I read with interest Paul Erhardt’s essay, “We Need More Postal Matches,” published on the Shooting Wire 23 June 2025. I wholeheartedly agree with the benefits that postal matches provide. They are relatively inexpensive, an easy entry into competitive shooting, and allow competitors from across the country to compete. I also agree that a “postal match may seem outdated in today’s 5G-connected world.” However, and what I'd like to highlight, most of Erhardt’s vision of the future of Postal Matches exists today, ready to use, with Scopos’ Virtual Match technology.
Here at Scopos we pioneered Virtual Matches, the 21st century version of postals, nearly 15 years ago. With a Virtual Match, targets are scored and recorded digitally at your local range. They are then automatically uploaded, using our Orion software, to the Internet where they are seamlessly merged with all other results from the same virtual match. The entire process takes mere seconds.
Scopos’ software supports virtual matches for every course of fire we support and for every Event Style (well over 100 different Event Styles). Any of our Orion for Clubs customers can create Virtual Matches, and any of our Orion for Clubs or Orion at Home customers can compete in them.
In the previous 12 months we, along with our customers, ran 1088 virtual matches with 38,000 competitors. These numbers go a long way to demonstrate the popularity of virtual matches.
Scopos offers two broad competitions annually, our National Leagues and Monthly Virtual Matches, both of which take widespread advantage of Virtual Match technology. The National League, for example, pairs teams from across the country against each other each week. Each team competes from their home range, with the results merged on the Internet for public viewing in near real time.
The Monthly Virtual Matches are an open and free competition each month, in 8 different events. Again, competitors shoot from their home range, upload their scores, and results are immediately available online. This allows competitors from Hawaii to Maine to compete, and immediately see where they stand in the competitions.
Scopos offers even more features in conjunction with its Virtual Match technology. In the National Leagues, for example, we offer athlete rankings and statistics. Despite the National Leagues being a team competition, we offer the athlete ranking to allow marksmen to show off their skills nationally. In respect for their privacy, the athletic ranking is only for marksmen who choose to enable their public profile.
With or without a public profile, athletes can privately track all of the scores they shot, in every discipline, in every Event Style, and from every Virtual or non-Virtual match they compete in. Recently added, Scopos further allows marksmen to graph their scores so they may see if they are improving or getting worse.
The number of Virtual Matches our customers run, the success of the National League, and the Monthly Virtual Matches reflect an interest in competitors' desire for low priced, easy to get into, yet meaningful competitions. Virtual Matches will continue to play a role in the competitive landscape for decades to come. At Scopos, we will endeavor to modernize the old postal programs to be easier, faster, more transparent, and more exciting. We welcome new disciplines to try out the many advantages Virtual Matches have to offer. Visit our website or contact our offices to learn more.
