# Episode 257: Doug Polka, Pinburgh & PAPA news

**Source:** Pinball Profile  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2020-05-06  
**Duration:** 17m 18s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.pinballprofile.com/episode-257-doug-polka-pinburgh-papa-news/

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## Analysis

Doug Polka, head TD of Pinburgh and ReplayFX, announces the cancellation of both 2020 events due to COVID-19 safety concerns, with rescheduling to 2021. The episode discusses financial impact on the Replay Foundation, ticket transfer/refund procedures, and the exciting return of PAPA 21 (Papa World Championships) in 2021 at a newly secured location in the Pittsburgh area.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] ReplayFX and Pinburgh cancelled for 2020 due to COVID-19 safety concerns — _Doug Polka officially announced the cancellation; decision made in early May 2020_
- [HIGH] ReplayFX is the main revenue stream for the Replay Foundation by a large margin — _Doug Polka stated this on Final Round Pinball podcast previously and confirmed in this interview_
- [HIGH] Pinburgh draws attendees from over 500 cities and 9 countries — _Doug Polka cited this as a factor in the cancellation decision, noting it's a near-global event_
- [HIGH] Pinburgh 2021 rescheduled for August 12-15, 2021 — _Doug Polka confirmed specific dates for rescheduled event_
- [HIGH] PAPA World Championships returning in 2021 with location already secured — _Doug Polka announced PAPA 21 for 2021; location details to be revealed later_
- [HIGH] Automatic ticket transfers to 2021 unless refund requested by May 19, 2020 — _Doug Polka outlined clear procedure; refunds processing starting May 26_
- [HIGH] Major tournaments including Pintastic, Yegpin, Pinfest, and EPC cancelled or moved for 2020 — _Jeff Teolis cited these cancellations during the interview_
- [HIGH] PAPA tournament had outgrown its previous facility by 2017 (PAPA 20) — _Doug Polka explained facility constraints requiring new location for PAPA 21_

### Notable Quotes

> "in the interest of safety, I think it's the most prudent move to do"
> — **Doug Polka**, early in interview
> _Justification for major cancellation decision affecting thousands of players and the pinball community_

> "we have people coming from nine countries and over 500 cities. So it's not like we're running a regional event. It's close to global at this point"
> — **Doug Polka**, mid-interview
> _Emphasizes the scale and global reach of Pinburgh, explaining why local clearing doesn't solve the problem_

> "It's our main revenue stream, you know, by a large margin"
> — **Doug Polka**, discussing Replay Foundation impact
> _Candid admission of financial vulnerability of the Replay Foundation without ReplayFX revenue_

> "The biggest thing you can actually do is just transfer your ticket to 2021"
> — **Doug Polka**, addressing community support
> _Clear call to action for attendees to help the foundation by maintaining ticket transfers_

> "Mark has secured a location for it, which I'm not allowed to release yet"
> — **Doug Polka**, discussing PAPA 21
> _Confirms PAPA 21 location is locked but details under wraps; speculation it's Pittsburgh area_

