OOAK Table Tennis Forum

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My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

All the CTT-branded rubbers are under the deprecated list and lose authorization at the end of 2019. Did the manufacturer fold?

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Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )

Don't know but CTT, LKT and Gambler are all brands associated with Zeropong, who is introducing some type of new Japanese sponge. Maybe they're thinning out their catalog. Kinda sucks that all these rubbers will be banned without warning in two months.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

Wow, Pogo is going too...I thought that was quite a popular LP!

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Wonder what Rakza Z is going to be like. Any info on it so far?

Can't believe Zeropong stabbed their customers in the back like that. At least keep it on the LARC for a few years until people use up their supply. People may criticize Butterfly, but at least they support their products and customers.

_________________



The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

Since when is the CTT brand (or LKT for that matter) affiliated with Zeropong? They only claim to own Gambler, they're just an importer for the other brands they sell.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )

ITTF upped the yearly fees for keeping rubbers on the LARC significantly, which is probably responsible for this.

Remember, there used to be only a fee for the approval process, which is understandable, because it requires work and equipment. The yearly fees were added later as a money-grabbing tactic. Now they've upped the prices and the small companies cannot keep up.

I could imagine that the ITTF is being encouraged by the big companies that are also sponsors of the ITTF. Raising the entry barrier into the market and creating regulations that are too expensive for smaller competitors is a proven tactic in many fields. The current ITTF equipment manager used to work for ESN and Donic.
https://www.ittf.com/2018/09/28/ittf-ap ... t-manager/

Any idea what the new fees are? Either for initial approval of renewal per rubber?

The ITTF licensing fee for the first rubber on LARC 2019A increased from 1800USD to 3200USD. Every additional rubber is 220USD.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

Have they explained where the money will be invested to improve tt? maybe, they could invest the money to track down illegal boosting by the pros,... good idea right????

It's not just Pogo. Looks like CTT is going belly-up, since all four of their rubbers is on the "to become obsolete" list. Their rubber's been gone from AliExpress for a while now, I think they just ran out of it and decided to wrap up the business rather than pay for another production run.

Iskandar

Isn't this off by a factor of 10? I'd thought $32,000 would be more like it. $3,200 isn't a huge amount of money (only 32 sheets of Dignics..), although if you're a small company (perhaps like CTT) and sell less than, say, 1000 sheets a year it'd be significant. Similarly $220 would be peanuts, so it wouldn't be a sole reason for a company that sells a large variety of rubbers (like Gambler) to cut ONE sheet (like Reflectoid). If it was $2200 then that'd be a believable reason.

Of course, the total amount collected by ITTF for the entire LARC is a lot, but there is a lot to pay for. Just venue rent for a World Champs would dwarf it. Still, the amounts involved for table tennis as a whole would be a drop in the bucket compared to, say, (lawn) tennis or Formula One. As Marty Reisman wrote, table tennis is a penny ante sport. It still is, in this age of $100 rubber sheets.

Iskandar

That's what's so maddening. Gambler sold out Reflectoid users to save $220.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

If it really was $220, then that wasn't the reason.

Iskandar