Want to Expand Paintball? Only one way.

[SlartyBartFast]

From the thread: http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=165891

Look at me! Look at me! I can outspend you with my 3-4 cases per day of play!

The simple fact is, the people that can afford to feed a fast gun automatically seem to think that they are better than people who cannot afford $200 per day of play.

I don't feel outclassed, I feel outspent, and theres not a damn thing I can do about it, aside from hitting the lotto!

EDIT - I REFUSE to buy whitebox paint just so I can shoot more! I will not substitue quality for quantity. Period.

If paintball is to expand, IMO, ther's only one way. It MUST have more limits at the rental and local tournament level.

Part of the problem is dumb field operators. The other is the industry and the lack of effort to promote good grass roots competition.

Sure in every sport there's the anything goes class competition where either the person with the most money wins or the minimum entrance price is HUGE. But the class of any sport that keeps the sport alive are the low level classes. Why is Football, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer popular and successful? Because anyone can cheaply pick up some equipment and play competitively with friends.

Even autoracing works mostly this way. Succesful formats either have large support from cheap alternative or lower level racing or they hinge their marketing on related products so that joe schmoe can vicariously see himself racing with the big guys.

Why is hockey losing ground to soccer even in Canada? Because hockey is getting too expensive even for little league level play.

In Montreal, the Impact (the soccer team) has increased their fortunes by promoting and selling to little league teams.

Paintball on the otherhand turns people away from their very first experience with the feeling that they were competing with their wallet and not with their skills. High field fees, expensive paint, and the organiser getting a free box.

With no low cost level of competition to aspire to, those with little interest in the toys and monetary material competition lose interest.

If the NPPL, PSP, NXL, or whoever wants to build a fan base and increase revenues they MUST start including promotion of lower cost competition. Even paintball fields have to start promoting more to low budget. Why for instance do no proshops carry any of the bigbox store sold markers?

First reaction from anyone walking into a paintball establishment is "Crap! 500$ before I can spend 50$ more per day to play..."

Some sports have a following regardless of high entrance fees (like skiing). But I don't see paintballs long term future benefiting like skiing.

[skife]

you could have a class like... 7 cases per 5 man team per tournament?

[Chronobreak]

good luck.

without the revenue alot of fields have now they would be out of biz and we would all be playing renegade ball(fine with me).

even our young gusn games are unlimited paint. so we can make more $ although i agree there SHOULD be paint limits.

but without going thru alot of paint the event isnt worth it to them to run.

i just wanted to say i play p-ball for myself. becuse its fun and exciting. i really dont carea bout the industry side. im here to ahve fun. all this pushing p-ball mainstream is what has caused alot fo problems.

i guess im teh only one that doesnt care if theyr are fans watching my win or lose. :headbang:

we need to stop pushing p-ball bigger expecialy before there are set leagues...this thing is a a mess people....and isnt the game i started and loved. infact a good game of recball or scenario is the best i can get without cheaeters playing speedball.

[JimmyBeam]

Playing at a field, or in a tourny isn't the only place you can play paintball. You get together 10 friends or so, and well head to the woods, or in my case, the desert and mountains.

Do I play speedball anymore? No, because I hate being outgunned. My mag is very accurate and very reliable, but I hate having to go against 15+ BPS when I can only dish out maybe 5BPS. So I play rec and woodsball. Sure, let me borrow your high end gun, and I'll jump on the speedball field, but I'm just as happy to play other places.

[master_alexander]

i have gotten some of my friends into paintball, and they love it as long as they don't break their wallets, they went out and bought tippys, and i have a mnag, just because i can shoot faster than them does not mean that i am better than them, they just decided to not buy into a big slice of a gun, i have to cut down costs for myself, i love this sport as long as it doesent get too expensive, i am in it for the fun, and it is nice to talk about how i got this guy out who had an angel and i have my first gun (brass eagle silver eagle...lol) and he was furious, of course i didn't know what it was then, but there is only one way to promote this sport... ...make it cheaper.

[Lohman446]

It seems to me that paintball is extremely expensive compared to any other sport that does not involve a motor.

I ski, mind you not competetively but I ski. A good set of skis this year, bindings, and boots set me back right around $1000. About what one pays for a high end marker.

An unlimited ski pass set me back $200 for the year - thats it, I can go as often as I want with really no further expense.


