Tim Sexton retires from pinball tournaments, blaming IFPA fee structure and deteriorating player experience.
Summary
Tim Sexton announces his retirement from competitive pinball tournaments, citing systemic issues including the 2018 IFPA dollar-fee structure that incentivized infinite tournament grinding, the rise of multi-day 'pinball farms' with poor accommodations and venue logistics, inefficient match-play qualifying formats that waste player data, and a broader shift away from sport professionalism toward social club dynamics. He argues the competitive integrity and player experience have deteriorated significantly and expresses concern that major tournaments like Pinburgh and Papa have abandoned skill-based divisions and quality standards.
Key Claims
The 2018 IFPA dollar-fee ($1 per player per tournament) was the primary driver of tournament culture change and his eventual retirement
high confidence · Sexton directly identifies this as 'the main change to pinball tournaments that led to my retirement' and traces the incentive structure it created
Match play qualifying is used in over 95% of pinball tournaments despite being inefficient and hostile to expert players
high confidence · Sexton states 'counting for well over 95% of events match play qualifying including strikes is by far the most popular pinball tournament you will encounter today'
Pinburgh (Papa) abandoned skill-based divisions (A/B/C) in Papa 21, consolidating all players into one mega-bank qualifying
high confidence · Sexton describes Papa 20 as 'the last Papa' with skill divisions and states 'those divisions would not be returning for Papa 21 and instead everyone will play in one Mega Bank'
Multi-day 'pinball farms' enforce rigid continuous play with penalties for extended absences and lack basic amenities (seating, HVAC, proper food options)
high confidence · Sexton details the farm format as 'rigid' where 'players do not have the option to leave for an extended amount of time without penalty of disqualification' and describes gastrointestinal issues from food trucks in poorly ventilated spaces
Pinburgh 2024 moved to 'Resid Sports' inside a movie theater in a parking lot with no walkable hotels nearby, requiring highway crossings without sidewalks
high confidence · Sexton contrasts this to the previous downtown Pittsburgh Convention Center location and describes the new venue as 'really just a large arcade builds inside a movie theater which is built in the middle of a giant parking lot'
Pinburgh and Papa have been reimagined with little resemblance to their predecessors and promise 'inferior' experiences
high confidence · Sexton states 'Pinberry 7' and other majors 'suddenly appeared on the pinball calendar just with no resemblance in any way to their former selves' and 'promise and will deliver an inferior experience compared to their predecessors'
Notable Quotes
“pinball tournaments were bad for me and they were going to get worse”
Tim Sexton @ 0:00-0:30 — Core thesis of retirement decision; frames decision as forward-looking prevention rather than reactive response
“the world pinball player rankings determine exactly how good of a person you are just like the Forbes richest billionaires list”
Tim Sexton @ 0:45 — Satirical framing of WPPR system's social dominance in pinball community; sets tone for systemic critique
“I believe that this is the main change to pinball tournaments that led to my retirement”
Tim Sexton @ ~2:30 — Direct attribution of causation to 2018 IFPA dollar fee; indicates this is the key inflection point in his analysis
“pinball tournaments are no longer sporting events so much as they are social club events for the broader pinball Community”
Tim Sexton @ ~15:00 — Central conceptual shift diagnosis; frames the fundamental change in tournament purpose and priorities
“discovering pinball tournaments at age 20 was a stroke of Good Fortune because it allowed me to as an adult practice compete and eventually succeed at the highest level at a sport”
Tim Sexton @ ~16:30 — Personal motivation context; explains why tournament integrity matters so deeply to Sexton's identity and goals
“I really have no interest in being complicit in what I see as a deteriorating state of competitive pinball”
Tim Sexton @ ~24:00 — Moral/ethical framing of retirement; positions decision as principled stance rather than personal exhaustion alone
“I don't believe that people should need to sacrifice their health to play in pinball events”
Tim Sexton @ ~24:30 — Explicit health and welfare concern; summarizes the physical toll of multi-day farm events
“the success stories of these far more esoteric Sports only go to show how attainable it is to turn pinball tournaments into marketable sports broadcasts and pinball players into professional athletes”
business_signal: Prize pool incentive structure (top 20 events per state/province count toward championships) drives infinite tournament grinding and prioritizes quantity over quality
high · Sexton explains: 'tens of thousands of dollars up for grabs at the North American pinball championship series every year... players are incentivized to compete as frequently as possible'
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community_signal: Tim Sexton, a top competitive player and major tournament organizer, has publicly retired from competitive pinball citing systemic degradation of tournament quality, player experience, and competitive integrity
high · Full 30+ minute video announcement with detailed structural critique; Sexton's standing as NYC Pinball Championships organizer lends significant credibility
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community_signal: Pinburgh and Pinberry have been substantially reimagined with 'little resemblance' to historical formats, suggesting organizational shift away from established standards
medium · Sexton notes these 'suddenly appeared on the pinball calendar just with no resemblance in any way to their former selves' and will 'deliver an inferior experience compared to their predecessors'
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sentiment_shift: Shift in tournament culture from competitive sport orientation to social club orientation, with majority of venues and events now prioritizing accessibility over competitive depth
high · Sexton: 'pinball tournaments are no longer sporting events so much as they are social club events for the broader pinball Community'; notes 95%+ adoption of match-play format which prioritizes inclusion over efficiency
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Topics
Tournament structure and formatsprimaryIFPA dollar-fee policy and economic incentivesprimaryCompetitive integrity and skill-based divisionsprimaryPlayer health, accommodations, and venue qualityprimaryShift from sport to social club dynamicsprimaryPinball professionalization and viable career pathssecondaryMajor tournament changes (Pinburgh, Papa, Pinberry)secondaryPinball community culture and valuessecondary
Sentiment
negative(-0.85)— Sexton is deeply disappointed and disillusioned with the direction of competitive pinball. While he maintains respect for the community and acknowledges some positive aspects (tournaments are 'more popular than ever'), his dominant tone is critical, frustrated, and resigned. He uses heavy satire (Whopper/Forbes comparison, food truck descriptions) to underscore systemic failures. His decision to retire is framed as principled withdrawal from complicity in deterioration rather than personal burnout, lending moral weight to the negativity. There is nostalgia for past tournament quality (Papa divisions, downtown Pinburgh) and hopeful framing of pinball's potential as a professional sport, which slightly temper the overall negativity.
Transcript
youtube_auto_sub · $0.000
in the summer of 2023 I made the decision to retire from all competitive pinball [Music] tournaments well hi everybody Welcome to Sports Center Brian Kenny here alongside Larry Beal is this it is that all from Tim ston and where do they all go from here and since I made the announcement I've been asked many questions about my decision so instead of answering one question at a time or getting dragged down into frivolous debates I've decided to make this video because ultimately my decision didn't come down to one particular event or experience but a conclusion I had reached pinball tournaments were bad for me and they were going to get worse so without further Ado here is everything wrong with pinball tournaments Whopper Whopper Whopper Whopper Junior double trip Whopper as the official ranking system of competitive pinball the world pinball player rankings determine exactly how good of a person you are just like the Forbes richest billionaires list Whoppers are increased through Sigma grind set for many years Whopper points were considered to be fake Internet points that's right the points don't matter at all just like Blair Witch 2 the system remained completely free for years but starting in 2018 the ifpa would roll out its dollar fee to all North American tournaments under this new structure tournament directors could register their tournaments on the ifp website for free but Whopper points would only be awarded after the tournament director submitted a fee of $1 per player per tournament this dollar would then go into the prize pool for the state championship series looking back I believe that this is the main change to pinball tournaments that led to my retirement but at the time it rolled out in 2018 I wasn't paying too much attention because I had just moved to Chicago and started my new job as a game developer following the temporary ban on both non-essential travel and non-essential pinball tournaments I set my sights on Germany which would host the upcoming 2023 ifpa World pinball Championship qualify for the tournament I would need to improve my Whopper ranking so that I could be one of the 80 International qualifiers since I already had the skill time money and knowledge it was never much of a challenge to qualify but I quickly started to notice that the pinball tournaments themselves had significantly changed while US city folks spend time sipping our lattes answering our emails and running our cute little 26.2 Mi marathons with their 6-hour time limits real Sal of thee pinball farmers are grinding every day from Sunrise until dawn playing up to three tournaments a day for 13 days straight named for their similarity to the farms and proximity to actual Farmland pinball Farms sprouted up to test the idea that you can can never have too much of a good thing it's hard to succinctly describe a pinball Farm but the general consensus is you'll know one when you see one my best attempt to Define it is as a multi-day event where tournaments start and end consecutively and no single event stands out as the main attraction unlike pinball shows where people are allowed to move about freely to all the different seminars tournaments free play areas or other entertainment pinball Farm events put everyone on the exact same experience at the exact same time these events are rigid and players do not have the option to leave for an extended amount of time without penalty of disqualification pinball machines are big pinball tournaments are big real estate is expensive unlike Pinball's more successful older brother golf with its luxurious private courses built in the middle of urban city centers pinball hosts its large scale tournaments in movie theater lobbies exurb and strip mall and actual barns what these locations lack in glamour they also lack in amenities from 2015 to 2019 the penberg tournament at replay effect was held at the David L Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh within a 10-minute walk from the event players could choose from dozens of restaurants and several major hotels sadly this event was forced to close due to the pandemic but pimber announced their return in 2024 at resid Sports which sounds really cool like the hyperx Esports Arena at the Luxor in Las Vegas but it's really just a large arcade builds inside a movie theater which is built in the middle of a giant parking lot which you will need to use because getting to the nearest hotel means Crossing three massive highways where there are no sidewalks one distinct advantage that players get when they attend pinball tournaments that are attached to shows are America's Bountiful casual dining brand places like Applebees Iha and Buffalo Wild Wings are an integral part of the fabric of this country they are reliable options for locals as well as business Travelers Road Trippers and pinball tournament Players alike but the problem with casual dining is that despite the sleek and sticky tablet printer that sits on the table that allows hungry guests to send their food orders directly into the kitchen sitting down to eat a meal during a pinball tournament just takes way too long and that time could be spent playing more pinball but have no fear because pinball Farms invented a great solution to this self-imposed time constraint food trucks with four player groups there's plenty of time to stand next to games holding a styrofoam container and plastic fork and shoving delicious and flavorful bites of meat cheese and carbohydrates down your throat until it's time to wipe your hands with a David Hankin and play your next ball let's just say that the gastrointestinal side effects of some of this food in a poorly ventilated closed space can cause some issues Hotel HS also come with a lot of modern amenities that we take for granted things like indoor plumbing HVAC security guards and carpeted floors event organizers do pay for these things as well as the venue staff who clean and attend to these facilities if you're a fancy boy like me you prefer the Finer Things in life you may prefer things like having fresh air to breathe chairs to sit on or soap and water to wash your hands with and perhaps even at the relatively young age of 30 you may feel like it's it's not great for your knees to be standing on concrete floors for 13 hours a day let's talk about match play qualifying match play is a beginner friendly format another way to put this match play qualifying is hostile to expert players counting for well over 95% of events match play qualifying including strikes is by far the most popular pinball tournament you will encounter today what makes these events so beginner friendly are the number of choices taken out of the players control and placed onto to a computer the game you play the group you play with and the order you play in the group are all determined so all you have to do is show up and it's your turn and play your game Additionally the scoring system is simplified so you're only playing against those players in your group rather than everyone at the tournament there are some significant issues with this format sorting players in event by playing one game at a time throwing out that scoring data and replacing it with a 3 2 1 or zero is a pretty significant waste these tournament are really inefficient player scores will always fall into a normal distribution plus there needs to be a pinball machine for every four players all players must play at the exact same time and every player must wait for every game to finish before they can move on to the next round these inefficiencies really incentivize tournament directors to cut Corners practice time is out of the question game setups are really silly with important parts of the game completely removed to speed up play flippers are modified tilts are set way too tight and often some ridiculous floor Riser or wood block is propped up behind the pinball machine's back legs so let's say I avoid match play tournaments completely well I still have a few qualifying events to go to this may be hard to believe now but the papa World pinball championships had multiple optin skill divisions with dedicated game Banks despite having the largest prize pool and being the only division to award Whopper points a a division was often the least popular of all the skill divisions at Papa with more players playing in both B and C divisions not only