> "personally, kind of sad for me because I kind of feel like I let people down, even though I know realistically that's not the case"
> — **Doug Polka**, early in interview
> _Personal vulnerability about cancellation decision despite recognizing it's the right call_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Doug Polka | person | Head TD of Pinburgh and ReplayFX; announced cancellation and PAPA 21 return |
| Pinburgh | event | Major international pinball tournament cancelled for 2020, rescheduled August 12-15, 2021 |
| ReplayFX | event | Pinball and arcade festival cancelled for 2020; primary revenue source for Replay Foundation |
| Replay Foundation | organization | Organization behind ReplayFX and Pinburgh; main revenue stream disrupted by 2020 cancellation |
| PAPA 21 | event | Papa World Championships returning in 2021 at newly secured location (undisclosed) |
| Jeff Teolis | person | Host of Pinball Profile podcast; conducted interview with Doug Polka |
| Josh Sharp | person | Competitive pinball player mentioned as favorite for 2020 Pinburgh; Jeff jokes about age advantage delay |
| Mark | person | Replay Foundation team member; handled venue negotiations and secured PAPA 21 location |
| Joe Cherovino | person | Posted donation/support links for Replay Foundation on social media during cancellation announcement |
| Allegheny County Health Department | organization | Pittsburgh-area health authority Doug would have consulted for safety protocols if 2020 event had proceeded |
| Elizabeth Cromwell | person | Referenced humorously in opening joke about vowing never to drink gin again |
| Marty Robbins | person | Co-host of Final Round Pinball podcast on Pinball Network |
| Pintastic | event | Pinball tournament cancelled as of early May 2020 |
| Yegpin | event | Pinball tournament (Edmonton); part of Stern Pro Circuit, rescheduled from May 2020 |
| Pinfest | event | Pinball tournament moved; previously scheduled for May, being held in Allentown |
| NYC Pinball Championship | event | Tournament cancelled for 2020; historically supported by PAPA organization |
| EPC | event | East Coast pinball tournament cancelled for 2020 summer schedule |
| Stern Pro Circuit | event | Professional pinball circuit; multiple events affected by 2020 cancellations |
| Pittsburgh | location | Location of Pinburgh and Replay Foundation headquarters; presumed location of PAPA 21 |
| Pinball Profile | media | Podcast hosted by Jeff Teolis; platform for this announcement interview |

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Replay Foundation facing serious financial constraints due to loss of primary revenue stream (ReplayFX) (confidence: high) — Doug stated ReplayFX is 'main revenue stream by a large margin' and foundation will 'pinch pennies' and 'tighten belt'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pinball community expressing missed engagement with tournaments; appreciation for tournament directors expected post-recovery (confidence: medium) — Doug noted local league members expressed missing competitive play after three-month hiatus; predicted increased appreciation for TDs and operators
- **[community_signal]** Pinburgh established as near-global tournament drawing from 500+ cities and 9 countries (confidence: high) — Doug cited attendance diversity as key factor in cancellation rationale; described as 'close to global'
- **[event_signal]** PAPA World Championships officially returning in 2021 (PAPA 21) (confidence: high) — Doug announced PAPA 21 with secured venue location (Pittsburgh area, details TBA); described as 'very similar to old Papa' with multiple divisions
- **[event_signal]** Pinburgh and ReplayFX officially cancelled for 2020; rescheduled to 2021 (confidence: high) — Doug Polka official announcement with specific new dates (Pinburgh August 12-15, 2021)
- **[market_signal]** Multiple major pinball tournaments cancelled through July 2020 (Pintastic, Yegpin, Pinfest, EPC, NYC Championship) (confidence: high) — Jeff Teolis cited cascade of cancellations affecting tournament operators and venue-dependent businesses
- **[product_strategy]** PAPA 21 planning in early stages; side tournaments, divisions, and free play area details to be announced later as coordinated reveal (confidence: medium) — Doug deferred specific questions about PAPA 21 structure, stating 'We'd rather make all those announcements kind of at the same time'

