FoosTalk Live | Ep 247 | Cam Burrows and Dan Packer

[00:00:00] The following is a presentation of Foosball Radio. It's FoosTalk Live. Are you talking to me? Compelling and lively banter. Are you going to talk to us? Talking Foosball. Foosball was how I measured my value as a man? You took that away! Players and fans, promoters and pros. Unedited and raw. Talk, talk, talk. Living in the moment. We have a lot of important things to talk about. All while practicing social distancing. Cool. We'll talk. No big whoop. Let's get this thing started.

[00:00:30] Foos Talk Live. Hi, this is Tom Robinson, and I want to personally thank our Patreon pillars for their support of Foosball Radio and Foos Talk Live. Here's to our newest members, Dan Packer. Also, Brad Lorene of Rodlock.com. Also, thanks to Randy Raposo, Thomas Dyke, Mike Veidt, Rob Cutler, Ernie Bischoff, James Sparky Castillo,

[00:00:58] Carl Fleischer, Carl Fleischer, Jay Teal, Brian Schmidt, Cameron Burrows, Jimmy Love, Dwayne Stewart, Judy Schober, Reid Rector, and our friends from the 716 Buffalo Foosball Club. Thank you. Your support brings continued and expanding content from Foosball Radio as we cover the greatest sport on earth.

[00:01:26] Visit patreon.com forward slash foosball radio to find out how to become a Foosball Radio Patreon. Foos Talk Live is brought to you by Original Leonhardt. The Leonhardt tournament model is the most popular foosball table at the ITSF World Cup. Designed and handcrafted in Germany, order online and have it delivered to your door.

[00:01:50] Visit www.original-leonhardt-usa.com and use promo code FOOSTALK to save 10% off your purchase price. And here we are, live yet again with Foos Talk Live. Hey there, I'm Tom Robinson. It's episode number 247. And we're going to talk about foosball as we always do. And of course, if you're going to talk about foosball, you may as well talk to somebody who really wants to talk about foosball.

[00:02:19] And that would be Randy Raposo from the great state of Alabama. Hello, Randy. Welcome back. Not to beleaguer, but how did things go last weekend? Are everything okay for you? Appreciate it. I listened to the show. Good stuff. And yes, that's, I mean, you know, just come back home and get right back to work. So I'm actually, I'm really excited for our guests tonight because one, they're one of our sponsors.

[00:02:47] And two, I finally pulled the trigger, ordered a table, and I'm really excited to talk about the process. I hope you use the promo code to get 10% off. You know, I did. Actually, so I tried to type it in twice, but it only worked once. Okay. But, you know, I'm from Massachusetts, Tom. If you're not cheating, you're not trying. So, right?

[00:03:17] Anyway, so I, you know, I just, I want to talk about the process. I want to talk about the table. And I want to talk to these guys. Yeah. Awesome. Well, without further ado, then let's, let's welcome in from originally in heart.com. Of course, with Cam Burrows and Dan Packer. Welcome. Welcome back to the show, guys. Great to have you back once again. What's happening, Dan? What's happening, Cam? Yeah. Thanks for having us. It's nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome.

[00:03:46] And so, so Randy is now an official Leonhart, you know, he's a Leonhart devotee. You want to, let me see, let me see if I can show you. So I got the tornado right there. And then I got the Leo right there. Oh, nice. I got them. I got them stacked up in my office. My wife doesn't give me a lot of room. So I got them. I got them stacked up in here just right. So I can go from one to the other. And you could see, you could see my rods touching the wall right there. Like it's just right.

[00:04:16] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nobody else. I mean, if somebody else comes over, we got to do a little maneuvering, but I don't really care. They're for me. So. Good stuff. It looks very similar to my living room. Can't turn the camera, but I got tornado right there and a Leo right there. Nice. Nice, nice. Oh, yeah. Way to do it. Oh, yeah. It's a nice. So for anybody listening who's on the fence thinking about it, I ordered the table on a

[00:04:45] Monday, went to the website, super easy, picked out my cabinet color, men color, got a light, did the whole thing, obviously used the promo code, foos talk, got 10% off. Immediately, once the order was complete, I got notification. Um, so obviously I had to go out of town for some personal reasons, but it, it, it was a week from door to door.

[00:05:14] Wow. A week. That's great. Man. Especially now, nowadays, that's pretty, pretty remarkable. It was a week. Yeah. Talk about service. Yeah. Yeah. And then, well, and it had to clear customs. Uh-huh. Randy, of course, just described his, his experience with, uh, purchasing a table, you know, through original Lee and Hart. Uh, and, and of course, uh, you guys made that happen. I mean, a week, is that typical of, of the time that it takes to get a table? Yeah.

[00:05:43] It depends on where it's going in the States. Uh, but we're shipping everything out of Toronto and we have all reliable shipping routes and it usually takes anywhere from two to seven business days. Wow. It doesn't count weekends, but, um, we typically ship on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sometimes we make special exceptions and we can to get tables out faster. Gotcha. But in this case, we were shipping the next day.

[00:06:09] And so we saw the order come in, put it on the pallet, wrapped it all up. So shipping had it picked up the next day and I hope that process runs smoothly because we haven't had any complaints about that, but we do all the deal with all of the customs broker import export stuff. So you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately they took all of the drugs out of the table. Um, so I, the, the, the, the, we tried our best.

[00:06:37] I appreciate it, but no, everything, like I said, it would have been, uh, so it actually, it, it, it cleared customs. I got the, um, cam was gracious enough to share all the tracking information with me. It cleared customs in less than 24 hours. And then it was in Birmingham by Friday. Uh, the problem was, and I called them, I was like, I'll come up there and pick it up. I'll throw it in the back of my SUV. And they were like, they were like, well, you know, technically it hasn't come off the truck yet. We don't have it. So they're like, we'll deliver it on Monday.

[00:07:06] They, I mean, the process was super easy. I scheduled an appointment. They gave me a window. And what's even funnier, Tom, Tom will understand. But the guy that delivered the table to my house is actually, he said, where are you from, man? I said, Massachusetts. He said, where in Massachusetts? I said, small city in, uh, Southeastern mass. He said, me too. Uh, I have family. I said, where? He said, new Bedford. I said, dude, I said, you're pulling my leg. He's actually from the same, from the same city. I was born and raised in.

[00:07:33] So it's just such a small world, but it is, uh, got the table, got the, got the table to the front door. Uh, Folsom came to the house. Like I said, the way the tables are engineered, I, it makes me want to buy a BMW because the German engineering is unbelievable. We put the table together in 20 minutes. Um, all the weights and the legs, like the legs weigh like 30 pounds. I mean, it's just the table is about concrete or concrete right inside the metal. And they cut and weld everything themselves at the factory. Wow. It's very well done.

[00:08:03] Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, the cabinets all one piece, the ball returned. I mean, everything. And it's not MDF. It's solid wood. Do you notice that? It's a real deal. Yes. Yeah. Dude. I look, I was, you know, it's the corner of the goals and how there's a nice piece of metal. Metal. Yes, sir. Yeah. Dude. I'm telling you, look, and then, and then the way, so the way that the cabinet came, I'm like, where are the rods? And then I picked the cabinet up and all the rods actually stored under the table.

[00:08:31] There's clips that hold the rods with the men built in. Beautiful. I told my wife, so I'm in my doorway. I have like a sunken doorway and I'm in there with the table and I'm like hugging the table and I'm talking to my wife. And, and I said, I said, I think, I said, I think I'm creeping the neighbors out. You do that anyway. What is wrong with you? Oh, I said, you got to see this thing. I said, I'm in love, man. And then Chris and I, Chris, look, Folsom came to the house.

[00:09:00] He's like, I got to figure out my setup because I got to get one. He wants to get one now because cool, but he's got Chris has Chris has a crazy setup at his house, but he look for anybody listening. Chris Folsom's an amazing pool player. He's got a beautiful pool table in his base. He's got two tornadoes. He's trying to maneuver now to make room for one of these. So, uh, I mean, if anybody's on the fence to pull the trigger, this table is amazing. It really is a beautiful, beautiful.

[00:09:27] And, uh, now's the time we'll have five of them at the Texas tournament. Ooh, let's go. There you go. Those five are up for grabs, except only four are left. Warren Van Landingham Jr. Has got one of them. Somebody's already got one. Okay. He's got first pick. He's got first pick. That makes sense. Is it the, is it the black cabinet or is it like, are they different cabinet, different specs, or is it all just the black cabinets? We'll send whatever you want. If you want the Zeus table, we'll bring that one down. Wouldn't that be something?

[00:09:55] Have you seen the Zeus table or the, uh, elements of foosball? No. They're awesome. I don't know if I can share my screen. Some people can look it up anyways on our site. That is, does, does, uh, Lee and Hart, do they do wraps? Do they do like custom wraps and things like this? Yep. They do custom for any business or school or anything? Cam's been dealing with that. That's neat. That's, that's, that's, yeah. They're not for wraps. They're actually printed, but super high quality print. Yeah. It's a wonderful side.

[00:10:24] Um, so, so how'd you guys, how'd you, how'd you get into this? Like what made you go? All right, let's just, let's start pushing Lee and Hart's over here. Like, what was the, you know, what was the premise? What was the idea behind this whole thing? Go ahead, Dan. Um, we got a great community out in Quebec and these guys love Bonzini, but they also love other tables too, like Tornado. And they've always loved Lee and Hart.

[00:10:53] They go over there over the years, play on Lee and Hart in Europe and they always come back like, man, we got to get Lee and Hart's over here in Canada. And so we've known we needed to do this. And, uh, when Cam and I ended up, uh, you know, hitting COVID, we weren't able to promote in our respective cities. So I was running Toronto foosball here in Toronto and he was running Vancouver foosball. And we decided to work together on a project to help Canada foosball make some money because

[00:11:22] historically we've only been able to raise funds from tournaments. So we decided let's put together a little e-commerce shop. We're getting all the ads on Instagram. It's so easy. We'll set up in two hours and they'll be fine. Obviously it took many, many, many hours, but we got it up and it started to generate a little bit. So we decided to reach out to Valley and see if we can get distribution for Tornado because these games room stores around the corner are gouging us all across the country.

[00:11:48] And if we can get distribution, we can help out all the promoters get tables at cost. So we did that and we got Tornado. And then I guess someone in Europe caught wind of it and we ended up talking, talking with Marcus Schultz, great dude. Out in Germany. And he hooked us up with Leonhardt. We started talking to them about what we're doing. We're trying to get, promote the sport in Canada and whatever way we can. And they decided to work with us to get our first shipment of Leonhardt's over here.

[00:12:15] And we ran a big tournament and we've been promoting Leonhardt ever since. That's great. Great. Well, it makes a huge difference. I'm curious, Cam. I know you work with schools and kids. Which table do the young players like better? Is it the Tornado or do they like the Leonhardt better? Well, I'm going to lean on Farid's answer from the ITSF here.

[00:12:41] Because it was the first time that I heard what I now believe could be the only correct answer. And the best table is the table that you learned on. There you go. You can't tell someone who played Bonzini their entire life that Tornado's better. They're just not going to hear it. Right. So I do think it comes down to experience and what you play with first. The, where, like, biased a little bit. But I think that Leonhardt is much better suited for schools.

[00:13:09] Just for the setup, the teardown, the quick removal of the rods, and the lack of maintenance. Yes. And to step back a bit, Dan and I started as promoters first. And where I'm promoting and where Dan's promoting, we have Tornado's and Leonhardt's in the same place. And across the entire country of Canada, with all of the promoters, I believe only three players have broken. Oh. And it's because there was a bubble in the mold. Whereas I've broken bumpers.

[00:13:39] I shoot a lot of slingshots that I can be a bit aggressive sometimes. I've broken bumpers day one. Like, literally swapped the bumper out. And then 20 minutes later, I've had to swap another bumper. I've never broken a bumper on Leonhardt. Huh. Man. It comes down to what they play. Like, if... I can't deny Tornado's game. I love the tic-tac. Like, my foosball style is a Tornado style play. And it plays so good. So I can't say... Honestly, I think it's whatever one they get. I think foosball...

[00:14:08] I've said this many times. Not on here yet. But I believe in the game. I don't think that there's a right answer. Like, if Leonhardt and Tornado shut down, I'm still playing foosball. Yes. You know? Like... Right. It's not the manufacturer that I love. It's the game of foosball that I love. But kind of a political answer, I suppose. But I think it's whatever you start with. I like Leonhardt for the setup and the easy teardown and the durability. Yeah. I mean, just for schools. Yeah. What schools have to go through.

[00:14:37] In other words, they typically have, you know, space. But they... You know, it's the maintenance, I think, is the toughest part. Because kids are... You know, kids are kids. They play and do stuff that may not necessarily be something you would normally do in a pro setting. But if it's easy to clean, easy to take apart, easy to reassemble, whatever the case, I can see where the Leonhardt would have a little bit of an advantage when it comes to the youth of foosball. Just saying.

[00:15:06] 20 minutes, Tom. 20 minutes, Tom. 20 minutes. It's the first time setup. It'll be even faster the next time. Because your nets are in, your ball returns in, or your ball serving cup is in. 16 bolts. And less than... Easy less than five minutes to take the rods out. That's great. Wow. You snap the rods underneath the table. Yeah. And it's gone. Dude, I mean, the bearings, it was one, two, three, four. It was eight screws you take off. Yeah, the bearings come apart.

[00:15:36] You slide the rod out. You put the bearing back in. As opposed to... Like, even the bearing design, it's like... Game. Game was plugged here. Engineering. Anyone listening, I've made a video. So, the question that Dan and I get at the shop all the time is the customer... Again, most of our customers aren't competitive players. They could just be someone with a games room or their office. They always ask, like, which table's right for me? Yep.

[00:16:05] I made a video breaking down the difference between the T3000 and the Leonhardt tournament. And I've had a lot of feedback on that video. So, anyone listening, if you haven't seen the Leo, I believe that video does a pretty good job. I missed a couple points, but overall, you'll see the removal of the rods. You'll see the metal goal. I try to cover all the points there. Now, is that on your website, on the original Leonhardt? Yep. Nice. Both. I don't know if it's on original Leonhardt.

[00:16:33] It's on Canada Foosball Shop, for sure, because we sell both Tornado and Leonhardt. Okay. Whereas on original Leonhardt, we don't have distribution rights for Tornado in the States. And we're not trying to target that market. There's enough people doing that. Also, the YouTube channel's Foosball Fanatic. You can find it there. But just a quick search of Leonhardt versus Tornado, and Google will get you right to it. Cool. Yeah. It's a good video. I've seen it. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:00] I also want to add on the kids thing. Like, Leonhardt, the ball is a lot slower when you tick it around. It's like kind of grippy on the play surface more than Tornado. Like, the Tornado, you can do that really fast tic-tac on the five bar. It's a lot more challenging, like some would say impossible to do at that speed on Leonhardt. Sure. But that makes it really easy for kids to see what happened every time they touch the ball.

[00:17:28] You know how every touch is an adjustment to keep the ball under ball control? Every time you touch it is a bit of an adjustment. Keep it under the bar. If the ball is moving slower, it's easier to see what happened after each touch. And so I think for that reason, Leonhardt is easier for kids to learn. That makes sense. It's just everything's slower. Yeah. And grippier. You don't have to worry about it, like, squeezing out as much. Tornado's very precise in that pinch point. Got a little bit more wiggle room with Leonhardt and then even more with Bonzini, right?

[00:17:57] Like, the Bonzini pinch point is an inch. Very tiny. As long as you're in with it. Yeah. No, I noticed, especially lately, with the inconsistency of the Valley Dynamo balls for Tornado, you know, pinching the ball is even worse because sometimes the balls are just too slick. They're just not, you can't grab them. Even some of the newer balls where if they've been played on a few times, they've just become very slick at times. And Leonhardt, I've forgotten who it was.

[00:18:26] I think it was Miriam Ali might have said that it's kind of a cheat because, well, Leonhardt is just too easy to play on. Like, well, why is that a negative? I have a theory about this because for those that have experienced the World Cup and seen all those countries, I don't believe Germany has ever won a gold medal. I think it's because every other country is comfortable on Leonhardt.

[00:18:52] The teams that are winning, Garlando teams, Tornado teams, where you have a clear advantage on your table. But I feel like anybody that's played any of the five tables goes to Leonhardt. They see a Leonhardt matchup, they go, OK, yeah, I can play that. Yep. The pins work, the chips work, the pull shot works, the snake, like everything kind of works. I even do my Tic Tacs on the five, not as dominantly as I do on Tornado, but I do a weave and a Tic Tac on the five on Leo.

[00:19:20] Like everything's doable on Leonhardt. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Like, ah, we can steal a game on Leonhardt. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. As opposed to going from Tornado to Bonzini. The transit. And again, like I'm literally going, I'm shooting five balls here, I'm shooting five balls here, and I'm going back and forth to trying to see, like, how hard is it to transition? The touch is different, of course. It's a different table. They're not the same table, but the transition is not difficult.

[00:19:51] It's not. It's not difficult. Yeah, shoot five rollers on Bonzini table and then go to Tornado and see if you can even hit the ball. Like, it's a completely different feeling, but everybody on Leo, they spend five minutes warming up to just adjust that pinpoint because it's a little bit higher. Or a little bit lower, sorry. Yeah, you just, yeah, adapt quickly. Yeah. Garlando, like, I try to do my five bar on Garlando. It's not even, it doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:21] It's, no, but again, I, I had an expectation and the table far exceeded what I was expecting. You know, I mean, cause I, I touched the table before Texas state a few years ago. Like to have one there all the time. Mike Stahl has one up. He had one at the great lakes classic. You know, there have been tournaments where we have them there. And I, I always love playing on different tables and I love the feel of the table.

[00:20:48] And, but I, I don't think I've ever, I don't know what models they had, but I, you know, I looked at the different models, the weight. That's another thing you guys do on your website. That's great. The specifications are there. You know, the, the differentiation between the tables. And so I basically looked at, you know, the weight, um, what each table offered.

[00:21:12] And I was like, I'm, this is what I'm going to do because essentially I would love to go participate in a Leonhart tournament. And if I'm going to, then I want to play on the same equipment. I mean, I have a, I have a coin op tornado table behind me, right? Why would I not buy the, the tournament model if that's what I'm going to try to hopefully one day compete on. And, um, it's, well, listen, if we could get Valley Dynamo to get some German engineers, the tornado table.

[00:21:43] It's not, it's not difficult though. That's the thing. It's the back wall of the cabinet on the tornado T 3000. You make that out of Oak instead of MDF. You don't have a ever break that corner. You'll never break the corner. Just change the material. It can be the exact same dimensions, but it just won't break. Add it as an upgrade option at least please. But that's the thing, Dan. Yeah, but then, then the company doesn't make more money.

[00:22:13] That's the problem, right? They, they only make, they make this much money instead of this much money. And it's like, there's a, there's like, and obsolescence is a thing for sure. I agree. But there's like, yeah, there's a limit, right? And their limit is a bit further and Leonhart's limit isn't on, on the board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And that's the thing. If, if they made this table, this table, the way they make that table,

[00:22:38] if they charge four or $5,000 for people would still buy it because they know you get what you pay for. I mean, I, I would spend the money. Add a thousand dollars for Oak backplate. Let's go. It's going to guarantee the last 10 years. Let's go. At least have the option, right? People are going to pay it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we've realized in running the shop for a few years. Like you get all sorts of customers, right? Lots of people are like, you know, have a budget and they're working on that.

[00:23:06] And other people are like, I want the best thing in the world. And you can't even offer that as a product. Come on, Ali. I know. I had one thing here before I get too far off topic. Sure. With the Leonhardt, when you were going through each model, Randy, and comparing the weights and everything, there is a difference between buying tables in Europe and buying a table in North America because Dan and I are biased towards competitive play. Everything that we've done is trying to grow competitive play.

[00:23:35] So if you were to buy the pro home model in Europe, they have different bearings. They have the bearings or the, sorry, the bumpers with the washers. You know, they have, they have the rings on like the TS tables. Yeah. Some of the Leonhardt tables have that. And they also have non-counterbalanced players on some of the tables. Huh. But any table that comes into North America, Dan and I automatically upgrade to have all of the tournament parts. That's great. So if you're buying a pro home model, it does have the tournament bearing or tournament

[00:24:04] bumper, tournament players, just because we know the difference it makes. Like to me, it's crazy to spend thousands of dollars on a table and not have counterbalanced players. Mm-hmm. Have them fall down. Unless that's the design. If you got Bonzini with a metal foot, that's different. Of course. But to your point, there are lots of different customers and some people might prefer that. So for instance, the Leonhardt winter retro table, it comes with wooden hand-painted men,

[00:24:34] like players. Wooden men. And they look awesome, but they're made of wood. And I'm just like, why would I ever play with this? So we don't even order them with the wooden players. We put the KL players, the proper tournament players on this table. What? Because I feel like a customer is going to open this up and they're not going to understand what foosball even is. Yeah. With these wooden players and they're round and weird, but some people might prefer that because they're more artistic and don't care. More ornamental?