did this allow several hundred players to compete while keeping weit time short across all games it reflected a culture of competitive pinball that has been eradicated Papa was my first big tournament in 2013 where I competed in the C Division I returned every year after to play in a skill division that matched my skill level coming up just short of the cut line for a division finals at Papa 20 the last Papa in today's exceedingly rare score-based qualifying formats hundreds and hundreds of players are all playing on the exact same Bank of games at the exact same time stretching Q times up to well over an hour for a single game this is made even worse when tournaments add ridiculous qualifying constraints like double cars or multiple scores on the same game counting towards a player's entry having grown up in those B and C divisions at Papa improving a lot Ong the way I was disappointed to see that those divisions would not be returning for Papa 21 and instead everyone will play in one Mega Bank selfishly I would much prefer that segregated game Banks return so that I had more opportunities to practice games before finals this year a five-game ticket at indis took me between 3 and 5 hours to complete after every game I played I'd queue up for the next game walk back to my hotel get some food watch some TV do something else because I had a lot of time to kill between every single game the good news is that pinball tournaments are more popular than ever I'm asserting that this is possible because pinball tournaments are no longer sporting events so much as they are social club events for the broader pinball Community for most people this is probably great but for me it's a tough pill to swallow growing up I was not permitted to compete in any sports I have no idea why this was as I was allowed to watch sports on TV all the time I was always competitive and I always wanted to be successful and I really admired professional athletes discovering pinball tournaments at age 20 was a stroke of Good Fortune because it allowed me to as an adult practice compete and eventually succeed at the highest level at a sport the journey going from a complete novice to one of the best learning what I could accomplish using my own physical and mental agility and being able to fully commit to something through my own valtion are experiences I wouldn't trade in for anything but right now when I look around at where I am and what pinball tournaments have become I feel like I only have opportunities to grow elsewhere as I look back on my less than Stellar pinball experiences of 2022 and 2023 I see what looks like a big effort to deemphasize both the skill and the sport of Pinball it's hard to pinpoint exactly where this came from sure it's possible that this was always going to be the entropic state of pinball but I have a different Theory remember back in 2018 when the dollar fee was implemented by The ifpa Looking Back Now I think this change is what set pinball on its current course with tens of thousands of dollars up for grabs at the North American pinball championship series every year these events likely represent the largest prize packages that most of these players will take home and since the top 20 events count in every state and Province players are incentivized to compete as frequently as possible and bring in as many players to juice up the prize pool so as I'm still so often solicited to play in pinball tournaments I wonder how cap captured people are by this incentive structure I am glad to say that I can proudly look back on my record as both a player and tournament organizer where I never abandoned my dedication to the sport or my principles in 4 years running one of the largest tournaments in the world the New York City pinball championships I remain committed to hosting and providing the best experience I could to the players by not competing myself the vision I had for pinball was to make professionalism possible for the future generations to hopefully create a viable path forward so that simply through playing and achieving excellence in the sport of pinball players could potentially earn a living I don't think you should need an entirely different skill set such as having the ability to write game software in order to make pinball your profession I'm aware of the challenges and sacrifices that had to happen to create the money maker moment in poker or the Queen's Gambit moment in chess but to me the success stories of these far more esoteric Sports only go to show how attainable it is to turn pinball tournaments into marketable sports broadcasts and pinball players into professional athletes it requires a level of capital investment risk and expertise that I certainly didn't have access to in my 20s but so long as we still have so many players who are getting better all the time that opportunity still exists and if anyone can make it work there's a ton of opportunity to bring in brand new players Spectators and a ton of Revenue remember that point Point earlier when I said that pinball tournaments were getting worse well it seems at this point that I was absolutely correct out of nowhere two majors suddenly appeared on the pinball calendar just with no resemblance in any way to their former selves there's pinberry 7 D2 player finals feeling and the tournament website suggests that this will only take around 10 hours