Exclusive Interview: Brian Pace and the Realities of Getting Sponsored

Last year I decided it was time to upgrade my Sriver FX rubber to something with a little more kick in an effort to appease my inner Equipment Junkie. Like a lot of players, I went to Butterfly Online.  After perusing all of their different lines of rubber I began to notice that the descriptions for each rubber were about as useful as a pair of breasts on the back of a pig.

So I browsed, but never bought anything until one day Brian Pace popped up on the front page of the site giving the first video review of the Bryce family of rubber. Outside of his recreational racket and his reputation as a player, I didn’t know a lot about him. Shortly after seeing the video I bought a couple sheets of Bryce FX. There was something about the way he described the characteristics of the rubber that cut through the “Marketing Hype” that plagues just about every product description on the site.

When Brian would come out with another video about drills and exercises with the Amicus robot, I’d watch it hoping to learn something that I was missing from my own game. Then one day, Brian wasn’t doing videos anymore. Instead, I was watching a German player named Stefan Feth replace Brian for their instructional videos. Stefan’s techniques and methods are top-notch, but I was just getting used to watching Mr. Pace on the site. Shortly thereafter, Brian Pace would no longer be seen in any video on the site ever again.

Eventually the instructional videos stopped only to be replaced by videos of Jack Huang showing you how to perform a stroke for 2 minutes without any explanation or coaching tips whatsoever. I stopped watching the videos after that.

Fast forward a year and I manage to stumble across some news about Brian Pace’s new company. Some discussion surrounding it had popped up on a forum and shortly after that Mr. Pace himself logged on and started answering questions. After reading some of his posts I became intrigued by his enthusiasm for his new company, Dynamic Table Tennis. I wanted to learn more about his story, why he left Butterfly, and reveal the truth about American table tennis sponsorships. So I asked him for an interview and he agreed graciously.

Thank for chatting with me Brian. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your Table Tennis career?

I started playing Table Tennis in a USATT funded junior program with the hopes of producing an Olympian.  It was not a participation program, it was an elite junior program. We had Nigerian players ranked at 2500 as our coaches and training partners.  The group went from 75 kids to about 12 elite level juniors, and the more intense the training got, the more the number reduced until it got down to Oscar Melvin and I.  We would both went on to the live at the Olympic Training Center, and the program was unofficially over in 1988 but continued for 1 more year.

How and when did you get sponsored by Butterfly?

I was at my local Rec Center looking for a new activity, and Ty Hoff walked in. We played for about 1 hour. He gave me 2 yellow balls, and I went home and told my mother I was going to be a professional table tennis player.  The USATT funded grant was influenced by Bowie Martin Sr. who was running Martin-Kilpatrick which sold low level table tennis equipment.  They were also the North American distributor of Butterfly equipment, and the top juniors in the program received a small sponsorship.  It was some rubber, shirts, shorts, shoes, and a bag.  It did take me a while to become one of the elite 6 that would receive the sponsorship. Since I started with them, I felt obligated to stay.

On a forum recently you stated that being sponsored is an illusion. For a lot of players once they’ve attained a decent rating they’re next goal is to get sponsored in order to help pay for equipment, travel expenses, etc. Tell me about your experience being in that situation and what it was really like.

If anyone that has hopes of getting sponsored, you may want to skip this because the answer is going to break your heart…

Being sponsored is an illusion, and most players become disenchanted after the experience. If you are able to get to 2400-2500, have a unique talent, have a good image, and are good with people you MAY get a sponsorship. What will happen is your name will be used to push certain equipment, and you will never know how much money they make off of it. My sponsor has never paid for my expenses to any competition. I have done exhibitions and had my expenses paid, but NEVER a competition.

The amount of equipment you get is so small it is not worth the headache. I know in my adult life I did not need a sponsor. I just needed rubber and glue, and that cost less than $2000.00 per year. What makes it worst is I was met with the most amount of resistance when I moved to Europe to play train and compete. They want you to get better, but are not in favor of you going to live in the table tennis hotspots for improvement. Living an American lifestyle and playing table tennis is the best way for the companies to make money.

So usually a player never gets any kind of financial reward. Not from prize money or sponsorship, but the company I worked for had bigger profits every single year. None of those profits were passed along to the players that they promoted to make the money. That is the illusion. It is the illusion that you are going to get a return on your investment if you get sponsored. The truth is the company is going to get a return on their investment of promoting you.