[00:25:03] We have to cater to them too. Or more, like it looks really cool when it's made of wood, but functionality is kind of like, I mean, we prioritize that. We're very biased. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, and that's the great part about having players who are also promoting and pushing a product. Yes. Right? You understand what other players want and that's the great thing about it. So, you know, again, is it called the yacht?

[00:25:32] That wooden table? The yacht. Have you seen the video where I installed it for a guy in Quebec? No. Oh, check it out on Instagram. I had the pleasure of driving seven hours with this yacht table in my Honda Civic because I didn't trust the logistics companies if they crashed or like if they dropped it or anything, I was just not going to risk it. So I put in my Honda Civic hatchback and I drove out to Quebec to this guy's ski chalet.

[00:26:00] It's not like, you know, renting an Airbnb. He owns the hill. He owns a couple of the runs. It's ski chalet. It's like his cottage. You know, some people have a cottage. He's got his own fountain. Whoa. Anyways. Dude. I get there, drive up. I carry it up there with him and I installed it. Man, this thing is hands down the most beautiful foosball table I've ever seen in my life. Wow. I was sweating buckets putting it together. The video can attest to that. It is solid oak through and through.

[00:26:30] The score beads, little tiny pieces of solid oak. The bearings, little pieces of solid oak. The handles, solid oak. The whole cabinet, the legs, everything. So beautiful. Christian and his brother, Andreas, is the one who actually builds it over in Germany. Andreas needs a full week to make each one because he's a wood, like a master craftsman with this product. That he puts it in with his hands, like it makes these things amazing. That is the coolest. Yeah, I got to see it in person.

[00:26:58] But then also you play on it and it feels just like the tournament model. Okay. Really. You're like, okay. I mean, I don't want to hit a slingshot right now, but like kind of do. Just go for it. It plays just like it. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. The net is a little bit different. Yeah. Because the Leonhardt tournament model you have, Randy, you can see that there's like the raised goal, which pushes the goalie all the way back. Yeah.

[00:27:25] On tornado, the goalie goes further than is what is needed to block the net because the ball could sneak behind. Yeah. Without the raised net, they don't cut a hole in the yacht cabinet. So the rod is further out away from the net, similar to your tornado. And that means that the player has to go further to get behind to block the balls that try to trickle in behind from the ramp side. Okay. There's a slight difference, but other than that, it has to be forward so that the player can do a full rotation.

[00:27:55] Yeah. Otherwise, it would just get hit at the top of the crossbar. Maybe you played Roberto Sport where they hit. The player hits the goal on Roberto Sport. You can't spin the goalie around. It will hit the net. Leonhardt doesn't hit the net. That's why they cut out that piece, and that's why they put the plastic goal higher up to give full range for the player to spin. But they didn't want to cut the solid oak cabinet. But there's a few Leonhardt models that the goalie position is a little bit different. But I kind of like it better, to be honest.

[00:28:25] Yeah. Obviously, it's not what you'll play on in a tournament. So if you're going to compete on Leonhardt, I would recommend playing the model that's going to be at the tournament. But the downfall with the single goalie is that dead zone. But when the player can go further, that dead zone shrunk. Okay. It's a lot faster a play. You don't have that inch where it just doesn't move very much and gets stuck.

[00:28:48] It seems Leonhardt is practicing what should be practiced for every manufacturer of foosball tables, which is referred to as mass customization. So you want a table. You want specific specs. You say, I need this, this, this, this, and this, and they put it together for you. And you've got, like you say, Dan, the best table in the world. You know, it's the, it's. We do that ourselves as well here.

[00:29:14] So last shipment, we got a ton of score beads, all different colors. Cool. Tons of players, all different colors. And we actually shipped four tables to a school in Michigan for Foosball Clubs USA recently. Their colors are black and orange. So I went in there and I took all the score beads off, put orange on, took all the players out, put orange ones in. Fantastic. So they had custom table colors to match their school. Yeah.

[00:29:36] And then this other one, we're actually working on a yacht right now where the company wanted to match the stain of this oak to their wallpaper. Oh. So they shipped a piece of the wallpaper to Germany. In Germany, they look at the wallpaper and picked up the stain, did a little bit of a test sample. It looks pretty good. Took a picture, sent back to the customer and they confirmed that looks great. They do a custom stain on their yacht. Dang.

[00:30:02] And instead of having the wooden yacht engraved in the side, they put their custom company logo engraved in the side. See, there you go. There you go. Wow. This is... Can't wait to see that installed. Yeah, that does sound intense, man. That's awesome. I'm thinking my wheels are turning now. I was like, Randy, we need a custom table made for foosball radio. That's what we need. I can... Yeah. I'll make room in my house if you want to get it. Okay.

[00:30:31] I know you got the space. So... I'll just stick it... I'll stick it in the middle of these two. Yeah. We'll figure it out. Wouldn't that be fun? We could sort it out. We could... Well, I mean, look, I'll put it somewhere, Tom. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I'll make it happen. Well, see, then what we got to do is take it with us on the road. You know, take it to all the different tournaments. And then people have to challenge us, you know, as a team. No. I don't want foosball players touching my table. No way. Uh-uh.

[00:30:59] Maybe Dan can expand on that. He actually created a mobile version that can break new tournaments easily. Oh, really? So just how easy yours is to tear down. He's got wheels. I'll let Dan elaborate on it. But a great option for mobile tables. We got a special one from Jeremy in our last shipment that actually has on one end of it, it has... Okay. So imagine, like, this is the table, right?

[00:31:27] On one end of it, there's two rollerblade wheels that are actually casters that rotate a little bit. So you can lift the table and wheel it around. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. And so I show up with this table at the big Leonhardt tournament in Montreal a couple months ago. So... And it's in the... Again, back of my Honda Civic has taken, like, hundreds of tables over the years. Oh, my God. It's doing a good job. I pulled it out, and Lynn Tran's there.

[00:31:53] So she takes a video of me literally wheeling the table from my trunk all the way in, down the elevator, into the tournament room, and within 10 minutes, again, just like you said, Randy, super easy to set up. But this one, you don't even need the Torx wrenches because the leg bolts have grip for your hand. So there's 16 of them, and you just pop them all in. The legs come in a custom bag. They're like a duffel bag that fits them perfectly with a zipper pocket inside with the screws.

[00:32:24] And I had the legs in the duffel bag over my shoulder, and I wheeled the table all the way in. Set it all up in about 10 minutes. Damn. And people were playing. Great little table. The little wheels pop off, and then the legs go on, and that's it. The rods snap to the bottom, just like you mentioned earlier. All the rods snap to the bottom, so it's perfect. The only thing is, it doesn't have any protection around the cabinet when I'm moving it in my car and stuff like this. Okay. So stay tuned on Instagram.

[00:32:54] We'll get some stories going because I'm currently working with a case manufacturer company in Toronto here that is making a custom case for this table. Oh. So that it's just going to go in the case, zip up, and then go into anyone's SUV or truck or trailer, whatever. We'll be able to rent these tables out by the day instead of typically we do rentals like by the month or three month rentals. Let's go. But this is so easy to set up.

[00:33:20] A guy can just come pick this up, bring it to a bachelor party, put it back in the bag, bring it back to us. So we're hoping that this will take off. One person. One person. Set up. It's easy. It's not that heavy. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. No tools at all. It's all hand screwed in and everything. Yeah. There's a. That's perfect. Instead of the torques, it's literally just a knob that's finger. Like finger tight is enough. Four bolts per leg. It makes it simple. Wow. That is really something.

[00:33:49] And all the legs still have leveling feet. So as soon as you set up, all the feet are up and then you figure out what corner needs to go. Adjust that corner and it's done. That's another thing. Tom, Tom, the feet, the leveling feet are like, they're like a hard rubber. That's not like the tornado ones that are plastic. Like, dude, this, I'm telling you, man. This is an AMG. It's a slide. Tornado slides. Yes. This is an AMG 63 right here, Tom. You have no idea. I'm telling you. I get you. I get the equivalence. Absolutely. Oh, man. Jeez.

[00:34:37] We also have full-time jobs and multiple. We're spinning some other plates. We were really hoping to share some other news. I spoke to Randy about it briefly, but we're not quite at the stage where we can announce publicly, but we've been working on something really big. I actually have told you, Tom, as well. Yes. In my last podcast. We're working a lot with schools and we've got some big plans for schools and we're very close. Excellent. Yeah. I wish we had the ability to announce it today because I've honestly, we've been working

[00:35:05] on this for years, but big things are coming. I mean, when it does happen, we can take that moment to get together again on air and definitely make the announcement right here. You know, let's, let's do that. We'll make plans for that. Or if we're in a tournament together and you can reveal the news at the tournament, that'd be even better. But all the above, it could be as early as Vegas. Like it might, I was thinking it could have been ready as for this one.

[00:35:33] A teaser is if successful, which I'm leaning, I fully believe it will be successful. I'll be quitting my job and doing full-time school. Let's go. There you go. Full-time foosball with a huge focus on schools. Living a dream, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Man. Who knows what the tour looks like in 20 years if we can do this right? Oh, dude. Right? Yeah. It's stupid stinking pickleball. How's pickleball in Canada?

[00:36:03] Is it big in Canada? People love it. It's too big. Literally. They're tearing down a famous skate park where I'm from to replace it with pickleball courts. Pickleball. Oh, dude. Yeah. The reason is it's a big bowl. So like it's really hard. It's a really advanced skate park. So not a lot of people go and it's not right in the heart of the city. So you lose a lot of like the core people. So the government just sees it not being used that much, even though the people that love

[00:36:30] it, like really love it, like really love it, but you've got a retired population in that area and those guys love pickleball. So we're losing a famous skateboard for a pickleball court. Leonhardt needs to figure out how to manufacture an outdoor table that they can like concrete into the ground at these parks. Bring your own rods in. Yeah. There you go. I saw, I saw a video. You can take an Leonhardt to a park and tell people you give them a hundred bucks if they could beat you. I saw that video.

[00:37:00] I should have brought lube for that. I left that all day. Yeah. I plan on doing that again. I've got a few videos in mind. The school stuff took priority, but yeah, the Leo is so easy to just like in the back of my truck, get someone to help me carry the cabinet set up in 10 minutes. Yeah. Wow. It's beautiful. Honestly, I had a lineup all day. Like I played out there for like five hours and there was not a moment where it was dead. That's awesome. Okay.