to play with both of these tournaments having so little to do with past events other than their name I really have no clue why either of these events are considered major tournaments both of these events promise and will deliver an inferior experience compared to their predecessors and this gets into my reason for making this video in the first place I really have no interest in being complicit in what I see as a deteriorating state of competitive pinball I don't believe that people should need to sacrifice their health to play in pinball events I think the players deserve a lot more respect than they're being given right now there are many big and small ways that pinball tournaments could change for the better right now things like providing basic accommodations for things like meal breaks or just enough time to sleep at night but the fact that these very Basics need to be demanded and are not guaranteed is pretty demoralizing I'll admit I gave up I stopped working on a normalized ranking formula that accurately assessed how difficult it was to finish at every position of every tournament I gave up on developing a set of standards that fellow tournament directors could agree to to provide players with a healthier experience it just didn't feel worth it anymore so I've decided to pursue other projects with my time such as making videos and if you'd like to see more subscribe to the channel [Applause] [Music]
Sexton ran the NYC Pinball Championships for 4 years as one of the largest tournaments in the world and maintained commitment to player experience without competing himself
high confidence · Sexton claims 'In 4 years running one of the largest tournaments in the world the New York City pinball championships I remain committed to hosting and providing the best experience'
The dollar-fee structure incentivized tournament directors to juice prize pools by holding frequent tournaments, shifting focus from quality to quantity
high confidence · Sexton explains that with 'tens of thousands of dollars up for grabs' and 'top 20 events' counting toward championships, 'players are incentivized to compete as frequently as possible and bring in as many players to juice up the prize pool'
Tim Sexton @ ~20:00 — Articulates vision for pinball's potential as professional sport; references poker and chess as models
Indisc
event
Pinberryevent
Resid Sportsvenue
David L. Lawrence Convention Centervenue
match play qualifyingproduct
pinball farmsevent_format
design_philosophy: Multi-day 'pinball farm' event format enforces rigid continuous play with poor accommodations (standing on concrete 13+ hours, food trucks, poor ventilation, minimal seating), creating health and welfare concerns
high · Sexton details gastrointestinal issues from food truck meals in poorly ventilated spaces, knee pain from extended concrete standing, lack of basic amenities like soap/water/fresh air
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market_signal: Pinball tournament ecosystem is experiencing structural degradation driven by perverse economic incentives, with quality standards and player welfare systematically deprioritized in favor of volume and accessibility
high · Comprehensive critique linking IFPA fee structure (2018) → prize pool incentives → tournament proliferation → venue/format degradation → player experience decline
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event_signal: Papa World Pinball Championships eliminated skill-based divisions (A/B/C) starting with Papa 21, consolidating all players into single mega-bank qualifying
high · Sexton identifies Papa 20 as 'the last Papa' with divisions and states new format removes differentiation for skill levels
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event_signal: Pinburgh relocated from David L. Lawrence Convention Center (downtown Pittsburgh, 2015-2019) to Resid Sports (movie theater arcade in parking lot) for 2024, fundamentally downgrading venue quality and logistics
high · Sexton contrasts previous 10-minute walk to restaurants/hotels with new venue requiring highway crossings without sidewalks
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community_signal: Tournament inefficiency in match-play qualifying (requiring equal simultaneous play, long queue times, data waste) is endemic to 95%+ of pinball tournaments despite identified design flaws
high · Sexton documents: 'a five-game ticket at indis took me between 3 and 5 hours to complete' with hours of dead time between games; identifies this as 'really inefficient'
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community_signal: Tim Sexton transitions from competitive player and major tournament organizer to content creator, redirecting expertise away from tournament infrastructure
high · Sexton: 'I've decided to pursue other projects with my time such as making videos' and states he abandoned efforts to normalize ranking formulas and develop director standards
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market_signal: 2018 IFPA dollar-fee policy ($1 per player) is identified as primary structural cause of tournament proliferation and player exploitation
high · Sexton traces current problems directly to this policy: 'I believe that this is the main change to pinball tournaments that led to my retirement' and shows how it created incentive to maximize tournament frequency and player counts