Perlmutter. Both of those guys are smart, real smart. The only reason they left paintball was because in true Mafioso style, they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse. These two companies, and a few more besides were acquired and rolled up into one mahoosive concern, Kee Action Sports. It then stood aloft of all other companies and had been dominating our marketplace up until last year. It should now come as little surprise as to who was interested in acquiring Kee. When I first heard the rumour, I dismissed it out of hand because it just seemed to be a step too far especially after Richmond had already added Tippmann to his stable of companies the year before. I knew he had deep pockets, but I didn’t think they were as deep as the Mariana Trench. If Tippmann was valued at $150 million, I dread to think what Kee would have cost, but it’s reasonable to assume it was a few bucks more than 150 mill. Well, it just so happens, that at last year’s Millennium event in Basildon, I went out with Richmond, Steve Baldwin and company for dinner one night. I don’t much like poncey, nouveau cuisine restaurants where you need a scanning electron microscope to see the food on your plate, and when the bill comes round, and your bottom jaw hits the table like a rocket-propelled anvil. Anyways, I put the fear of a massive dent in my wallet and asked Richmond if he’d closed the deal on Kee yet. He said he was a few days away but I kinda wondered what he was up to in acquiring Kee on top of the GI stable of companies and Tippmann. It had to be something more than just basic acquisition. Now, the reason I mention any of this is because now, Richmond’s sphere of control and influence i n our industry has never been seen before. Basically, he’s now in a position that enables him to pretty much nudge this sport wherever he wants to. Richmond has always had pretty strong links with Steve Baldwin’s concerns over the years, one of which is obviously the Millennium along with the stable of companies under the GI banner. And it is this relationship that now ties up the Millennium with the US NXL, joint-owned by Richmond that proves pivotal in all this. THE THREE MUSKETEERS And so, we now home in on one of the changes that needs to happen if we are to arrest the slide of tournament paintball, and this change is predicated on the not unreasonable opinion that playing tournaments is too expensive. If we address this, it can only be good for stimulating the flow of players over to tournament play. That’s not a bad premise but how do we bring about re-establishing the previous flow of players into the tournament scene? The Millennium Series has decided to come up with a new game format this year, and with it, the hopes and aspirations of Steve, Laurent and Richmond will play out in this overhauled Millennium Series along with the NXL in the US. There will now be a standardization of rules, formats and administrative hierarchy across the paintball world under the WPSB umbrella, and hopefully, this infrastructure will become the bedrock for our sport’s longawaited consolidation. The WPSB is a recently formed federation to act as the focal point for all national federations that provides the necessary incorporation across the board that our sport has www.paintball.media 127