What do you mean by an ‘living an American lifestyle‘?

To play table tennis in this country at any level requires you to live like an American, which means finding a place to train. It may be a school, fitness club, or table tennis club and not every player around you may be interested in that level of commitment. You will have to work a regular job to supplement your life, competition, and expenses. That lifestyle takes away from your focus on hardcore training. The only people that really understand this are players like me that have lived and train abroad. You wake up, train, go home and eat, take a nap, train again, go home and eat, then go to bed.  That is the culture of table tennis when you live and train abroad.  That lifestyle allows you to be fully focused on training, and there are no distractions.

Do you think the companies promote table tennis as a recreational activity like bowling or billiards and less like an athletic sport in order to be more profitable in America?

Having worked for 2 different table tennis companies I can say that they don’t know who to promote to the recreational players, because they can’t find them. There is an estimated number of people in America that play table tennis. 19 million is the number that I heard, and historically we have not been able to find them, group them together, and use them to change the demographic of what table tennis is in this country. Those people find the companies to buy equipment to play in their garages, basements, patios, and attics.  We haven’t organized the sport enough on a National scale for those players to leave their ping pong environment.

We can account for the 7000 competing members that have a USATT membership. But they are making a killing off the recreational ping pong players. The Butterfly “Brian Pace” racket made $126K in 2009 in profits, and what is more depressing is I only got 1.5%. That is the crime.

The companies don’t value the player enough to pay them.  They value them enough to market and promote them.  My racket has been the number 1 selling racket in the “6 Racket line” that includes Danny Seemiller, and Todd Sweeris.

Do you think that this situation only happens in the US, or is it a common occurrence in Europe and Asia?

In Europe it is different in a lot of the places that I played. In Sweden, the club gives you equipment, and they give you a salary if you are good enough to make it. So being sponsored by an individual club that has deals with different sponsors is a very different approach. It is a more honest and controlled approach, because if a player is a good then it is in the club’s interest to keep him. Eric Owens, won the US Nationals, and soon after that he left Butterfly. He beat back the 2 Chinese players that have the most Nationals titles in recent history, and he did not get a pay upgrade, so he left. Whatever amount he was asking for, they did not give it. The same goes for Mark Hazinski, Razvan Cretu, and a few others. The main problem is the companies don’t really value the players. At least, not enough to get pay the players over 2400.

Killerspin has come in and done more to value the players, and most of the players that left Butterfly have gone to them. The roster is mostly Europeans and foreigners, but it is a move in the right direction.

So if American players don’t get paid a salary for winning or receive travel expenses or tournament entry fees, other than free gear there is no incentive. How does a sport grow if you can’t get paid to do it professionally?

Brian Pace at the US Open - photo by Robert Trudell of Outpost81.com

The players get paid a bonus if they win the Nationals Men’s Singles or Doubles, North American Championships, and a couple other events. I won 3 Collegiate Titles, and that is what is promoted on the “Brian Pace” racket, and I never got 1 bonus for that. Let me explain the numbers so you get a since of realism. I starting playing table tennis in 1986, and I officially started paying my own expenses in 1989, and it took me 10 years to win a National title, at the rate of $20K per year in expenses. After 10 years and approximately $200K in expenses my sponsor creates a product off my hard work and dedication, and has made over 1 Million Dollars in profits. That is why I got 1.5%, TOTAL.

That is how the industry positions the players. It’s to make money as much money off them as possible, and the reason Dynamic Table Tennis exists is for me to make money off my own hard work and dedication. It may seem like I’m bitter, but I’m not. I have accepted how the Table Tennis business world works in America. That is why I’m going to change it as I see fit.

Most of my peers have walked away disenchanted. The reason I had a long career is because I have always been planning this move. I did a 1 hour and 45 minute interview called, “I am Table Tennis”, and episode 1 is up at DynamicTableTennis.com. It explains that I have been working towards owning my existence and why it took me 15 years to get to this point. What may seem like bitterness is actually total acceptance that the rules are set up a certain way. What makes me and other ambitious table tennis professionals different was the choice we made to not play by those rules.

Not playing by the rules? How so?