Compare to paintball. Say I buy a good marker $750 or so, yeh theres cheaper, there are also cheaper skies. I used this for example, my DevilMag was noticeably more than this. Now, the theoretical customer without contacts has to pay $50+ every time they want to play to shoot a competetive amount of paint even on rec days (and thats only one case). Now most people in tournaments are like me. I play tournments for fun, not because I expect to win. Paintball is comparetively expensive considering the amount of influence physical ability has over it (quite a bit).

Yeh its expensive to play... there are other things more expensive but normally (car racing) they do not have as many teenagers in them.


Hmm... let me back up and consider - you have that new pure electo fom National - in a day you are meant to shoot 600 rounds. Most people I know who play renegade (or me when I do) plan on shooting about that many in a day. We take our hoppers full and then normally ten paintballs in our pockets "in case we run out". Maybe I'm looking at this from too much of a "play speedball" mindset. I have watched scenario players play all day and five of them split a case - I've done a four way split of a case at a tournament before. Let me rephrase everythign to paintball can be expensive, I guess it can be pretty reasonable to.

[Eric Cartman]

The field I've played at for the last 15 years or so still rents pumps. They rent out Tippman 98's too, but they still like to push the pump option for new players, or players who want a more relaxed style of play and who want to go easier on their wallets. Semi's and pumps were never mixed (except in the very rare case of a disabled player who couldn't use both hands) I reffed at this place too for many years. We'd get a couple of families who'd have reunions there every year. You'd have grandparents out there playing with pumps with no fear of getting lit up or toasting their pension.
Sadly I know that this is a rare situation, but there are still some good field owners out there who haven't abandoned their roots in favour of going strictly speedball for the credit card kiddies.

[LudavicoSoldier]

i have gotten some of my friends into paintball, and they love it as long as they don't break their wallets, they went out and bought tippys, and i have a mnag, just because i can shoot faster than them does not mean that i am better than them, they just decided to not buy into a big slice of a gun, i have to cut down costs for myself, i love this sport as long as it doesent get too expensive, i am in it for the fun, and it is nice to talk about how i got this guy out who had an angel and i have my first gun (brass eagle silver eagle...lol) and he was furious, of course i didn't know what it was then, but there is only one way to promote this sport... ...make it cheaper.

Haha! I also loved getting a V6 angel toting player out with my Tippy 68 Carbine (pre CVX) back in the day. Good times good times! :headbang:

Edit - I didn't even notice that you quoted my post! Word! There needs to be more discussion of this type. Paintball should not feel like its "the speed(way) or the highway".

[TheDuelist]

Paintball is what you make it. Talk to your local field operators about limits or special games wherever you play. Pump is a great way to improve your game while playing relatively chreap. Input from consumer will give the field owners an idea of what their customers want. Ask them to try different formats and see what works for everyone and what doesn't. If you want the sport to grow everyone needs to be involved in the evolution. Sometimes though you just have to say- Shut up and play!!

[SlartyBartFast]

Playing at a field, or in a tourny isn't the only place you can play paintball. You get together 10 friends or so, and well head to the woods, or in my case, the desert and mountains.


If you live in the city it sure is the only option.

[SlartyBartFast]

even our young guns games are unlimited paint. so we can make more $ although i agree there SHOULD be paint limits.


So, even in the class that should logically be the most cost sensitive the competition is one of who has the deepest pockets. :rolleyes:



but without going thru alot of paint the event isnt worth it to them to run.


But, why does the young gun event need to make money? In F1 racing the main event is the money maker and the dozen support races probably don’t even cover costs. But, the participants in support events (in general) are more backsides in seats for the main event, more concessions sold, and more recruits for the higher class in coming years.

It’s also similar to fields with high field fees and paint prices. If you could double your business by decreasing your margin you might end up making more money. In the case of tournaments, adding teams might not require an increase in fixed costs.

Or, look at the stupidly placed sponsorship. What good is it to give away paintball products to paintball tournamnet players? How does that attract new players or promote the company/sport? The industry is too closed and often is preaching to the choir.

AGD recognised this and saw that selling 10% of the scenario market would be better than selling to 90% of the tournament scene. I think other paintball manufactueres don’t have sufficient vision becasue many of the managers are (or were) heavily involved in the very small tournament scene.



i just wanted to say i play p-ball for myself. because its fun and exciting. i really dont care about the industry side. im here to have fun. all this pushing p-ball mainstream is what has caused alot of problems.


I started for fun as well. But I only played regularly when I found a cheap place to play where all the players were good natured.

I disagree with you on the ills of becoming mainstream. I think the problem is not that paintball became or is pushing mainstream recognition. It’s that the tournaments series are acting mainstream when they aren’t.

They’ve all built top class environments without any regard to supporting events and structures.

What future does NXL have without farm teams? They’ve put the cart before the horse. While top-down organisation is quick, it can also fail and disappear as quickly as it appeared. It is still possible to build the support structure under the main event, but is that happening? How long until the organisation gets too top heavy and fails due to a lack of good foundations?



i guess im teh only one that doesnt care if theyr are fans watching my win or lose. :headbang:


No, you’re not. But even if you don’t care about spectators, you should care about venues and facilities and their cost. I find it’s impossible to convince a sufficiently large group to go and play paintball. Without a cheap recreational alternative having ANY kind of paintball game becomes a challenge.

I could probably get a few players together no problem if it was 40$ or so for some fun. But when 40$ only gets onto the field and after just a couple of games into your 4hr block (or worse full day) you’re out of paint and need to spend more.

Even other expensive activities are better value. 50-60$ for ski rental and lift ticket gets you as much skiing as you can endure for the day.



we need to stop pushing p-ball bigger expecialy before there are set leagues...this thing is a a mess people....and isnt the game i started and loved. infact a good game of recball or scenario is the best i can get without cheaeters playing speedball.


I think the exact opposite. P-ball needs to get bigger before you have set leagues. Or, ideally, the big leagues should be intimately involved in promoting lower level play.

And by promoting lower level play I DO NOT mean directly running local tournaments and perpetuating cetralised local control of paintball businesses. The local tournaments around here seem to be the worst example of industry inbreeding. The only people who can afford to compete are the sponsored field teams.

How about the NPPL/NXL/Whatever setup rules or requirements for local organisations, high school, college, or university teams who could get low cost equipment through them. The “investment” could be as little as providing guidance and structure and/or selling equipment at cost. Say a local group needs to keep a board of directors and run a given number of events and be certified in a certain manner. In return they can purchase the equipment required to run a field or enough to hold a tournament at cost. I won’t pretend it would be easy. You’d need some form of followup, damage deposits of liability if the equipment is diverted to for-profit use, etc.

Think it doesn’t make sense? Think again. Most computer printers are sold to consumers at a loss with the profit being made on the average quantity of consumables each printer will require. But where’s the paintball industry equivalent? If it was cheap to open a field or start a club, more paint and other equipment would be sold. Perhaps fields should be branded by paint manufacturers much like pubs are by breweries in Britain. :D

I don’t understand why no one in the paintball industry has attempted to set up a franchising system yet.

I guess PBX is a developing franchise name. But it’s surprising that no marker or paint manufacturer looked past their own navels to come up with the idea.

[SlartyBartFast]

Sometimes though you just have to say- Shut up and play!!

True. But a little difficult to justify at 60-70$ per outing.

[paintman1234]

going back to the man idea... almost half the people i see at the feild i play at our under 16 and cant afford paintball but yet they spend all there money and pull it off now thats rec ball if you want to play a tourney just a small tourney not like nppl your going to have to dish out at least $50 and if you want to be at all sucessful chances are your not going to get by with the one q pod i use your going to want to play competive and need more paint (that also involves buying a pack) i know i cant afford that (im 14) unless i give up pb the next 3 weeks fallowing the tourny i aggree tourneys need to be cheaper and sacrifice the huge $1000 cash prize at the end with like a few cases of paint so for all your feild owners lower prices on tourneys please and thank you especially around west michigan wink wink

[Tyger]

Paintball, the only sport that embraces new technology while fearing change.

Every time it's brought up, the people that want limited paint say it's a show of skill, and the other players say that it shouldn't be restricted becasue that would (in the vernacular) "Suck". If we set a limit to 1 hopper, 1 pod, I don't see where people would complain. Set the rules so the pod can be transferred to another player, left in a bunker in game for a player, or so on, but the ammount of paint that can be brought into the field is set in stone. Then you have strategy, does your team front guy keep his pod, or dump it to the back guy right away?