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## Transcript

 it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teals you can find everything on pinballprofile.com including your new subscription which you will need you're probably not even listening to this unless you've re-subscribed on pinballprofile.com so thank you for doing that Check us out on Facebook. We're also on Twitter, at Pinball Profile. Same for Instagram. And you can email us, pinballprofile at gmail.com. It's important today to bring our next guest on. Big announcement made today. Head TD from Pinberg and ReplayFX, Doug Polka, joins us right now. Hi, Doug. How are you? Good. How are you, Jeff? Good to talk to you once again. I saw it on social media. I think everybody did. I thought, I got to talk to Doug about it immediately. And, of course, that being Elizabeth Cromwell has vowed never to drink gin again. Doug. I don't believe that at all, by the way. Such a lie. Oh, there's this other thing too I noticed. And maybe we should talk about it if you've got a second. So obviously the decision came today officially. I know probably you had been thinking about it for some time, watching what was happening in Pennsylvania with the governors and certainly what's happening with COVID-19. The decision was made to cancel ReplayFX and Pinberg for 2020. Tough decision? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we don't want to cancel our event. But in the interest of safety, I think it's the most prudent move to do. We released the statement a couple hours ago. Mark put it up. He's done all the negotiation with the convention center and all the vendors and stuff to make this possible. And it's it's kind of bittersweet. A lot of people have really reached out and showed support for replay. I know Joe Cherovino actually posted on our online store and said, hey, go buy a t-shirt or something. But at the same time, personally, kind of sad for me because I kind of feel like I let people down, even though I know realistically that's not the case. Yeah, not at all. Absolutely. And in fact, almost like a weight off people's shoulders too, because I certainly want to go to Pinberg, but I don't know if I want to be in that social setting, that big environment, touching all the machines without some assurances that there's going to be some safety there. Who knows what it'll be like next August, but I don't even know what it's going to be like this August. We just felt it was in the best interest of everybody who's going to attend the show that we basically cancel this year and move it to next year just to keep everybody safe and sane. If you read the announcement, one of the things that really weighed on us as we were thinking about what to do is when Mark looked at the ticket sales, he's like, we have people coming from nine countries and over 500 cities. So it's not like we're running a regional event. It's close to global at this point. So while things may have cleared up in here, you know, when I see it here around Pittsburgh in July, you don't know what the rest of the world is going to be like. So rather than, you know, forcing people to try and attend something and making them feel obligated that they need to come to this because they don't want to miss it, moving it to 2021 seemed like the best decision. I'm going to ask you a few questions, Doug. I've had some people submit on Pinball Profile on Facebook and had some personal messages to me, too. anything you don't feel like answering and we'll just avoid that question completely. First of all, I'd like to talk about the financial impact of canceling this show. Recently on the Final Round Pinball podcast that I do with Marty Robbins on the Pinball Network, you were a guest and you talked about ReplayFX really is the biggest financial support system for the Replay Foundation. With it not happening this year, tell us about what's going to happen with the Replay Foundation. So it's our main revenue stream, you know, by a large margin. We do game rentals and obviously the YouTube channel and some other things that bring in some money. Things will just be tight around the foundation. We're just going to, you know, pinch some pennies in the next few months and tighten the belt a little bit. Maybe not do some of the things that we were going to plan on doing as far as expansion wise so that we can be able to return in 2021 You mentioned Joe Cherovino sharing some of the donation links and some other things too We be glad to do that as well How can people help the Replay Foundation The biggest thing you can actually do is just transfer your ticket to 2021. If you read the announcement today, if you don't do anything, your tickets are automatically transferring to 2021. But there is a form on there if you need to get, if you go to replayfx.org and you need to get a refund because the new dates don't work for you. Fill out that form and we'll gladly give you a 100% refund over the next two weeks. You can also donate to the Replay Foundation if you go to replayfx.org. There's a donate section on there. There's also a store on there if you want to buy a t-shirt or something. All that stuff kind of helps us get through this. I know times are tough for everybody right now. So I'm not asking that anybody do that. But if you were going to buy a shirt anyway, hey, jump on the website and buy a shirt. Sounds like a great idea for sure. Doug, I'm not going to ask you about financials in the sense that it's none of my business, first of all, but I hope everything's okay. I see that we've transferred into August of 2021 as the next Pinberg. You'd mentioned that players can take their tickets, whether it's for Pinberg or the IPC, and automatically have them transferred over, including their admission tickets. I hope a lot of people do that. If people decide not to transfer that, at some point next year, will you open up this many tickets or will that go to the waiting list? How will it work for 2021? So what we're going to do is we're keeping the waiting list. Everybody who's on it, we're carrying the wait list over. So if, for example, I've got this question a couple of times today. If you were anticipating coming in 2021, jump on the wait list. The wait list is open and you can get on there now. And refunds will start processing for this round of Pemburg for anybody who can't attend on May 26th. And after that date, we're going to start to go through the wait list and fill it back up again. As you mentioned, people coming from 500 different cities, nine countries, not surprised, the biggest tournament in the world. I've seen online that currently, and this is today only, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, the hotels may or may not be open right now. So you might have to do it by phone. You might have to do it online. But hopefully you can transfer that to the August date, whatever hotel you may be at. But I don't know if you've heard anything or Mark's heard anything about hotel blocks or is it just too early? So I've only heard from people that have had experiences in dealing with this. Right now, apparently the hotels and the airlines are exceptionally flexible with what they're allowing people to do. So I hope that most people can transfer their reservations. reservations. And if you're flying in, at least get a credit towards a flight for next year. If you're still coming into Pinburgh, I don't have any firsthand knowledge of any of that stuff, though. Again, who knows where we're going to be a year from now? Fingers crossed we'll have a vaccine. Everyone will be tested, all that kind of good stuff. Do you see your tournament or pinball tournaments in general changing as far as social distancing, safety precautions, masks gloves there's a lot of contact on these machines where do you think we're going to go with pinball competitions so pinball makes it tough right pinball and arcade and gaming in general because it's a lot of shared surfaces everybody's playing the same machine so they're touching the same buttons the same sides of the cabinet or whatever back in march when kind of the closings and the covid19 began to kind of gain momentum in the united states and north america I had talked with some other members of the Pinburgh team about, you know, if this lasts all summer and we're still holding Pinburgh, what are the steps we can do to kind of help people? And we'd thrown around a bunch of ideas, you know, being able to provide gloves to players between rounds going through and having basically the techs sanitize, you know, all the contact surfaces on all the games. I know that Mark had discussed if we had gotten to the point where we were still going to hold the event, we would have definitely went to the Allegheny County Health Department, which covers the city of Pittsburgh, and gotten suggestions from them on what we would have needed to have done to have that event safely. Obviously at this point I don think it possible to have that many people in a confined space safely I think you know the first couple tournaments that are going to decide to come back of the larger scale they may have to make some changes. They may have to spread some games out. That's going to be basically be a decision that each tournament director is going to have to make. Because the other thing is, are players going to feel safe coming to your event? So I think, especially for the first few events that come back, they're probably going to have to publish a list of things they're doing to make it safe so people can decide, okay, I want to travel to this event because it sounds like they're taking every possible precaution, you know, to make sure that it's a safe environment for all the players. It's tough, though. I think pretty much all the major events at this point are canceled through July. I know Pentastic just recently canceled as well. So it's rough for a lot of the people that run shows and a lot of the people that may depend on, And, you know, operators that depend on leagues and tournaments for their business like this, this is a very rough time for them. So if you feel safe when they finally start back up, you know, go out, enter some extra tournaments or something just to throw a couple extra bucks their way. And I know a lot of people I've talked to from like our local league or whatever, you know, they were like, ah, there's, you know, there was always so many events that like it was nothing to skip one or two. But now going like three months without an event, boy, you really miss being able to go to pinball whenever you get the hankering to go play some competitive pinball. So I think some people will also appreciate tournament directors and people that maintain games a little bit more than maybe they did before all of this. See, I've done some training for this. Years ago, before I was married, I lived in the smallest possible apartment ever. it basically was a three-story house that they converted into not one not two not three nine apartments i don't even know if it was 300 square feet maybe 400 let's say my oven was like an easy bake oven really i mean if you had the oven on and the microwave on a fusible you couldn't do both at the same time so i remember living there and i'd have a friend over there you know you couldn't have many over but you'd have a friend over and they'd be like how do you live here i go Well, I think if ever I go to jail, it'll feel like luxury. Knock on wood, that hasn't happened yet, but you're right about that kind of, you know, what are we going to be comfortable with? And we've been in our homes for quite some time now. Yeah, we're looking forward to the things we love, the pinball tournaments, and there certainly were a lot of them, but you're still going to have that in the back of your head. Okay, you know, is everyone tested? Are we okay? So yeah, we do have to be careful as we move forward. but I know we all want to support pinball and the people that provide all these. You mentioned about Pintastic cancelling. I