[00:37:28] Even one guy, he came out and I guess he used to play in the eighties and he's like, you're going to beat me because I haven't played in years, but I really want to see like where your game's at. And then he started talking. I was like, Oh, do you know this player? And this player is literally from the same hometown as people that I play with locally here and have known for over a decade. Cool. And he started playing like just that one encounter re-sparked this for this guy. And now he came out and played again after like 30 years of not playing.

[00:37:58] He's back into it. He's back into it. Not every, not every week, but he, he did come out a little bit. Sweet. Yeah. But it's like, yeah, you're just walking down the beach one day and all of a sudden something he did 30 years ago just got brought into his face again. Remember how much he loved it. We just got a link up on, just got a link up on our, our Twitch TV feed here. There's a link for an outdoor table in San Francisco. It's a, it's a video apparently from H A I C D.

[00:38:27] I'm not sure who that is in, in, in, in Twitch land, but thank you for. Don't, don't, don't, don't click that link, Tom. Don't click that link. You never know. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. No. But it claims it's a, it's an outdoor table in San Francisco. So there you have it. There's a, there's. Orlando makes some outdoor options. We were in Spain. We saw some concrete ones that did not play. You couldn't even like, if that's what you were introduced to, none of us would play foosball. It's just not the same thing.

[00:38:58] Got it. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, you said something earlier about, um, you know, what Farid had said and all that stuff. And, and so Mario or Rigonello had said something years ago that always stuck with me. And, uh, he said, I don't play tornado. I play foosball. And, uh, that just always stuck with me, man. Especially like the multi-table stuff. If you look at the best players in the world, um, they all play multi-table foosball.

[00:39:28] Yes. And I, I, I've always felt like in order for me to improve, I need to start playing on other tables. So, uh, you know, I spoke to a few players, um, and I just asked them like, Hey, you know, I, I kind of want to try to get to the next level. What do I need to do? You know, I, I, I was thinking about getting another table and, and, uh, they were like, get a Leonhardt. So, uh, my testament to it as a player, not like obviously biased. We sell Leonhardt, but you can look at my results.

[00:39:58] Like everything's public, right? You can see where I placed in Vegas in 2013. As soon as I got a Leonhardt in my life and started practicing on Leonhardt, my tornado game went through the roof. Wow. Um, that's just learning what I learned, my weave and my tic-tac on the five bar on Leonhardt to the point where I'm comfortable enough to do it in a world cup setting and singles, like played my exact same style of game. My tornado, when I go back and do the tic-tac on tornado, I have this much of a foot. Like it's great. I can just play.

[00:40:28] I'm so much more confident on it. Um, and you learn what works on all tables before I was only doing tic-tacs and a snake shot. I can't shoot. I still can't shoot a snake shot on Bonzini. As soon as I learned a chip pass and a pull shot, that seemed to work on every single table. So like you said, once you learn what, like you find what works everywhere and you can just focus in on those areas and it really, yeah, you can refine your game to be like

[00:40:56] super effective if you can choose the right options. There's like some things are just easier on one table than another table, right? Like I actually found, I always shoot pull shot on tornado. That's how I've always, I started as a goalie. So I was ripping pull shots from the back and I just brought that to my forward game. And then once we, I got a Leonhart and I decided to start messing with the snake again. I literally tribute my snake to Leonhart cause I didn't have one on tornado until I learned it on Leonhart.

[00:41:25] And once I could figure out how to release it and hit it and everything on Leonhart, all of a sudden I just had it on tornado. They didn't practice anymore on tornado. I didn't do any more drills until after I figured out on Leonhart. I'm like, wait, can this work over here? And it's the same thing with Bonzini and the chip passing. I didn't know how to chip pass on tornado until I learned it on Bonzini. And all of a sudden I'm chip passing on tornado all the time. People don't expect that. Nasty chip. Yeah. What about you, Randy? Have you noticed anything that's easier or more difficult?

[00:41:54] Like, you know, you haven't had the right ball because of a slip up, but our apologies. No, and that's okay. I had like an old warrior ball that I threw in there and it's been fine. But I started shooting some backpins and it feels pretty good. Cool. It feels pretty good. But so the rollover on the Leonhart, I find that if I'm just smooth, right? Not focused.

[00:42:22] Like, you know, tornado, you just, you can kill the ball on tornado. But on Leonhart, if I try to kill the ball, it's going everywhere. But if I'm just like, I'll just focus on being smooth. The ball, I have so much control and I can just kill the ball. And then I go over to tornado and it's the same concept where I'm just focusing on being smooth. And it's like, I feel like my shot, I think I hit the ball pretty hard, but I feel like I just, it goes up almost like just a hair.

[00:42:51] And the two, like shooting pull shots on a Leonhart, like dude, you could just spray the ball. It's insane. Oh, it's, yeah, it's insane. I love, I love a chip pass. I'm a, I'm a big fan of chip passing. So going onto Leonhart and doing chip passes, it's, it's, I, you just, I mean, you can just chip it so fast and so hard, run out there and grab it. But, um, but I've been, I've been doing, yeah, dude. And I, I, so I've been doing ball control drills on my Leonhart and now going over to tornado

[00:43:21] and I just feel like I just catch everything. Huh? Like, yeah, I caught a cold two days ago. I wasn't, I was just, it's just everything. It's just, you just catch everything. I mean, it's, it's definitely, I feel like it's going to make a huge difference in, in my game. And that's, that's the whole point. That's why I spent the money. It's definitely going to have an impact. I'm thankful. And, uh, yeah, I'm down on the smooth. Yeah. Yeah. That's it, man. I repeat a mantra in my head.

[00:43:50] Um, I can share this part during the school stuff. I built the curriculum. I've got a 12 week video series designed specifically for students and it's for someone that's never played the game before. I want to give them, I start with a broad overview and I get a little more specific and just do an offensive overview than a defensive. And then I go offense and defense episodes, three bar, five bar, two bar. I go singles versus doubles.

[00:44:15] Um, I try to cover everything and I repeat so many times in the lessons like slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I don't know how many times I've tried to over muscle something in a tournament. Maybe it's meatball and I need this goal and I hit the post cause I'm just trying to rip it. But I have the best success when I just remember slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And Leonhart, like you can't muscle Leonhart. You can, but you don't need to muscle Leonhart.

[00:44:43] Leonhart's like a finesse smooth. The rods are light too. Like it doesn't tornado. I get a little bit sore from shooting the pull shot after a weekend. I don't feel the same when I'm playing Leo. Um, yeah, it's a smooth game. Well, so I noticed pretty quick. So Chris, Chris came to the house. We played some singles and dude, he was killing the ball. I mean, he shoots a pull shot. He was absolutely killing the ball. He's like, I love the way this thing feels.

[00:45:11] And then he was trying to shoot some pull kicks out of the back. And you know, when you shoot a pull kick on tornado on your two rod, you get it. You got to get it like right in the pocket. It's just a hair behind the rod and it just squeezes out and it feels good. And he kept stopping it. Yeah. And he kept stopping it, stopping it, stopping it. I said, nah, dude, you can't do that with this table. I said, just bring it down straight and just hit it. And he did. And he's like, he's like, holy crap. And I'm like, dude, it's just like, you don't have to do that with this table.

[00:45:40] All you have to do is be smooth. Like the, the, like I said, the feel, the touch, the way you take off. Um, it's just, it's just different. It's just, and, and, um, I, you know, for me, the smoothest fast thing, I've been saying that forever. You know, I have, I call it a checklist in my brain. Like I go through, you know, on my five, even on my shot. And I try to explain to people, right. If you're just smooth, right. Say you shoot a pull shot, you got a smooth takeoff.

[00:46:09] Your shot doesn't have to be lightning fast, but scientifically biology. If you explain it to people like this, if you got a good, smooth takeoff on your shot, you go, if I'm defending you and your takeoff smooth by the time the ball goes by me, right. My eyes have to tell my brain to tell my hands to move. The ball's already gone. Yeah. So you don't have to kill the ball. You just have to be smooth. That's it.

[00:46:34] You know, Loya, Loya one open mix playing forward and her pull shots, not a heavy muscle tornado pull shot. It's just smooth and well-read. Yeah. Yeah. There's like, there's a point where you're fast enough. Anything after that, you don't need to be faster if you're making the right decision. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I noticed with the Leonhardt, especially with the pull shot, if you put the ball a little

[00:47:01] bit forward of the rod, it's easier to make the pull shot rather than having a look at sometimes with, I noticed with tornado players, when they want to go long, they put the ball a little bit behind the rod and then pinch it way out there. Whereas with the Leonhardt, it's better if it's under the rod or just a little in front of it. Is that what your experience is too with a pull shot? You say if they go long, is there another hole? Well, there is a few others.

[00:47:29] Usually there's three altogether, but no, it just seems like the pull shot is more effective on the Leonhardt when you have the ball forward a little bit more. That way, it's not stubbing the guy. Just saying. I think with the pull shot, it depends on... Yeah. I've shot... I shoot the pull shot. So when... It depends on somebody's stroke. When they're bringing the ball laterally, sometimes people like to have the foot in front of the ball and then it kind of...

[00:47:59] The foot actually goes back and then hits. Other people, like if you watch a famous Billy Pappas video, he shows how you can use the front corner of the player to cut the ball in half in order to send the ball straight, if not a little bit in front of the player, so that you never have to lift the player up. You just bring them across and shoot forward. And that makes it so that there's less movement and it's actually faster. More efficient. Yeah. And it's not faster.

[00:48:25] If it's smooth, then it appears faster because it doesn't register. The takeoff doesn't register until a fraction of a second after it's already happened. Okay. And you're cutting down the ankle a little bit and there's less movement, so there's less of a read. So lots of reasons why to do that. Now on the Leonhardt table, I like to line up the... Imagine there was a string, you're hanging it and you just brought it over to touch the front of the bar, the three bar.

[00:48:53] The front of the ball should be touching that string too. So I like to line up the ball and the front of the bar like that. Okay. And then I put the foot of the player in the front corner of the foot. It kind of cuts the ball in half so that when I do my lateral, it brings the ball exactly in the same spot across every single time. So it... Well, that's where I like to have it, but it doesn't matter if you put it too far back or too far forward.

[00:49:19] As long as you cut the ball in half, you should still be consistent. Yeah. That's where I like to put it. Your takeoff, as long as your takeoff is where you're saying the man is kind of cutting the ball in half, you're still... The ball's going the same way in your swing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you could set the ball up back as long as your takeoff is the same where you're cutting the ball in half. Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. So, Tom, I guess it's just a matter of preference, basically. Yeah. Okay.

