Thank you very much. So for everybody, for all international guests, or let's say US, Americans, Canadians, or whoever is here, who is not from Austria and Germany, most of these people know me. I want to give you a short overview about pinball in Austria and how it evolved and how it has done and progressed in the last 10 of years. So a short introduction of myself. My name is Stefan. I'm playing pinball since the mid of 2000s. The first pinball machine that I bought was a Buck Rogers, but I always say it's Cyclone because I picked it up at the same time. And I really love this game and collected then from the end of the 2000s till now more than 100 games. what I have in our pinball club in the Flip Arena Vöcklerbrock and which we always enjoy with a lot of people to play the games and have a lot of fun. In 2015 I started to sell as well pinball machines. In the past I was working once at KTM as a motorcycle manufacturer and so the theme Full Throttle from Highway Pinball was very approaching to me and I decided to buy this game. and even then decided to buy more of them and start to sell them. This was in mid-2015. And from then on, it has been a continuous grow. Since two years, it's my main business and not the side business. And even a month ago, I opened RS Pinball Germany. We're located in Bavaria, where we have a small showroom right now. But the new building is in progress and shall open in mid-2025 with 30 games in there. So today I will give you a short overview about Austria, very short and brief, and some hard facts about the pinball. I will go with you a bit through the pinball culture. So where can you find pinball? Which museums do we have? Which associations? Where can you play pinball and find them? And as well, what are we doing in Austria for pinball education? Then we go into a closer look onto a competitive pinball scene, how it's built up in Austria, and a close look as well onto dates and figures from IFBA. I was nearly 10 years country director in Austria for IFBA and I asked Josh Sharpe this year to send me all the data and excerpt of the IFBA database for all tournaments that have been done in Austria. done in Austria and I analyzed all this data and give a short outlook on how many tournaments have been done, how many locations we had and how it's going on and let's have a look on what we can do to even further grow Pinball in the future. And this year is a very large big year for Austria in Pinball because we are organizing in 2025 the European Pinball Championship in Vöcklerbrock in Upper Austria and we are organizing in Steiermark the IFPA 20 so we let's say will be the capital of the world somehow for competitive pinball hopefully in 2025 so in Europe you find the tiny small Austria which is only 80.000 square meters so it's only around 50% of Illinois in the center of Austria. Our population is around 9 million people, and we speak German. We are famous in the U.S. for Sound of Music. Even if a lot of Austrians don't know the movie, everybody asks us in the States, do you know it? It's very famous over here. What I can tell you, it was recorded in the area of Salzkammergut, and the area of Salzkammergut is the area where the European pinball champion will take place next year. In the near Graz, in the southern area, in Badendorf, there will be the IFBA. And so we have a good triangle when you're coming to Austria to join the tournaments. You can fly to Vienna, you can go by train to Vöcklerbrock or you go by train, for example, to Graz or can fly to Graz and then go by car to Badendorf. We have our top pinball player sitting here in the row. It's Markus Stix. His top position was number 16th in the world. Congratulations. And right now we have 395 ranked pinball players in the IFPA database. In Austria, you find four pinball museums. One where we had before the seminar from Günther. It's the Terra Technica. We call it an Austrian Pinball Museum, even if it's on the border to Czech Republic, but it's owned by an Austrian. Then Günther himself, he has as well another pinball museum in Ruprechtshofen, the Pindigiland, which is also very nice to have a look on and to visit. We have a Flipper Museum in Lichtenau. This is specialized on Gottlieb games. So if you're interested in Gottlieb games, go there. They have all of them. and then we have the kinder gram in neuland park so it's specialized on bailey williams games and he have as well a big lego collection what John Youssi all these museums are located in a very close area together in let's say lower austria near vienna and so there we have a high density of pinball culture if you would see it like this the amount of associations in austria have been growing from 2012 on and i call this this is the new pinball era in austria everything started with the flipper as far which is a kind of umbrella organization so most clubs are members or the member of the single associations what John Youssi there a lot of members as well in the Flipper SV So it does work over whole Austria It does not have a fixed location by itself but they organize and support For example they support Strong the Flipnicks on the Austrian Pimple Open They support participants when they go to competitions and so on Very short afterwards, or nearly on the same time, the Flipnicks in Steiermark have been founded. And three years later, Kugelklopfer in Upper Austria, followed by our club in Vöcklerbrook in 2017. And very young, there is coming the Flipper Rehbläuser, the multiplayer and Flipper Asyl in Vienna. So we have them here as well on the map. We know that we have very low density in the Tirol area, but everything is growing a bit. And let's hope that in further parts of Austria, more clubs and associations or places where you can play pinball and enjoy it will come up. So this should give you a good overview. And as well, the Google links and the presentation I will upload later on to the website as well that everybody can download it, that you find the links. If somebody wants to go to Austria and find locations where you can play, that you have here the links as well available. Where can you find pinball machines if you're coming to Austria, for example, on a business trip or on vacation? Obviously on pinballmap.com. I think this is the most actual database as well for the Austrian machines. On Pinsight Map, sometimes these data are quite old. and especially when you have a look on Vienna area quite accurate and detail is Flipperliste.at where you find as well always data pictures and locations where you can play pinball. What are we doing for education? So it was not long ago, so three years ago, Abe from Abe Flips, Abraham started to play pinball and he was interested in how do you really play pinball where do you learn the skills and he watched a lot of videos from all the streamers and he decided okay i like this but i want to have more available i want to have it in english i want to have it in german and so he started the youtube channel ape flips right now he have around slightly below 6 000 subscribers he have more than 350 000 views and he started very recently a kickstarter project for a movie called mastering pinball so he rents so this kickstarter project was very successful he aimed i think it was something like 10 000 euros he reached more than 20 000 so he rented already high speed cameras made some additional recordings he met Escher at events he met Johannes Ostermeyer and drove to him to Munich and so they did a lot of recordings and due to the high amount of patrons what he had in the Kickstarter project there is additional chapter of tournament play in the movie the target is that this will be available then in mid 2025 I shortly check if it works here to go on the link and to shortly show you one of the videos it's now there so that John Youssi the the quality of information what he's doing this video is without sound martin so he did as well some special videos like a loop so if you have a arcade or if you have a pinball club and people want to learn how to play pinball you can run this video in a loop on your television and it shows the different skills with the additional texts and information of how to play it it was already reposted as well by by stern and by others so he got a lot of hits and it was a really good success and he does really an amazing job with these videos. And we are very good looking forward on his movie, which will be between 60 and 90 minutes and come out next year. Good. You find here then later in my presentation as well the link to this loop and you find as well the link to his playlist so that you can have a look on all his videos on a separate session. let's say so pinball sports in austria and competitive pinball playing what is the fundament of the pinball or competitive pinball it's a lot of tournaments it's smaller tournaments it's larger tournaments it's leagues so all of these we do have in austria and we do have let's say very strong since 2012 around where all these pinball clubs have been started and the leagues have been introduced. And in addition we have then the Austrian Pinball Championship Series which started in 2014 where Austria was one of the first countries in Europe which started these events and took it over from IFPA and have then a yearly IFPA final and crowned the champion. Next year we will have as well the EPC and as overall masterpiece there will be the IFPA. So So in competitive play of pinball, my experience in my club is when we're playing our league, we register each league event as a separate IFBA tournament. And when new people are coming, and even if they only get 0.5 points or 0.03 points or whatever, they find their name in the list and they get injected the pinball drug. So they like to play it. They're coming more and more often and they enjoy it. then this is really, this was boosting the competitive play on our location In the past with the IFBA leagues we registered one event over the whole year So the league participants played 192 games for one IFBA result And so we decided, no, it's not worth, makes no sense. We separate the league from IFBA. We make always the events where you have the IFBA tournament. And the qualification is a Swiss system where you play 16 rounds. and this result goes into the Austrian Pinball League, which is separated from IFBA. But this really helps to bring the people into the events, and more and more people are coming into the hobby, and the larger tournaments are growing too. So in the competitive scene, as mentioned, we have several leagues. We have Flipperina, Kugelklopfer, Flipnik, Flipper, Süle, Rebloiser and Multiplayer. So these are the continuous clubs where we are playing. and locations which we have. So we have overall created once a logo for the Austrian Pinball Leagues and then there is the logo picture available for the single leagues as well with their name. And due to the environment what you have in the different regions, in Austria we keep it for the leagues quite flexible. So we don't have a strict system, let's say like in American football, soccer or nba or whatever you have this rule and always it need to be exactly like this because you need to consider the boundary conditions we have a club with 50 games where the people can play and you can get a lot of people then we have other people they meet regularly but they always meet one is this person and then it's at this person and then it's on another location and they have a different amount of machines and so they define a system how they play regularly and meet and how they define at the end of the year the best players and so we keep this separate from ifpa and from austrian league but still we want to have it there competitive and to have this sport character available from these leagues we have then as well a league final end of the year that means the best four players of each league meet together on a league final because austria is not so large and it's let's say like six competitive leagues which are most of the time meeting or five or six depending on availability of timing from the persons so we usually play then a round robin which means you have 20 or 24 participants and after the round robin you count the points of the wins from the people in the single leagues then you know who is the best league and who is the best league player in austria and then they get the trophy therefore The Austrian Championship Series I shortly mentioned and we have the Austrian Pinball Open where you usually have 100 to 120 participants. This started in 2013 with once an event in a cinema where a lot of pinball machines have been brought to and then a real big series started with the APO in Badendorf. I think timing might be a bit far so I go a bit faster. Then in the Austrian Championship Series I collected as well all the results. John Youssi we have always different locations so since 2017 it was in our club. On the Pinball League final it was several times in our club but we started to rotate to go on different locations that the people and players see different events. So the top pinball players what we had shortly mentioned before marcus who joined already six times the ifba and several others which have been once or two players stefan karlhuber and roland schwarz who joined already four times the ifba so the competitive thinking and joining on the tournament is growing and is very strong and large and when you have