But nobody wants this, becasue it's a "manly" competition to see how fast you can shoot your paintgun and how many balls you can shoot in the shortest ammount of time. Best joke I'd heard on this was from Bob Long, who said that we should just create a new game. You go onto the field with a credit card reader on top of your paintgun. On the word go, you run your card through as fast as you can, and the winner is the team that's credit limit is not busted.

-Tyger

[SlartyBartFast]

But nobody wants this, becasue it's a "manly" competition to see how fast you can shoot your paintgun and how many balls you can shoot in the shortest ammount of time. Best joke I'd heard on this was from Bob Long, who said that we should just create a new game. You go onto the field with a credit card reader on top of your paintgun. On the word go, you run your card through as fast as you can, and the winner is the team that's credit limit is not busted.

:rofl:

I love it. :D

By "manly" I suppose you mean an infantile display of hystrionics coupled with a venting of adrenaline and testosterone and governed by the simple rule "any number of categories I lose in is trumped by the single category I win in".

Right? :p

[thorn]

i think that the only way they will get to jack down practice costs is reballs. other than that, rec games or tourneys u couldnt use them. but for speedball teams, like the one i play on, an indoor field that uses reballs and has a way of recollecting them seems to be the best option. but reballs are expensive.

[PBX Ronin 23]

Paintball, the only sport that embraces new technology while fearing change.


This has to be one of the best quotes that I have ever read about paintball. It's so apropos.

There's a couple of basic tenets that been mentioned that I do not wholeheartedly agree with.

From my experience as a store owner and field operator, the best way to grow the sport is to promote any means necessary to expand the incoming uninitiated players. Get them to the field more often, How? By making the field more accessible to major population centers.

Make sure their starter equipment is as cheap as possible and still be a reliable as it could possibly be made. How? By having the manufacturers design the best possible products and have them made to the highest possible level of quality for the least amount of money....Taiwan anybody? ;)

By pushing the overall cost of playing as low as possible. Paint pricess have been steadily dropping in the past couple of years. The competitive nature of the industry practically ensures that while the economies of scale kicks in, better and cheaper means of producing paint will be developed. Who in this forum ever thought five years ago that some fields will be selling a case of paint for as low as $40? Who would have imagined?

Of course these things can only be achieved if no additional restrictive or prohibitive legislations are to be put forth by our government either on the local or federal level.

[PBX Ronin 23]

i think that the only way they will get to jack down practice costs is reballs.

Paintball as a game has always been predicated on marking your opponents. Does Reball do that? Considering the issues of cheating in paintball, where do you think Reball can help the sport in that regard.....

This is not intended as a flame and I hope that it is not taken as such.

[shatter_storm]

I think the paintball/skiing analogy is flawed.
Worst Case - casual play/ski:
Locally, lift tickets to any of the major mountains here will run you $30-$60. Rentals will be another $30. Food is way overpriced - $8 for a sandwich, $2.50 for a drink. You're looking at $100 a day if you don't own your equipment.
All-day play at my local field runs $15. $20 if you need to rent gear (that's $5 more, not $20 more). Paint ranges from $40 to $80 a case, price goes up slightly if you buy bags instead of a case. Food and drinks can be bought at the food shack for $2.50 a burger, $1.00 a drink (gatorade/water/soda). For a day's play, if you just have a small lunch and shoot a case of paint (!), it's going to cost $65.

Best Case - own your gear:
Seasons pass costs between $699 and $1200 here. I don't know what ski gear will cost you, but I'll assume lohman's got it right and it'll cost $1000 or so. $1700-$2200 for the season and you bring your own lunch.
My local field doesn't offer season's passes, so lets say you play every sunday for the whole year. That's $765 in field fees. Depending on your setup, you can play on $500 or $2500 of gear - I've got about $1500 invested between two markers, two sets of pants/jersey/masks, and two air systems.. so lets go with half that: $750. If you're still doing a case a weekend, you're going to spend $2040 on $40/case paint. Bringing your own lunch nets you a total bill of $3555 - *AND YOU PLAY EVERY WEEK*.

Run the numbers, paintball is cheaper where I live. Paintball has done nothing but get cheaper every year, and skiing has done nothing but get more expensive.

If anyone else wants to confirm the pricing, I'm using Sunday River in Bethel, Maine as the skiing location and Rogue Paintball in Standish, Maine as the paintball location. Links here:
Sunday River lift ticket pricing (http://www.sundayriver.com/lifttickets.html)
Rogue Paintball Pricing (http://www.roguepaintball.com/prices.html)