The rules that are set in place favor the companies. They have all the keys, and we are sitting at the gate waiting to pass through to move on to financial reward in table tennis. We get sponsored by them, and they tell us the state of American Table Tennis based on the contract that they give us. If that is the case would we be informed that things have improved and it be reflected in your contract from a monetary standpoint? They get to choose if they want to pay a player.

I’ll tell you how I upset the balance. The conflict came when I asked Butterfly to sponsor the equipment for my Video Series, and I asked them for a tiny $1000.00 sponsorship because I did not want to give all that promotion for free. I upset the owner, and he said yes, but I would have to sign over the rights of my video to them. You are not following the rules when you go to the company that you have been sponsored by for 22 years and say, “Hey, how much do you want to pay to have your equipment in my videos.”

They don’t treat the association that way. They don’t go to USATT and say, “Because we are sponsoring the US Open, we want 98.5% of the entry fees.” They are fighting for that sponsorship of that event, not ownership of the profits. The video job I created with Butterfly was a job I fought for, and it took me over a year to get it.

I informed the company of what I was doing 1 year in advanced, so they knew. And, on top of that I offered this project to him at least 5 times, and he declined it every single time. I then mention that my racket royalties had never gone up in 10 years, and I was told, “Brian, for the racket royalties, there is NO money.” I then countered with, “On this Video Series, there is NO money”. And that was it. That was the last time I talked to anyone in upper management. After 22 years of loyalty I was told that, I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too.

At the moment that it seemed like I was going to shine bright and create something for myself, they wanted to end the relationship because they didn’t want to indirectly give me a worldwide platform. I understand that, but after 22 years, that is not how you end a relationship.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but somehow the companies are in on something, because I was aggressively asked to go to another company. To not do it on my own. Why would a company that I have been sponsored for my entire career make strong suggestions that I go to another company? The first thing it tells me that at the heart of it, they have no vested interest in me being successful. You would think if I created something that was truly mine, they would support me going off and being successful on my own. I still can’t wrap my head around that one 8 months removed.

Another way of not playing by the rules, is by making a move right past the companies and dealing with the world. Now, the world gets to choose if I can make a return on my 22 year investment. Players have historically got there financial rewards from the company they are sponsored by. That is exactly what it is, a reward which is based on performance. When the performance is over, so is the reward. I’m making an attempt to brand myself in the table tennis world with my logo the same way Michael Jordan branded himself. And to do that I will not let anyone choose how successful I’m going to be.

What I have experienced has led me to be believe that changing how the companies supplement the players that are committed to being a professional players has to change. Some people in my circle have not wanted me to talk about this publicly, because they think it will give them the impression I’m bitter. And I’m actually not, and if you ever sat down to talk with me one on one, you would feel my need to success, create something viable, and be responsible for table tennis being more popular.

The movement is bigger than Butterfly, because the sport belongs to the people. If the sport belongs to the people then that is the culture I want to reach. My angle in that movement is by teaching people how to play, but before that we have to talk about the bad culture in the sport.

That is how you change the rules.

It is obvious that the system needs to change, but how do you do that? What’s the first step?

It is hard to say what we need to do as a whole, but the DVD Series is me doing my part. There are some players that sit in the backseat, and there are some players that are in the driver’s seat. More players have to work towards creating their own existence from a financial standpoint.

If that happens, you will see more players having longer stints training abroad because they have a product or service that supplements them. You can’t change all the people, but you can change the culture. If all the players that were table tennis professional were creating their own products, then the culture would change. You would see a shift that favors players based on something that is real. If the public buys your product you are valid. If the public does not, then you have to go back and rethink your approach, your product, and your goals.

My goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire. That is the theme you will come away with from visiting my site each day. I want to turn it into a nice daily dose for the Table Tennis Junkie.

Brian Pace at the US Nationals - Photo by Robert Trudell of Outpost81.com

I recently found this Hard Bat Tournament that is going on in Delaware at local bars of all places. Originally they said that you could win a million dollars at the “National Championship in Vegas” (like its stated in the video), but then had an “oh crap” moment and changed it to $100,000 like its reflected on the webpage.

Now I find it interesting that a Food & Entertainment magazine out of Delaware and a beer company can somehow scrounge up $100,000 to pay beer drinkers to play at the National Championships, but the USATT can only afford to pay $3,000 for winning the Men’s Singles Championship. [Official Entry Form with prize payout] If I were Bud Light and donating $100,000 for a tournament, I’d want to make sure that event was packed out and well advertised.