a look on marcus and have a look on his IFBA number I think it's 29 so he is playing really long already and still very competitive in the and in the top 100 and he will go on so from the analyzers of the data from the 10 years or from the overall data what is available I say there we have done in Austria 350 tournaments which are registered for IFPA. It was organized by 20 different tournament directors. I think that's quite an interesting figure to see how many people have done here these main jobs. And overall, it was 32 different locations. And when you have a closer look, then John Youssi that the amount of games that have been done in either pinball associations and their clubs or on public locations is three-fourths, so 75% of the overall tournament plays. When the new pinball era 2012 started, several people came up and it was a lot played as well on private locations. This is the reason why we have here 92 events, but these have been decreased in the last years. And this is from this data. I say the data what is pre-2012 in IFPA, that's mainly single results and single data from big events and Austrian pinball champion race, where several people here, Jimmy, Markus and others joined in the past. Here is only single results available. And then really from 2011, 2012, IFPA data have been continuously filled. And this is the modern pinball landscape from my point of view as we see it in Austria. And obviously there was a big hit because there was no IFBA competitive playing due to COVID in the section. But John Youssi a very strong continuous growing in pinball What is very interesting on these locations and what i shortly mentioned before this is the peak what i mentioned when the associations came up a lot of pinball players motivated people the austrians know for example in wales we had pin nobi they had a regular league they had several events and some other locations but these have been decreased and quite strong because if your organizer already wants a tournament, you know it's a lot of effort. It's not always getting honored as you would maybe like to have it. The people, it's typically an open event, so everybody can come there. So you have maybe sometimes people in your location which you don't like. And I think these are some of the reasons why these private events are decreasing and why it's important to have really public locations, pinball clubs who drive the sports forward and create these events. So in Austria, over the past years, this led to around five active tournament directors, what we had and which are regularly organizing these events and tournaments. And we have seen now in the last year where the clubs close to Vienna started, there are some now, because of all these activities, we got gathered some new pinball people, like for example Alois Koza he was in a podcast with Jeff Teolis when he was in Jekpin and there was already some news about pinball in Austria he is playing now since 3 years he joined once IFPA he won the novice section in Jekpin and he is one of the guys who is driving pinball a bit forward in Vienna and want to organize tournaments so we have here the people but let's see how it really goes forward in the future because you always need to consider the environment what you have as well the legal environment in vienna there are people they want to do something but it's not allowed to have more than three pinball machines on a public location so we see the amount of tournaments which are organized per tournament director have been growing over the last years very strong and this is because often these tournament directors are associated with one of these clubs and they are driving the club and this helps as well to get some income to help the club to live and to cover all the costs for rent and whatever is there i shortly go over this gives only an overview about in which season of the year most tournaments have been done since 2012 and this is one of one slide what i think is very important what can you do to drive pinball forward in the future so it's important to get these people which are interested in to have locations and really to push it this helps us on the competitive play we achieved it now let's say with four or five locations what we have but this should further grow and last second i jump further to the epc so next year in vöcklerbrock we're organizing the european pinball championship which will be a huge event we are organizing 140 pinball machines in ice hockey hall there will be 320 tournament participants which will be there we will have a dedicated high score tournaments for example a jersey check high score tournament so the epc is a major we will have most likely between two and four further if per certified plus tournaments so there is a lot of whopper points for competitive players to to gain with the 320 participants on the epc main it's around 350 to 400 whopper points for the winner of this tournament what we calculated and for the side tournament and for the classics it's as well 150 whopper points or more for the winner so if somebody would run through everything it's maybe 700 or more whopper points so that's really a big competitive playing we have luckily enough time for the four and a half days that we give enough time for the qualification qualification sessions and for the finals and details will be announced and for the registration will be done end of the year. We have this big public location, a big supermarket, several restaurants walking distance and as well several hotels in walking distance so that the competitive player really, you can fly to Vienna, go by train to Vöcklebrook and then either you have a scooter or you walk by yourself and you enjoy playing pinball. everything will be as well further supported by some manufacturers so there will be some cool prices what we have and the main organizers is let's say myself the company and my club but as well very strong support from the austrian pinball club from flippnick in badendorf from kugelklopfer and as well in Germany from another friends club that we can gather these 140 machines. Last but not least, one slide for the IFPA. So IFPA is mentioned in Badendorf. The location is very well known already since a lot of years. Martin have done several reports already, I think twice or three times you have been there. JDL have streamed several times from this location. It's 100 pinball machines continuously on the location around 500 square meters of place. And so that will be for sure a great event for these 80 competitive players and for some visitors. And we are very happy in Austria to warm welcome everybody next year and even before afterwards for these big competitions. Thank you very much.