[00:49:48] It just seemed like the first time I played it on a Leon, a Leonhardt back in 2011, and I'd been playing a tornado for maybe a year at that point, it just seemed like because the ball was stickier, I had to put it a little bit more forward for the pull shot. You're right. You are absolutely right. Between the tornado and the Leonhardt, I would still tend to put the ball a little bit maybe forward. Gotcha. And the tornado. But I always just am trying to think of where my foot is when I start. Okay.

[00:50:17] So, you know, some people like Arigunalo and myself now would like to do a little wiggle, you know, see if people move. But for the takeoff, it always has to cut that ball in half or else it'll just change the trajectory and then you have one extra factor that will reduce your consistency. Right. Instead of just one smooth movement, it ends up being two. So you're doing two things instead of one just coming across and then hitting it in one smooth movement.

[00:50:46] But if you want to get a crazy seven, do that. Bring that ball really far back on the Leonhardt. Try this, Randy. Bring it really far back and bring it to like the four dot and you can cut it right back to the one from a pinch position. You're not even chipping it with the corner. You can pinch it back. Cool. It's crazy. It has like almost as much grip as like, yeah. I feel like you have more manipulation with the ball on Leonhardt. Like when you were talking about Chris' pull kick from the back and you were saying

[00:51:16] to just keep it under the rod, you can really like hit corners. Like you can have a release point, especially from the two bar. You can pick either side of the net and just depends on your follow through of where you're brushing that ball. The brush is much easier on Leonhardt. I struggled. I have an okay brush on Tornado now, but it's taken me 10 years of playing to get there. Whereas on Leo, like I can learn my brush is just better. I actually, I pass brush on Leonhardt. I wish I was a pull shooter on Leonhardt.

[00:51:45] I still have one, but my roller is just so much better. Like it's so easy to shoot rollover on Leonhardt that I'm doing myself a disservice, not shooting it in a tournament. Um, yeah, so I, when I was doing singles at world cup, going back and forth, every two points, I'm brush passing and shooting a roller on Leo and I'm doing tic-tacs and a pull shot on Tornado. So my opponent's like, he's got two points to figure it out.

[00:52:11] And then I'm just completely flipping my game on the other table, which it worked for me. But, um, yeah, this is, this is, this is turning into a clinic, you know, on the, on the differences in, in people's games. And of course the table itself. Uh, I think Randy is probably going to make us cut this short because he wants to be alone with his table. Just saying. Don't be jealous, Tom. Don't be jealous. Well, don't be jealous. Take you the only one without one, Tom. I know.

[00:52:40] I know. It's, uh, you know, my T3000 is, is still in, in, well, shall we say a less than optimistic place in the house? Or I'm sorry. Um, um, um, what was the term I'm trying to think of? Uh, less than, than, uh, advantageous location in my house because yeah, well, no, it's in the garage. It's not in the house. That's the problem. It's in the garage. Yeah. Well, listen, Tom, I know, I know, I know a place where you can get one.

[00:53:08] And if you, if you use the promo code boost talk, you get 10% off. So save a bunch of money for sure. I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Oh, no question. No question. Everything, everything about this, uh, everything about this purchase. I have no complaints. It was. Add a little urgency to it and not to get political, but if, uh, if your president targets the EU

[00:53:38] on tariffs, luckily the Canadian tariffs, the origin of goods is still German. It doesn't affect distributors. It's not built in Canada. Okay. If there's a tariff on German products or on European products. Yeah. It's crazy. The difference in price. So we have right now in Canada, our tornado price just went up 25%. It went up a thousand dollars basically. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. In this trade war. Ouch. Ouch.

[00:54:03] So hopefully it doesn't continue bringing it into the, the EU countries into it because, Right. They make a lot of stuff that are great. Yeah. So now, now, so now's the time. If you want to get one, get one now. Do it now. All you listeners pull the, pull the trigger, do it now. Yeah. Yeah. So we have to, we got a good deal for the ones at the Texas tournament in May. Oh, you do? Let's go. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's go left for sale. So that's it. Message us. Give us a call. Back now. Whatever color you want.

[00:54:33] So they're going to go. I'm telling you that those you're not taking those home. That's true. I'm going to get snatched. No, no, no, no, no. I think so. Yeah. There'll be no need to take them back. Um, so I just, not to, not to break up this party about Leonhardt, because this is great stuff, but, um, next weekend, uh, is the, uh, the first annual multi-table North American championship, which is, uh, happening in, uh, three rivers in Quebec. Uh, are there, you guys going to be there?

[00:55:03] I will be there. I will be driving the tornado tables. There you go. Across the country yet again. Yeah. I'm drawn to Quebec. Quebec. What, uh, what is it? Next Wednesday. And then we'll be setting up on Thursday and we've got events Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah. It'll be awesome. Oh. We have tornado, being in art and Bonzini. Love it. Bring your A game, play foosball, not tornado. I mean, tornado will be there, but you better play foosball.

[00:55:31] So this is the first annual. So what are your expectations? I mean, obviously it's, it's, um, it's, it's, it's like a trial, so to speak. Uh, what are your, what are your expectations and what would be, what would, what would, once the, the tournament takes place, um, what would be your, your, uh, plan for, for the second annual? Would you, uh, would there be something about this tournament that would cause you not to do a second annual, like nobody showing up or something like that? What would, uh, what would your expectations be?

[00:56:02] It depends who wants to answer that. I have no problem answering that. Um, first of all, I want to shout out to Matthew Begalt and before it was the AQBB, the association in Quebec for baby foot Bonzini, but now it's AQBM. They've rebranded and they are fully a multi-table organization and this is their event. So Dan and I, while Dan is delivering tornado tables himself, he's not the tournament director. Right.

[00:56:30] Um, it's a Canada foosball shop assisting, uh, AQBM, but every time the AQBM or AQBB run a tournament, it's always met with a lot of positivity. They have a great vibe. Their commentary is really funny. Um, we were both just in the Leonhardt event in Montreal and they did an amazing job and I would be really shocked if this is not like, I don't see a world where this doesn't happen again. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of hype around this. Absolutely.

[00:57:00] Um, even in Vancouver, my intention moving forward was multi-table and I'm glad that they beat me to it because I think that that's something that the North American market is lacking. Yeah. I know that there's not as many players that are interested in multi-table, but there's enough players, especially on the East coast, which isn't so far from Europe. Yes. I would love to see team event or bring your best six, no limitations. If you think you're the best six multi-table, prove it because there's six people from this

[00:57:29] city that disagree. And I, I think that this is going to open up like a different feeling for a tournament. Um, I'm sure Dan can add on top of that as well, but I don't imagine a world where it doesn't happen again. I think this is a great progression of foosball in Canada. Oh, this is definitely, we keep making it better every single tournament. We learn lessons and we make it better. You know, a couple of years ago, they decided to bring food to the event and have a little canteen.

[00:57:58] They had a little piece of paper. You take whatever you want, put your name down and you eat, transfer the total at the end. Since then, now they have a POS system. You're talking to someone who's there volunteering for the weekend, handing you your beer or whatever food you want. This venue is the best that we've ever seen. It's the biggest tournament we've ever seen in Canada. It's at a big sports facility. Yes. There's a huge wooden middle area. Imagine a big square.

[00:58:25] And then up top, a second floor mezzanine that goes all the way around, kind of like at the Colorado tournament where you could look down on a table from above and you'll be able to watch the games. Oh, cool. It's all going to be run through ITSF Coral. So we'll be using new software and getting the hang of that. I like that software, by the way. Things have definitely evolved over the years. And then having the multi-table aspect, the biggest other multi-table that we've done,

[00:58:52] we've done a couple that have had three different tables, but they've been like maybe two or three of them. This tournament is going to have at least eight of every table, probably up to 12 of each table. So we're targeting 36 tables. That's fantastic. Depending on sign-ups. But things are looking good in terms of the sign-ups as well, from what I've heard from Mathieu. It's looking like it's going to be the biggest tournament that we've ever run. And we'll definitely be running it again. Yeah. And we want people to come visit.

[00:59:20] And if you'd like to play foosball, come on out for sure. Mathieu was on the show recently and he showed us through Twitch TV, through sharing the screen and we saw the arena. Awesome. I mean, oh man, that's a place to have a sporting event right there. That's real nice. Real nice. So yeah, I hope this is one of many to come. Many, many, many decades worth of multi-table competition. And may it become the norm in North America.

[00:59:50] I think this is something we had. I know that Norfolk, Virginia, they're doing a Bonzini tournament coming up, a $4,500 tournament, which is, again, you know, it's different and it gives you some variety in your competition. May it continue to be the case. Right? Well, I mean, next year, we're getting some Leonhards down South. Next year, you might get six players from the South coming up to Canada. Yeah.

[01:00:17] To see if our six men are better than your six men. So... Or women. I'm getting my passport updated. Whatever, dude. I'll figure it out. Good. Will they let you out of the country, though, Randy? I mean, come on. Will they? Technically, they can't stop me. So I haven't had Swiss Shelly in years. And yeah. Yeah. We'll get you some poutine. Poutine. Let's go, bro. Yeah.

[01:00:47] Hey, listen. I was almost born in Canada. I was almost born in Canada. Almost. Yeah. My parents lived in Toronto. My mom, they got married, moved to Toronto. My mom was pregnant with me. And then they moved back to Massachusetts. And she had me a couple months later. So I missed it by that much. Ooh. So... Could have been here in Toronto, where there's the first ever 24-7 foosball club. Yep. Multi-table action. I know. Play whenever you want. So jealous. I know. Football table.

[01:01:17] Foosball lovers dream over here. So jealous. I have 24-7 action right here. I got two tables. Right there. Two tables. We got eight tables. We got 40 guys. So what's funny... So... Excuse me. In May... So in May, we're driving up to see my parents, my grandmother, and my wife. She's never been to Canada. We were going to drive over to Niagara and then shoot over to Toronto for a couple nights.

[01:01:45] But we're not going because Canada has a breed restriction on dogs. I take my dog everywhere. Really? Yeah. Pitbull. No pitbulls or pitbull-type breeds allowed. Huh. And that's the love of my life. Yeah. That's the love of my life. I would have left my wife home before I left my dog home. So... Is it just crossing the border? Like, can you own a pitbull if you live in Toronto, Dan? Do you know? That seems... No. It's breed restriction. There's a breed restriction in Ontario. I got a Doberman right here. Yeah. That's a Doberman, bro. Look up pitbulls. Yeah.