Why is it we hardly see non-table tennis sponsors at major events like the US Nationals?

Through my research it’s one word, “Demographic”. In the process of going back to school to take classes in video editing I found that the demographic for table tennis is “White male, bald spot, and 45 years old.” That demographic will never get a Corporate sponsorship from XBox, Coco Cola, etc. I think once “Beer” comes into play it changes the demographic. Now, you are going to be attracting the type of people that go to football, baseball, and basketball events. The corporate office that approved this deal is not interested in high level table tennis, because it’s the wrong atmosphere. You will never see people playing a game of pick-up basketball and drink beer at the same time. I think they are marketing the group that can drink and play pool, foosball, darts, and table tennis with at hard bat. What they don’t know if all the USATT Members that play with the hardbat are going to scoop up all those spots, so the beer drinking people that love to play hardbat will get scorched by the average 1500 USATT Member.

So what advice would you give to a player who is training and wants nothing else than to be sponsored?

I would say for the player to really try to factor what they are getting as a sponsored player. It truly does seem as if being sponsored is the goal standard, but I have still yet to understand how it gives you the type of financial reward that would allow you to support your family. Butterfly passed up on a really good up and coming player a few years ago. His name is Michael Landers, and he is full of talent. He has a 2550 ranked player as a coach. He does not need to be sponsored, and I saw his mother all but beg for them to give their son a chance. They passed on it, but he still wears Butterfly. The way to catch their eye is to not wear their equipment, because it does not give them free promotion.

In a perfect world, how do you think sponsoring should work?

The ideal situation is for both parties to get something out of it. The sponsors need players, because it brings identity to their brand, and pushes the sales of their equipment. Without players to bring an identity to that blade, it is just a piece of wood. They value players enough to promote them to move their products, but not enough to pay them. The sponsors are standing on the shoulders of the players to exist, and giving something back to the players with true National or International potential is a way to change the culture.

How does one change it so that it benefits everyone?

If a player is on the National or International training pipeline, then they have to be compensated accordingly. I think that is a problem with that is value. I was talking with a table tennis executive that has a kid that is involved with another sport. He told me that his kid is ranked as one of the top athletes in the world. That kid has no sponsorship deal with any company, and that is because in that sport the culture does not demand it.

So how could that executive ever bring himself to give money to a kid that is 2400 with a lot of potential? His kid that has no sponsorship deal does not push a product, so not having a sponsorship has some justification. But the 2400 player that they are sponsoring has equipment that is being promoted. So the companies have to create some type of system of value, because they are not involved in the development of the player, but they are involved in the promotion (and profit) of the player. The players gets the glamour of being sponsored, but they are so concerned with how much equipment and clothing that they are getting, that they are never concerned with getting some type of money.

What made you create Dynamic Table Tennis?

I’ll tell you a quick story. In one of my Business & Ethics classes I kept having all these philosophical debates with my professor over the how corporate America takes more than they give. So my professor sent me to the public library to read a book, and he told me that we would not have another conversation about ethics until I read that book. It’s called Pimp: The Story of My Life, written by an actual pimp named “Ice Berg Slim”.

One of the most disturbing stories I read in the book forever changed my approach about any type of structure. In the story Ice Berg was having problems with one of his girls and an older pimp told him to beat her with a clothes hanger, make her a bath, and give her some pain pills, and he did. And she was so grateful that he made her a bath and gave her pain pills, that she forgot that he had beaten her up in the first place. That is what my professor wanted me to walk away with, and we never had another debate.

How did it relate to me, you ask? I had been sponsored by Butterfly my entire career and the $1100 I got a year from the 1.5% of the racket sales was like the pain pills. They were making over $100K, and the money I got was enough for me to still be grateful that I was getting something. That changed for me in 2004, but I couldn’t do anything about it yet. I had these training videos I had been sitting on for 10 years, and that is when I started to move onto program “PIMP MYSELF”.

Pimping yourself seems degrading, but it is everywhere. You see it when you see Jay-Z, Kimora Lee Simmons, P. Diddy, 50 Cent, Madonna, and Kim Kardashian. They are pimping themselves to the world, and in control. They are the face of the companies they own, and they run the company. They are not figure heads, they are the owners. So when you look at Dynamic Table Tennis, know that it has taken 15 years for me to create something that I’m pimping myself.

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