OOAK Table Tennis Forum

According to gnopgnipster the annual licensing fees for rubbers (to keep them ITTF approved) has doubled this year. Has anyone seen this published anywhere?

This could lead to higher prices, especially for the smaller manufacturer where this cost is more significant. It would also discourage new manufacturers from starting up.

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Reminds me of a particular Dire Straits song that has an animated video.

If I were the ITTF, I too would want my MTV

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It will also lead to older/less popular rubbers being dropped from the ITTF LARC (LIST AUTHORISED RACKET COVERINGS) as manufacturers decide they can no longer justify producing them.

Dear Mr. Fruit Loop
Hear is the answer, I believe.

Anyone have an idea of how large these fees actually are? And has anyone confirmed that the license fees are being doubled? Wouldn't the guy who owns Gambler have heard of this, since he'd be one of the "victims"?

I don't think there are any truly small manufacturers. There are small BRANDS, but they get their rubbers from large OEMs - ESN, Daiki, and in China, probably 729, 999, Yinhe, DHS, probably one or two more. Still, the effects would be the same - small brands would find it more difficult to get going or to continue.

Iskandar

Yes I'd like to know the fees as well, it's hard to sort through all the ITTF paperwork and it does not seem to specify actual numbers. Hopefully one of the manufacturers can offer some help?

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Transparency! They have heard of it. Used to use multiple of them for presentations before death by powerpoint (not the shocking sort, the one spelt by the 3 letters N U I) came into vogue.

Somewhere in the basement in a disused toilet guarded by a stained sign "Beware of the leopard" is the answer to this and all the other questions that we have of the ITTF.

Things like what punishment is there for manufacturers that make and sell eggs (other defect types available) for 3 * ITTF approved 40+ balls? Similarly for changing rubber characteristics of ITTF approved rubber without fanfare.

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Retriever (sometimes golden, but often leaden)
Moderator, Inverted Retriever Technique sub-forum - http://ooakforum.com/viewforum.php?f=74

There's an active thread on this same topic over at mytabletennis.net where a contributor claims $1500 old price, $3000 new price *per color* meaning that it's now $6000 per year to get and keep a rubber ITTF licensed.

I'd like to hear response from Zeropong. He is the real man in the know of rubber/ balls production, not just a tale teller..
Is he still active on this forum?

Zeropong, DerMaterialSpezialist, SauerUndTroeger, Spinlord, we know a lot of rubber manufacturers. If anyone wants to respond to me privately with the information, I'll keep your name out of it.

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I am bit lost on this. If a rubber is non-ITTF approved, probably it will not be accepted in competitions.
But else, what would it miss?

Its marketability would be diminished and few, if any, manufacturers would want to continue production of such a rubber. Supplies would be limited to NOS (new old stock) at distributors and retailers until that was gone.

US$6000 is not a large amount for a business to pay for a product to be certified. I cant imagine that covering the $6000 certification fee would be the largest issue for companies. It's more likely the manufacturing costs and fees that would stifle these rubber sheets that sell poorly as that would be a much larger part of the production costs.

That being said, if you are looking to manufacture a rubber sheet and sell to a global market, I would imagine $6000 to be a small cost in a large pool of costs to make this happen. As well as it being part of a tax write off in most western economies for the production of the rubber sheets in question.

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In short, everything. People who actually buy rubber are the ones who either play in competition or play others who do, and care about whether rubbers are approved. Basement and rec room players don't buy rubbers, they buy pre-mades at Wal-Mart. Might be different in China, which is why you come across non-approved rubbers on AliExpress (e.g. Timo Boll Warheads).



I agree - I thought the figure we were talking about was at least five times that. $6000 would be what they pay their lowest-paid employee for maybe 4-6 months, their total payroll alone would be many times that. I suppose if you have a HUGE catalog of rubbers, like Andro does, it adds up to a substantial amount, however, a brand of this size sells a vast amount of rubber and can surely afford it. As has been pointed out many a time, table tennis is a penny-ante sport. I hate to think of what the tennis and golf equivalents of ITTF charge for approving, say, balls.

Iskandar

For manufacturers that produce low volume rubbers, like a some of the specialist pimple rubber, $6000pa is a significant amount. Note that this is the annual fee for which the ITTF does not actually do anything, this is not the initial fee for approval.

It's only in recent times that these fees were charged at all, 10 years ago (or less) all that was required was an approval fee, and it would stay on the list for at least 5 years, with no annual cost AFAIK.
It would be nice to see justification for an increase in this fee, because an increase just because 'the market can bear it' is not good enough IMO... don't forget that it's players like us that end up paying this money. Also, as mentioned before, the higher the fees the more likely manufacturers will remove rubbers from the list, which is a problem for both dealers and players.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide