Paintball #3 Extreme Sport

[xtreme paintball]

According to the most recent Superstudy published by the SGMA, paintball in 2001 was more popular than snowboarding, mountain biking, artificial wall climbing and many other
sports. Participants numbered approximately 7,678,000 for paintball in 2001. It is now the official 3rd most popular "Extreme Sport" according to the SGMA, beaten only by inline skating and skateboarding.
Here's the link: SGMA (http://www.sgma.com/press/2002/press1026484987-17617.html)

[Cliffio]

1 reason as to why would be because of location, paintball can be played anywhere. where as sailing or snowboarding can only be done in select areas

[Curly]

And snowboarding can only be done during the winter.

[BajaBoy]

yea i know ALOT of people are going to snap at me but o well.. i use 2 skate myself.. and around here there are alot of skaters.. but its like to them skate or die.. and skating was there life and pretty much they were all drugies.. so i dont really think they know what they like and dont..

[shartley]

Sorry, but we on AO have already proved that these “studies” show little of nothing. Why? Well, let’s take a look at the standard they used for their numbers…

participated at least once in 2001

hmmmmm In my opinion, this does not indicate a darn thing… even less that Paintball is more “popular” than any other activity. Sorry. Having to only play the game (or do the activity) ONCE does not indicate anything other than the number of people who did it, NOT how they liked it or if they ever did it again. We had this same discussion last year. LOL

For example, if you have 100 people who participated in Sport A, and 100 who participated in Sport B…. this study would rank them as EQUAL in popularity. However, what if you then found out that Sport A had 90 people out of those 100 who participated in that sport on a regular basis, while Sport B had only 5 people out of those 100 who participated in it on a regular basis? Then you could conclude that Sport A was indeed more popular than Sport B….. and could very well be more popular than even Sport C that may have a “participation rate” of even 500 or MORE (and would be actually rated higher by THIS study)! :D

These studies will tell you anything you WANT it to tell you….. for AO we demand a bit more from our “facts and figures”. ;)

Again… sorry if I burst your bubble.. but you can draw no conclusions from that study.

[Jonneh]

Doesn't an Extreme Sport have to incorporate an element of danger? Paintball is an irritatingly safe sport, the only way i can see someone getting hurt is by stubbing their toe on a tree stump or tripping over some sup air tubing

[Cliffio]

Originally posted by Jonneh
Doesn't an Extreme Sport have to incorporate an element of danger? Paintball is an irritatingly safe sport, the only way i can see someone getting hurt is by stubbing their toe on a tree stump or tripping over some sup air tubing

but i would say 7 or 8 out of 10 people that dont play, dont know it isnt safe, which i think is a problem

you go to a mall and ask people the first word that they think of when you said paintball, i would wager it would be pain or something related to that


Cliff

[paintbattler]

IMO paintball is 1000 times better than skateboarding..im a josk (play all sports) and i just cant stand them (no offense) but i do have some friends that are skaters that are cool. i dislike some of the ppl that skate, not the sport. i just dont like how those certian ppl go about things.

[Halliday]

Originally posted by shartley
These studies will tell you anything you WANT it to tell you….. for AO we demand a bit more from our “facts and figures”. ;)

Again… sorry if I burst your bubble.. but you can draw no conclusions from that study.

To quote and slightly paraphrase the imortal Homer Simpson, "You can prove anything with statistics, and 65% of people know that."

[Cliffio]

facts shmacks, you can prove anything that is SLIGHTLY true with facts

[Kevmag]

From the PR on Warpig:

Another signifigant number was that paintball had 1,172,000 players classified as "frequent participants" based on the fact that they played paintball 15 or more days out of that year.

I think it would be more meaningful to compare the "frequent participants" numbers to other x-sports (that require daily use fees), like snowboarding.

1.2M hard-core paintballers seems pretty small to me, though.