mean, last weekend was supposed to be two Stern Pro Circuit events, Yegpin and Pinfest, which has been currently moved. We'll see if that stays in Allentown. Next weekend was supposed to be, as you know, Papa's been a big part of that in years past, the New York City Pinball Championship. EPC later in the summer, that's even been cancelled for 2020. So there's a lot of people like yourself, Doug, that have put a lot of time and energy into big tournaments for our enjoyment that have seen their work, hopefully not wasted, just postponed till 2021. And I'm sure we'll all be back for things like that. And that's one of the great things about this announcement was that there was this little note at the bottom saying, in 2021, expect to see the return of Papa 21. That is very exciting. Yeah, I know I've talked to you personally at a couple events about this. You kept asking me when it's coming back. And I said, we're working on it. We're working on it. Mark has secured a location for it, which I'm not allowed to release yet. And we're going to be working out the details over the next month or so and hopefully be making some more announcements as we get closer to the date. But we're really excited to have the Pop World Championships back on the calendar for next year. I'm going to throw a bunch of questions at you. And of course, you can answer them or say I can't tell or all those kind of good things. But when you mentioned that, a lot of questions went in my head and other people too. So here we go. Was this the plan all along to have Papa 21 align with the year 2021? Because it did make sense to have Papa 20 in 2017 Now 21 is in 21 Was that the whole idea It a coincidence purely coincidence at this point Although if you want to give us credit for that planning we take it We do know in 2017, and actually even probably before that, the tournament got so big, it outgrew the facility. You mentioned Mark's got a place, doesn't matter where it is, we assume obviously the Pittsburgh area. Seeing that, that tournament continued to grow, and it was an open tournament. Yes. Do you think Papa 2021 will be an open tournament or a finite number? It'll be very similar to the old Papa we're all familiar with. Okay. The old Papa tournament had different divisions. They even had like seniors division, junior division, split flippers, of course, women's, ABCD. That was a big tournament and you had the facility and there was also this massive free play area. When you're talking about Papa 2021, how many of these things, all, some, a few, many, do you see happening in 2021? So we haven't really drilled down to like the side tournaments or anything like that. We're really, a lot of it's planning right now. And we'd rather make all those announcements kind of at the same time. I don't want to kind of trickle out information. So I'm going to defer on that. No problem. Well, we'll wait for those announcements. I'm very excited about Papa 2021. I'm also excited to see that Pinberg has secured August 12th to 15th next year. So I have a ticket in the tournament and others do. Obviously, there are a thousand of us. What do we need to do if we want to either a get a refund or just have it pushed forward to 2021? So if you want your ticket to carry over to 2021, you don't have to do anything. Just hold on to your ticket and it's automatically going to get transferred over to the 2021 event. You won't have to enter the Pinberg refresh drawing as we usually have every year online. If you need a refund for your ticket, you can go to replayfx.org slash coronavirus. That basically has our whole announcement on it. And down at the bottom of that page is a form you fill out. And once you fill out the form, you'll be put in for a refund for whichever ticket you need a refund for. The deadline to fill that out is May 19th to get the 100 percent refund. and we will start processing refunds on May 26th. A lot of people have seen the announcement. It's been shared many times on social media. You're hearing it on podcasts like this one here on Pinball Profile. Again, May 19th is your cutoff if you want a full refund. Otherwise, if you want it to transfer over, just don't do anything. You don't have to do anything. I like the sounds of that. Easy as possible. I do have one bit of bad news I thought I would share. before I called you, I called mybookie.net and I asked based on the thousand people that were registered for Pinberg this year, who was your favorite? And they said, Josh Sharpe. I believe that he's due, he's overdue for a major championship at this point. So close, so close. And then, you know, he's going to be a year older when it rolls around next year. So what are the odds he's going to get better? I remember last year watching him lie on the cement floor. There were a thousand people there. He was the only one to do it. I mean, so if his legs couldn't handle, waiting for a few games on the Intergalactic. I don't know what 41 or 42 is going to look like for them. But anyway, we're all rooting for you, Josh. You're a fan favorite here. Well, not to me, but to others, I'm sure. Doug, thanks very much for the announcement. I hope everything is fine with you and your inner circle, your family and friends. And I look forward to being back in Pittsburgh at Kickback, at the Papa facility, at Papa 21 next year, and of course, ReplayFX. Thank you to your entire Papa team for this announcement and some encouraging news for 2021. Thanks for having me on, Jeff. We look forward to seeing all our pinball friends. Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait a year, but hopefully twice in 2021. This has been your pinball profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com, including your new subscription feeds, past episodes and more. Don't forget to check us out on Facebook. We're also on Instagram and Twitter at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. I'm Jeff Teolas.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: 06970119-82d4-4855-9523-91d455fdb886*