[01:02:15] Really? They both... That's bad rap rules. No idea. I googled it to make sure there's a breed restriction in Ontario because... And again, my girl is sweet as pie. So... But we were gonna go over, spend the night in Niagara, then shoot over to Toronto. Because I have family up there in like London, Mississauga. I have a cousin in Montreal. I have family all over Canada. And I haven't seen them in years. They've never met my wife. And they probably...

[01:02:44] They owe me for so many birthdays. But I would have loved to have gone. I told her. I was like, yeah, I want to pop in here and check out their foosball club. But another time. Another time. Yeah. Like I said, we're gonna play for next year. Some update on that foosball club. Yeah. What's up with that foosball club? Yeah. So we just moved, actually. You just moved? Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys got a new spot. Yeah. Yeah. So we started it as a proof of concept three years ago.

[01:03:14] You know, a handful of guys. And we rented a place. We were working really hard to try to cover our expenses. But working capital is kind of bleeding each month and never really breaking even. Unfortunately, our landlords weren't willing to help us out. So our lease was going to expire at the end of December. Oh, geez. I was working really hard with the founders to try to find some sort of solution at the end of the summer.

[01:03:42] And pretty much made peace with the fact that the Toronto Foosball Club's not moving forward past the end of last year. So a couple of my guys, we put together a little video called Action, asking for the members to step up either with their time and effort to help take care of the place and promote and that kind of thing. Or financially, if they can, to help us with, you know, find a solution.

[01:04:07] We're blessed with three guys that stepped up financially and with their time to help us come up with a solution. So a new team of management has taken over the Toronto Foosball Club now. Myself, obviously, attached at the hip. We found a new location only a block away. So it's literally like a two-minute drive down the road. Cool. And it's better than the old location in a million ways. Our old location had people living above.

[01:04:36] So we built a soundproof ceiling and it didn't really do a great job. They complained all the time. Now we're in an industrial building with 15-foot ceilings. You can make as much noise as you want. It doesn't matter. We've got the sound system set up. This unit got built out for us. So it's all painted our colors. We've got the tables in. Freshly polished floors. Fresh build. It looks awesome. If you're coming to Toronto, if you're coming to Canada, please come visit us. Support us.

[01:05:04] We're in also a new building that has a 24-7 golf simulator. A 24-7 pool hall. And a fitness facility as well. So it's really like about adult recreation. They're building a disco right across the hall from us as well. Where people can come for dance parties and stuff. Damn. So it's all about adult recreation. Yeah. The old location is right next to an adult video. So not the same vibes as this new location. Yeah. Seriously.

[01:05:32] So it's going to be good. We'll be able to bring school buses of kids to our new location. Not so much the old location. Yeah. Right. We'll be able to work for schools in the area. Massage parlor. Adult video. Marijuana store. Making restaurant that was pretty good. Yeah. And as soon as we left, the place that took over their old place is a magic mushroom dispensary.

[01:06:01] Like it fits in much better than it did before. And it also merged our Canada football shop warehouse. So basically they were two separate locations. So someone could go to the club to test out the two different tables or the multiple different tables. Figure out which one they want. And they have to drive, not very far, but a few blocks down the road to the warehouse to pick it up. Now they're in this, we share the same space. Oh, that's great. Great elevator. Yeah. Right there. That's the big reason. Dude.

[01:06:31] The only way basically to make this work with our current membership structure. So we charge a monthly membership and that's how we cover our expenses. But like I said, the rent was going up because they're building some condos across the street and the landlord wanted to charge more so we couldn't afford it.

[01:06:52] We found this space and in order to make it affordable for the club, the Canada foosball shop was renting three storage units across the street. So we shut down the three storage units just last Thursday. I hired movers to move all of the tables over to our new space. So we rented basically like a, again, with my phone here, a nice rectangle. And the top chunk like this is the Canada foosball shop.

[01:07:21] And this big L is the Toronto Foosball Club. You can check out pictures. They're now up on torontafoosballclub.ca if you want to see what I'm talking about. But basically the L is the club and then the other space is fully walled off, separate doors for all of our inventory for the Canada foosball shop and original VNR USA. Awesome, man. That's great. So by putting everything in one spot and then the Toronto Foosball Club sublets from Canada foosball shop,

[01:07:50] the rent is now under the amount that we're bringing in for membership revenue. So the club is breaking even financially on day one. Now, breaking even is not enough for it to be sustainable forever because a lot of people put a lot of money and time and effort in starting it. So what we've decided to do is offer, since there's 24-7 pool and 24-7 golf nearby, there's going to be 24-7 foosball in this building. There already is now.

[01:08:18] So people can use a QR code and they can rent one of two rooms. We have a Gattoni room, which has a Roberto Sport Revolution table in it, and it's an Italian theme. And we have a Tishkicker room, which has the Leonhardt tournament table, and it's a German theme. So we are working on setting up the spaces right now. We just moved in, like I said. But those spaces and the tables are available for rent.

[01:08:41] And we are expecting this rental income to help us actually make a bit of profit so we can start paying back those loans that the original founders have provided to help make this whole thing reality. That's the way it's done. And if that all works, then guys, we have a foosball club model. We can help anyone who will do this anywhere across the country. That was my next question. Across Canada, across the States. If you want to talk about this, you've got a group of guys. If you can rent a storage unit, you can start a club.

[01:09:11] I can tell you how to do it. Cool. I'm really excited about that. So we're almost financially sustainable. Let's talk again in a few months. I'm sure we'll be there. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting stuff. I mean, this is really when you see that kind of success, that kind of ingenuity on your part, spreading the word and helping other people do the same thing, man. Greatly appreciate that. That's awesome. Cam said it.

[01:09:41] It's like any information like this, we can't hold it. We've got to share it. It's got to be available to everyone. So we're trying to make this content and put out this information and help as many people benefit from it as possible. And that's how foosball grows. That's how it grows. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We take care of each other, you know, regardless of what your geographical location is and whatever the tariff situation might be, we still take care of each other, right?

[01:10:05] We just want to make sure that there are new boundaries or borders when it comes to playing this sport of foosball. Just saying. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Dan, you going to Vegas? I wish. I've gone to Vegas every year except this year's first year that I'm actually prioritizing the Texas tournament in May because of the ITSF stuff and getting the Leos down there. Vegas is going to be sick, man.

[01:10:34] Cam, you going to Vegas? I know Cam's going. Yeah, Cam's going to be there. Yeah, Cam's going to be there. Yeah. It is going to be sick. Yeah, yeah. I haven't toured in a while, but back-to-back Portland, Vegas, and then Texas in May. I'm really excited. It's been a while since I've done three like that in a row. Outstanding. Nice. I think Vegas especially, they've already sold out of the rooms, although I guess there's still a couple of the upgraded versions of those rooms.

[01:11:04] I mean, that's a huge place. How do they even, you know, I don't know how many rooms they had to begin with in the foosball block, but man, it must have been a ton, and they're gone. You guys know if darts is happening as well this year? I have no idea. Darts had a way bigger turnout last year. Okay. A loophole for all those listening. I guess the dart room rental was cheaper because they have ten times the amount of players that enter the darts tournament. Okay.

[01:11:30] Some foosball players, there was one guy in particular in Canada, he shifted from playing foosball competitively to competitive darts. He was the only person that entered both tournaments. He played DYP and he played the darts tournament, but the people that know him realize that it's a cheaper discount code to book a room at the Westgate under the, because they have way more, they had a way bigger block, right? Oh. You get a bigger deal the more players you commit to. Maybe darts isn't sold out. Worth checking. Okay. Yeah.

[01:12:00] And how are they going to know one way or the other, whether you're a dart player or a foosball player? Just give the right code. Oh, you need discount code. Yeah. You just need the code, right? Yeah. Cool. Well, there's a hot tip right there if you haven't got your room for Vegas. I don't have my room, so I should figure that out. Yeah. I haven't played a tournament in Vegas in almost 20 years, so. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This is going to be a good one. I'm excited. What are you playing with?

[01:12:26] I'm playing pro doubles with my good friend, Bruce Welton, and I'm playing open doubles with Sullivan. Sullivan? Really? Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Wow. That's going to be a tough team. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. She's playing great. I'm excited to play with her. So you may know my rookie doubles partner, Randy. Eric Shea? Who do you got? Eric Shea? Yeah. From New Hampshire. Yeah.

[01:12:56] Yeah. I like Eric. Nice kid. He's been playing good foosball. He's getting better. He's a good guy, for sure. So fingers crossed. Yeah. All he's got to do is get out of New Hampshire. That's all he's got to do. That's it. He'll get way better. No, I'm sure. Who are you playing with, Cam? Diego Zaniga from Peru. Forgive me. Oh. In expert doubles. Playing with Mohamed Udin in pro doubles. We did. We've only played with him once, but we did really well in Moneyball in Portland.

[01:13:24] And I think we're a good team. And then open. I made a mistake. I thought I was playing with my buddy, Robbie. But as I reread the text, I read it wrong. We were playing a completely different tournament together. But I teamed up with Ryan Harvey from Portland. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good guy. Good player. The man can execute. Plays with Jeff Pipkin a lot. Jeff Pipkin Jr. Yeah. Yeah. Now all of us have been. Robbie Hayes is the other guy I mentioned there.

[01:13:53] But lately, like the four of us have just been like teaming up. So like in Moneyball, I played one event with Pipkin. I played the other event with Robbie. And the event that I didn't play with them, they played together. And Ryan's in the mix. Like we kind of just mix it up. But I played with Ryan once before. And I am excited again. That man can just crush the ball. Seriously. His execution's on another. Yeah. Yeah. I met Robbie in Louisiana last year.

[01:14:25] He's solid, man. Great five. He's a good player. Really, really good player. You guys got. There's a good. Good. I mean, obviously, you know, there are great players everywhere. But Northeast has a lot of. I mean, you got a lot of good players up in that region. And it's, you know, just like every other region in the country. There are guys that are only playing the Northeast. Guys that are only playing the South. Guys that are only playing the West Coast. Guys that are only playing the Northwest. So hopefully, you know, people can start coming out and playing a little more.

[01:14:54] There's more interest just, you know, just in general. I think when we came back from the Tornado Worlds and then, of course, the TKO, suddenly our local scene is just coming alive. You know, people are showing up because they're hearing about these events and saying, hey, you know, I'd like a little piece of that. I'd like to check that out.