[billmi]

Originally posted by shartley
Sorry, but we on AO have already proved that these “studies” show little of nothing. Why? Well, let’s take a look at the standard they used for their numbers…

participated at least once in 2001

hmmmmm In my opinion, this does not indicate a darn thing… even less that Paintball is more “popular” than any other activity. Sorry. Having to only play the game (or do the activity) ONCE does not indicate anything other than the number of people who did it, NOT how they liked it or if they ever did it again. We had this same discussion last year. LOL

You're right, the raw number of total participants isn't the most usefull data in the world. It's only part of the picture. The article I wrote cites a very few figures compared to what's available in the report. If you've got $900 burning a hole in your pocket there's a lot more than the surface data I referenced in the article (about 8 inches thick worth of printed pages more). They do break down criteria based on how often the people played, their income levels, etc. Give the article a read, it will fill you in. Or you can give the SGMA a call (their number is on the web site, they're right down the street from the pub that was my regular source of food when I lived in WPB) and they can enlighten you further.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills

[shartley]

Bill,
I will indeed give YOUR article a read at some point. I was however only referring to the original post, what was written in it, and how the conclusion based on the data shown as a reference would indicate nothing. By blind luck (IMHO) the actual in-depth facts and figures may indeed support the “fluff” shown in the link… but more times than not, this would not be the case. Anyone making any conclusions based off of what the original author of this thread posted would be taking a risk that I personally find unacceptable.

I am glad you got more information (and as you can see, that was not posted until much AFTER my post), and can prove to more of a certainty about paintball’s status as it deals with popularity… but the author of this post was not referencing your Article. ;) I therefore was only commenting on the information that was posted at the time. And I did not even know about your article until another member (not the original thread author) posted about it (unrelated to the original post aside from being the same topic). :D

Again, I will read your article when I have some free time to devote proper attention to it, anything less would be disrespectful of the time you put into writing it.

[nastymag]

i actaully think paintball is an extreem sport .
for one if it wasnt done right it would have the potantiol (sp) to very dangerous .

another is that i have gotten hurt playing paintball alot more then snowboarding ( i am not a good snowboarder either)
. i pull muscles all the time when i play paintball ( i am in very good shape).
and this one time i was unscrewing a co2 tank form a rental gun that was not working right. the tank shot out because the o ring had swelled . the tank smacked right in the crotch . every one came over to make sure i was ok .
need less to say i sat out a few games.
that was extreem enough for me!

[xtreme paintball]

Shartley,
I never said that the information contained in this article was true. I resent having you imply that information provided by me, personally, is false or questionable, simply due to the fact that I called attention to an article that may or may not be correct.

I was simply providing a source of media that others may draw their own conclusions upon, and was in no way expressing that it was true or false, accurate or inaccurate.

I would appreciate it if, in the future, you would refer to it as the articles information, and not mine, as I only brought it to attention. I did not write it.

I wouldn't like it if people began questioning my intelligence based on someone else's article, which may or may not contain inaccurate information.

[shartley]

Originally posted by xtreme paintball
Shartley,
I never said that the information contained in this article was true. I resent having you imply that information provided by me, personally, is false or questionable, simply due to the fact that I called attention to an article that may or may not be correct.

I was simply providing a source of media that others may draw their own conclusions upon, and was in no way expressing that it was true or false, accurate or inaccurate.

I would appreciate it if, in the future, you would refer to it as the articles information, and not mine, as I only brought it to attention. I did not write it.

I wouldn't like it if people began questioning my intelligence based on someone else's article, which may or may not contain inaccurate information.
I am sorry you read that into my posts. It simply was not said nor even implied. I am sorry you resent any not stated, nor implied, things from my posts.

I on the other hand, do not resent your resentment and statements of such, since they are derived by things that did not happen nor were said by myself. In fact the only reason I kept mentioning you specifically was because there were multiple posters, and some used information NOT contained in your opening post. You see, if I had NOT made such distinctions, my point would not have been valid. And if I had NOT made the distinctions, there may have been room for confusion as to what my point actually was since further on in the thread, MORE information was posted.

My only point was that it would take more information than what you posted to draw any conclusions about Paintball’s popularity. It was not myself that posted the thread and Titled it Paintball #3 Extreme Sport, and then used (posted as reference for your thread and title of it) only one source that actually showed no useful information as to the topic. I then also only made note that more information was needed than what was posted in that article to form any sort of objective and conclusive facts on the matter.

I also never said it was YOUR article or YOUR information. I just read the whole thread again to make sure of that fact. It seems that you may have read more than was actually written. I would LOVE to apologize to you, but you see… I simply have nothing to apologize for. The claims you make are not true.