[01:15:17] But I'm curious, Dan and Kim, how do you feel so far about the results for the World Foosball Tour, that first event? And, of course, now, of course, Wisconsin was also a World Foosball Tour event. How do you feel about their progress so far? Is there anything that you think they should be doing better? Not immediately. I haven't. Honestly, I'm not sure. Like, do you mean results in, like, the players or in, like, the turnout?

[01:15:47] Just the overall organization of the way they're doing things? I mean, is there anything you notice? I haven't been to a World Foosball Tour stop yet. Vegas will be my first. The first, yeah. But I believe Ryan's going to do well. Like, he's been around the game since he was a child. Any lessons his mother learned, he knows. You know, I don't think that it's different if it's someone with a whole new idea coming in. Like, obviously, he has a different perspective. Every one of us do.

[01:16:17] But I don't think it'll be drastically different. It's not like a put the board over and restart from the ground up. Yeah, at the end of the day, I believe in Foosball. And I think it's going to, like, I think it can grow further than it was at its peak. But I don't have anything specific or any advice or any thoughts, really. I haven't been to enough. I know that Ryan's been successful in a lot of his endeavors. So I don't see why this one would be any different. Yeah. I don't know.

[01:16:46] I haven't really, I hadn't thought about it. I don't really have an answer to that. So far, so good. Dan, anything to add? I don't have much to add to it either. I haven't been to, I didn't get to that tournament either. Gotcha. I don't have plans right now because of other initiatives that I have to choose to prioritize. I'm very excited to work on.

[01:17:14] So touring is going to take a step back for me a little bit right now. But I love the enthusiasm. I have seen lots of the videos that have been coming out and a bunch of his posts. I love the concept, World Foosball Tour, bringing everyone together. I'd like to see that mean multiple tables, potentially, in there. And it's not just the Tornado World Foosball Tour.

[01:17:41] But maybe it's the multi-table World Foosball Tour. But maybe that's just me. I don't know. Well, I mean, this is... He's got a lot. Yeah. There's room for stuff like that. There's a lot that he could do that they can do. And I think maybe they will get to that in time. Maybe right now they're looking to take over. And whenever you take over something, there's learning curves, right? You have to first learn the thing before you can improve on it.

[01:18:10] So like Cam said, he's been around forever. So he's learned the thing. He knows what to do. And I'm excited to see what he and his team decide to do to make it better. Yeah. Two things. One is just adding context. I'm not using Facebook. If anyone's waiting for a response from me, my apologies. I'm not looking at it ever. And I know that in our group chat, there's a lot of videos. So I haven't even seen Ryan's updates.

[01:18:38] So I'm pretty out of the loop as to what's going on. And the second thing, I completely forgot, which sucks because that was the reason I brought it up. The context was just extra. But hopefully it comes back to me in a second. It was on something Dan said triggered it. But yeah, it's completely like left for the moment. Hopefully I get it back in a second. That's fine. Sorry, guys.

[01:18:59] No, I think that if you're going to refer to yourself as the World Foosball Tour, then maybe there's an event or two in that World Foosball Tour that does include multiple tables. And, you know, the ones that the tables that maybe are used at World Cup would be a good place to look just because you want to get some of your players ready to go and represent. But World Foosball Tour kind of at least open ended, don't you think?

[01:19:27] Yeah, so we reached out actually specifically about our multi-table tournament thinking like we've got almost 40 tables. We're going to have a huge thing. We'd love if you could help promote it. It's World Foosball. We're your neighbors right here. Like it's multi-table action in the world. It's international. Like, come on. But I'm not interested in being too busy.

[01:19:49] Like, I think, yeah, when you've got lots of things and you're thinking, you know, like you can't do everything, can't work on every initiative. And we totally understand and respect that. Oh, sure. Hopefully we can find some way to collaborate. Yeah, there's plenty of time. Remember what I was going to say. And it's not super valuable. I just know that I think that foosball is going to get its moment, but I don't think that we're going to be able to predict it. I don't think that if you wrote on paper, like the path to success for foosball, I don't think anyone's going to nail it.

[01:20:19] It's going to be like one person on a podcast that brings it up. One influential person in the world that's not currently in the foosball world that falls in love with it. And then they bring millions of eyes to it. It's going to be maybe one of the young superstars to hit a wave and then they become a celebrity in this world. And then that will trickle down into the tour. If the school stuff takes off, that will bleed into the tour.

[01:20:46] But I don't think that there's like one thing that you can do on a tour right now to like increase tenfold. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope they prove me wrong. I just don't. No, I think that there's going to be some it's going to hit the algorithm. And then as long as we're ready for that moment, if we built the stuff. So when they click on that video, the new viewers that there's kind of content for them to consume and a path for them to get into it. I think that's the answer. Getting the outside the outside interest.

[01:21:15] Yeah, I think I think that's what Ryan. I think that's what Ryan's kind of I think that's what he's banking on with all the social media stuff. Or maybe we just need to send Joe Rogan a Leonhart. I have thought about that many times. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. This is an idea that I've had for the video that I did with like beat me with 100 bucks. I have a video in mind that I'm I just don't have the money to do it right now. But don't arrest me.

[01:21:44] I've stolen UFC pay-per-views in my life. I've streamed them illegally because I can't afford to spend $100 on a UFC pay-per-view. But I really love the UFC and I'm going to make a video or I'm going to get a custom UFC because they have football tables in the UFC Performance Institute. Oh, all of the athletes train in Vegas and the table's garbage. I want to make a video where I just show up at the door with the custom every moment. I don't know if you guys follow, but there's so many like picture-perfect moments in the UFC.

[01:22:13] If I could just piece that together custom on the table black and gold players and just go there and be like for all the times I stole your pay-per-view. Like I don't want anything in return but have this table because the table that you're playing on is garbage. And yeah, it's great. Like that kind of stuff. You know, I think there's a whole nother avenue that you can take. You could even find like an impoverished family and you could just go surprise them with a free table and make content around that. Yeah, there's so many. It doesn't need to be competitive. There's so many avenues for promoting this game.

[01:22:43] It's not the human interest. It's the championship format. Don't let me. That's one thing I disagree with, I guess. I think championship format's dumb. I don't think it saves. I think you have the downfall of both double O-M and the downfall of single O-M mixed into one format. Forgive me if I triggered there, but it's one match. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've got the ITSF, which is, you know, bold as day and they're doing Swiss format.

[01:23:09] You know, to me, that was the kind of format I really enjoyed the most this last year. Going to Texas, knowing when you're going to play. You've got to break it through, you know, two o'clock in the afternoon. You come back after an hour for lunch. You play again and then the finals are at a specific time in the evening. And then they give out the trophies at the end of the day. And then they do it again the next day. Yeah. I think that you need to put some incentive on the preliminary rounds.

[01:23:38] I watch masters drop preliminary rounds because they didn't want to play. They're negotiating if it should be 7-2 on a forfeit. Like, give me 7-3. No, play your freaking match. Yeah, yeah. Just do that. So if you had payouts for the people, let's say you qualified second, but you got eliminated first round in the single limb, you should still get rewarded for, like, you should put some sort of incentive on the initial phases. Because that's the downfall of Swiss in my mind is, like, once you've hit,

[01:24:06] especially at the one in May at the ITSF Tornado World Series, most people qualified. If you, like, had a bye and you won one round, you're in. So there's no real, like, motivation to do better. So you're losing those, like, intense matches, which is, like, I'd rather watch, I'd watch two rookies at 4-4 than two masters where it's like a steamroll. I want to see those, like, those moments, you know? I want to see what do they do when it's meatball?

[01:24:35] But you kind of lose that when you've already qualified and there's no incentive. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Well, it's a combination of all these ideas that ultimately is going to make the difference. And I think we need better looking players, too. Like, you know, we need more Randy Rapozos on the table. That would help. You are 100% correct, Tom. I agree with you 100%. Yeah.

[01:25:05] I think, look, honestly, you're right, Cam. At every level, incentive is the issue. At every level. I think. And that's the championship. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, incentivize people to want to move up. Incentivize the top players to want to play hard. You know, it's, you know, I think there's just, there's some things that have to be ironed out.

[01:25:29] But at the end of the day, I just, I'm happy whenever I get to go play foosball. So that's, that's the, that's the biggest thing for me. I still love it. You know, I feel bad for these guys that do it. I don't know if it's like a job for them or whatever, but I do feel like, I do feel like the guys at the top deserve more when you've dedicated so much of your life to something. I, you know, I, I, I get it. But I, you know, for me, I, I, I work, I do.

[01:25:59] Okay. I just, I love playing foosball. So whenever I get to go play, I just want to go enjoy myself. It's the passion. And compete. Yeah. I want to see where I, where am I in this room this weekend? Right. This whole room. Where am I? Where do I, you know, where do I land in this room as far as, uh, where do I finish? And so that's, that's usually how I approach a weekend, but I definitely think the incentive is, is they have to figure out something as far as an incentive to motivate people to want to do better.

[01:26:26] So, uh, well, like, like any major, any major sport, there is a, there is a desire to be the best. Um, but there's also, you know, some kind of compensation for, like you say, putting all the time and the effort, uh, whether it be the glory, but I think in most cases for, especially for Americans, uh, they'd like to see a, to maybe make a living once they get past a certain level and, uh, they're, they're in contention that, uh, that they have. Yeah. You need the eyeballs. Yeah.

[01:26:56] Yep. Yep. I looked at it. Like, I don't know if you guys have done this, but I pulled up my results, my best results. And I looked at what I would have made if I played in the million dollar tour back in the day. Yes. Without adjusting for inflation or anything. And like, I cringed to see that I would have like, I forget the number, but it was like tens of thousands of dollars. Seriously. Like in the seventies or eighties that I would have won. And I got like 150 bucks. Rice. Oh yeah. It's not their fault. Right.

[01:27:25] Like, I don't expect them to lose money on the tournament. Yeah. Uh, I've run tournaments. Um, I've just do percent payback. That way I'm guaranteed to not like, Oh, um, but yeah, it's hard to pay out to 13th. You know? Oh, it's a challenge. Oh yeah. Well, yeah. Well, without the spectators, like you can't get that ad revenue without the ad revenue, you can't get that prize money. Mm-hmm. And so I almost wonder that at this, but we're still at this grassroots level, like just

[01:27:54] get rid of the prize money and just try to promote it more, spend that money on promotion and get more people to the event. More eyes. Yeah. It's a prize money. Like for me personally, and maybe this is just where I'm at, at my, in my career, I guess, whatever with foosball, but 150 bucks is like, I don't want to tell people back home that I made 150 bucks. Yeah. Like I'm not proud of this. I want the medal. I want the pictures. I want the good time with my friends. Yeah.

[01:28:23] Money is not where I'm going. So I don't know if I'm though, maybe many people think that way as well. And maybe they're just like, okay, put more money into like making it really fun and spectator friendly and no prize money. And it's just some trophies and stuff. Like keep it simple unless it's thousands of dollars. Like what are we doing? Well, the players are hotel room. I don't think a player that wins a tournament should like, it's crazy to win. Like I did pretty well in Portland this past weekend. I made money in multiple events.

[01:28:53] I lost money going there. Wow. Like if you count my gas and my hotel. Yeah. That's a, that is an issue. I mean, you know, it's very expensive. I'm, uh, we were just having this conversation the other day about, uh, you know, going to Vegas. Uh, it's, you know, most tournaments right now, if you spend, and if you've got to fly, let's say, and you spend say $1,100 for, for everything, you know, room and board and meals.

[01:29:19] And of course, uh, tournament fees, uh, 1100 is pretty average for most, most tour stops, but Vegas, you got to tack on an extra 800 automatically just because of the cost of, of food. Uh, just the, just the fact that it's, uh, you know, it's a different kind of, uh, different kind of experience, but there's, there's more money involved just, just to go to one of those. Let's talk about conversion rate for us Canadians up here either. Our dollars not do well. Yeah. Yep. Well, don't, but if you win money, I guess it helps.

[01:29:49] Well, and for some players you got to tack on, you got to tack on money for extracurriculars too. So, you know, some of these degenerates, you know, extracurriculars back home anyway, that's a fixed cost no matter where they are in the world. That's so, yeah, there's solutions to every problem, Randy, there's solutions. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, Tom, Vegas, Vegas could end up costing somebody 10 or 20 guys.

[01:30:17] It could cost somebody their kid's college fund. Who knows? Right. So, oh, well, that's the problem too. You've got, you've got that temptation right there. You've got, you've got to go from the tournament room to your hotel room and you have to go through the casino to do that. Oh, listen, I, for me, I'm look, man, I'm foosball back to the room. That's it. I stopped to eat. And so the flights caught my flight was 500 bucks. And, um, you know, again, that's the thing about being in the South. It's nice. I can drive to everything, everything.

[01:30:47] I got six, eight hour drive and I can play foosball. So this is the first time I'm getting, well, now I went to the, I went to the one in Michigan last year, but besides that, this is the first time I'm getting on a plane to go to a foosball tournament in like 15 years. So, uh, it's, you know, it is what it is, man. I just kind of like you, Dan, it's not about the money for me. I'm okay. So I just, I just want to go play and whatever, but there's gotta be, there's gotta be something. I, you know, I, I don't, I don't know.

[01:31:17] They're doing something right in Europe. They're getting, you know, a thousand people to a fee for me and you know, they're, you know, they're giving out trophies. So I don't. It's a, it's a cultural thing too, uh, especially in Europe because of the fact that, uh, you know, soccer or, you know, um, European football is so ingrained in the culture. It's, uh, it, you know, it's a, it's a no brainer that, that foosball will be as big as it is in Europe and, and for the glory more than anything else. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:31:46] You know, I think we're on the right path. If I'm being honest, like, I know that, that people have frustrations. People are going to, who's ball could be 10 times better than it is now. And people are going to be bitching about it then. Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. That's, I like the trajectory. There's a lot of people putting a lot of effort in you guys too. This is like, what episode is this? 200 and 247 for, for the, for the live version. Yeah. Yeah. We've, yeah. Like that's no joke. You know, that's a, that's a commitment and it's not, I don't know.

[01:32:16] I appreciate anyone that puts this much effort into promoting foosball. And I think we're on the right path. I really do. And if we're not, oh, well, I believe. No, I think there's. I believe in the game, but here we are. Nothing wrong in making the effort. Nothing wrong in making the effort. And, and, and thank you both. I mean, both, both Dan and camera are, are, and now you Randy too, are regular Patreon contributors. And we are, we are so ecstatic. We're through the roof with, with your support.

[01:32:44] It's a, you know, it just means we're doing something right, I guess. I guess. But we're all, we're all just, I mean, obviously we're all trying to support foosball in our way. And, you know, obviously you guys are doing it on a little bit, uh, on a little bit bigger scale. Uh, and again, I'm, I'm thank you for your time guys. Thank you for coming on tonight, but thank you. Thank you for getting me my table. Thank you again, man. Look for anybody.

[01:33:13] If you didn't catch the first half of the show, it was, it was seamless. It was flawless. Ordered it within a week. The table was at my front door. Took 20 minutes to set up. The table's beautiful. Uh, promo code who's talk for 10% off. Go get a table. Go get a table before the tariffs go up. Cam, what's, what's the website? Where do they have to go? What's, what's the website to go to get your table?

[01:33:40] Original dash Leonhart dash USA.com. Couldn't have said it better. Let's go. Let's go. You might've been able to, but I'll take that. You got a pretty good voice over there. Just another pretty voice. Yeah. Uh, but another pretty voice. Damn it, Tom. Hey guys. I hope I look for Dan. I hope everything goes great next week, man. I'll be checking. I'll be checking on the brackets. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:34:06] Watch, um, at a Q BB on Twitch. Okay. They're still converting to AQ BM for multi-table or multi-table, but, uh, watch it there. Uh, they'll be doing the live commentary all weekend. And like Cam mentioned, they have a blast. Cool. They got their stream deck. They have ifs and animations pop up and they're always making jokes in there. It's been in English and French a little bit as well. So I noticed that. Yeah. Check it out again at AQ BB on Twitch.

[01:34:35] Is, is, uh, Justin Coyote, is he one of the, uh, one of the commentators, Justin? He's, he's, uh, yeah. What a personality. MVP maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And Jeff Waugh was on there for the Canadian qualifiers a couple weekends ago. Yeah. No, they're great. I really enjoy their, their, uh, their commentary. They do a nice job. Good energy. Yeah. It really is. It's, uh, it's, it's refreshing. And, you know, that's the other thing. We're seeing a lot more of that too. A lot.

[01:35:01] Uh, the coverage of foosball is becoming much, much better when it comes to the play by play action. And it's such a pleasure to, uh, to be able to just, you know, go to the, the YouTube channel or the Twitch or wherever, wherever it's being sent. Especially now because it's free. I think that makes everybody happy for sure. It had to happen. I was, I'm so opinionated on that. Like the idea that foosball is behind a paywall. It's just mind blowing. Yes. Like, yeah. I don't know. We don't need to go down that road.

[01:35:30] I like, I could not agree more. It's crazy that you would put it behind a paywall. Yeah. Yeah. We want it accessible as possible. So. Absolutely. At least for now. The eyes on it as possible. Oh yeah. Yeah. No question. Well, guys, thank you so much for your generosity and what you do for foosball, you know, just even in just your local scene, but you know, we're, we're, uh, we're pulling on the same side of the rope here, which is great.

[01:35:55] And I think that, uh, nothing but good stuff can happen, uh, as, as we go forward in, in the, especially 2025. I think this is going to be a real special year, but, uh, we're, we're looking forward to, uh, camp seeing you in Vegas, but, but Dan, uh, when's your next tournament? I'm hoping to get to that May tournament. Yeah. In Texas. I'm really excited for that. Uh, we'll have those five tables down there for the ITSF gold finals. Cool. Excited to see all the players coming over from, uh, Europe.

[01:36:24] Good to see some of my friends as well. So hopefully, yeah. May, Texas. Excited for that one. We'll hang out for sure. No doubt about it. Yeah, absolutely. Well guys, uh, Randy, any other, any other, uh, any words of wisdom that you'd like to part company with? I got nothing, Tom. Okay. You got nothing. My drugs, my drugs are well, like, um, um, it's yeah. Dan again.

[01:36:53] Thanks buddy for coming on cam. I'll see you in a couple of weeks, man. Yep. Absolutely. Tom, Tom, stay pretty. Stay pretty. He says. Thanks for having us. Yes. Oh, you're welcome. Absolutely. And it's anytime the door is wide open. And again, you guys are, are, again, are huge supporters. We really appreciate your time and your, and your, your, uh, your support. So guys, uh, stick around. Cause we've got a very nice long list on the, uh, foosball tournament. This is the, uh, foosball talk. It's late.

[01:37:23] It's the foos talk. Life. The foos talk. Live. You know, I can make mistakes too. The foos talk. Live tournament beat. Have a great night. Foosball tournaments are everywhere. Foos talk. Live proudly presents a weekly update of events near you with the foos talk. Live tournament beat. Here's what's up. The first annual North American multi-table foosball championship featuring tornado, Bonzini and Leonhardt.

[01:37:52] March 27th through March 30th at Three Rivers, Quebec, Canada. San Francisco foos presents the Vegas Hall of Fame warmup. March 28th through the 30th at California Billiards, Fremont, California. The Norfolk Foosball Club presents the $4,500 Bonzini East Coast Classic. March 28th through the 30th at Sanctuary at the Rail Yard, Norfolk, Virginia.

[01:38:17] It's the Central New York Foosball Spring Main Events, April 4th through the 6th at Hometown Studios in Cortland, New York. The World Foosball Tour presents the 2025 Hall of Fame Classic, April 9th through the 13th at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. RK Foosball presents the 2025 Florida State Championships, May 1st through the 4th, Holiday in St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Florida.

[01:38:46] The 2025 Minnesota State Foosball Championships, May 2nd through the 5th, Wyndham Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The ITSF presents the 2025 Tornado World Series and ITSF Gold Series Finals, May 23rd through May 26th at the Westin-Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Dallas, Texas.

[01:39:09] It's the 2025 Illinois State Championships, June 5th through the 8th at Poplar Creek Bowl, Hoffman Estates, Illinois. The World Foosball Tour presents the 2025 National Championships, July 10th through the 13th at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee.

[01:39:28] Canada Foosball presents the 2025 Vancouver Island Foosball Championships, August 22nd through the 24th at Courtenay Legion, Courtenay, British Columbia. Each week we do our best to give you the most up-to-date listing of foosball tournaments near you. If you have an event you'd like to add, send us all the details at foosballradio at gmail.com. Tune in every week for the Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat.

[01:39:58] Foos Talk Live is a product of Foosball Radio. With gratitude we recognize our Foosball Radio Patreons. Our Foos Talk Live sponsor, original-leonhart-usa.com. Tune in again next week for another episode of Foos Talk Live. In the meantime, we'll see you at Foosin'.