Is paintball being promoted enough in the UK?

[Nitestorm]

With the lack of info for the general public about the campaign cup, I'm wondering if we just aren't promoting the sport enough outside of the paintball community. How are members of the general public supposed to know what it's on, if they can watch, what it's about etc when it's website hasn't been updated since the 2005 cup.

I hear people complain there is hardly any major coverage of it, but should we be doing more to get noticed?

 

[mikey601]

With the lack of info for the general public about the campaign cup, I'm wondering if we just aren't promoting the sport enough outside of the paintball community. How are members of the general public supposed to know what it's on, if they can watch, what it's about etc when it's website hasn't been updated since the 2005 cup.

I hear people complain there is hardly any major coverage of it, but should we be doing more to get noticed?

Short answer, No its not promoted enough and yes we should do more to get it noticed

 

[lemonadeX]

Definately needs promoting - People don't see it as a sport and just something you do with mates every so often.

Only publicity paintball seems to have at the moment is the annoying guys from the Ministry of Paintball who offer you *cheap* group paintball on the street.

-Will

 

[JAYDB]

i dont know about anyone else but i tell everyone else about it at school sometimes its tough as a previos thread shows, but im trying my hardest to make people know more about it... it needs to go on tv regulaly
not just a 1 off extreme sports channel that hardly anybody has, its needs to get noticed on either channel 1, 2 3 4 or 5 and not be on at something stupid like 12 o'clock at night.
something like the nppl event which is on ESPN but i have heard its hard to get that cannel in britain.
or planet eclipse for instance is in a back ally
it needs to be on a high street and have dvd's playing out of the window etc. ino the rent or woteva would be higher, but it would get us more noticed and advertisement...

 

[p8ntballer321]

lol i was told that was the updated one, but oh well

nobody cares

 

[Samurai]

Back on topic

Short answer, No its not promoted enough and yes we should do more to get it noticed

slightly longer answer , definitely not - please see any topic on the state of UK paintball and that'll explain

http://www.p8ntballer-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=67810

http://www.p8ntballer-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=68657


however that doesn't (or shouldn't) stop us that do know about it from helping out, rather than just waiting for the industry to promote itself to the public and meanwhile bemoaning the lack of spectators and outside interest

These are only minor things, but will help - however limited the success!

For example I (like many others on here) work for reasonably large (non paintball related) company with 150+ employees, and in the run-up to campaign I've sent out an email about the event and that my team are playing (please come an support us etc etc) with a link to the so they can see what its about!

I've also been ranting to all friends and family to try an convince them I don't dress up like rambo - and that they should come an see what it's about for themselves!

then it's back to the whole promotion of paintball as a sport thing, why don't more people know about it? why aren't we getting more new players? - and why aren't pb site owners/companies forking out loads of money to legitimise our sport with no guaranteed return?... etc etc

but again, teams can advertise themselves by talking to local press, submitting articles to local papers, keeping an updated website, registering as a sports club with their local county council, running newbie training events - advertising them in uni's and colleges etc (printing off flyers aren't that expensive!) also actually suggest these to a local site owner with sup air (they are out there!), and you'll probably be pleasantly surprised - if you're doing the work and the site is still getting an income on top of the punters, it's hardly a bad thing - and with luck you get new players & new blood into the sport!?

sadly these things take time and effort...

making the last post sadly accurate, even if it wasn't meant to be

nobody cares

 

[Robbo]

No it is not, and if you think about it, why should it be.
Knee jerk answers will have us all believing the promoters should be pushing our sport forward because they will benefit in the end, blah, blah, blah but this is really an industry wide problem and shouldn't really be directed toward the promoters of this event.

Promotion of Paintball isn't about promoting the Crystal Palace event tho it's understandable how some people might think so.
The guys who run the Millennium have to keep a careful eye on finances and bucket loads of cash ain't exactly available after the all the ex'es are taken out.
If Paintball gets promoted properly then EVERYBODY in the industry benefits and thus it should never be incumbent upon one small group (in this case the Millennium) to foot the total expenditure for the promotion of our beloved sport.

It's not rocket science in how best to structure the promotion that is needed, it just needs the political will of a few of the industry big guns (Inc the Millennium and other leagues) and some responsible sites.

All the time the industry ignore the commonsense imperative of working together to achieve a collective marketing campaign, we will wallow, in this country at least, in public indifference and ignorance of our sport.

Bejeezus if an outfit like Delta Force can promo on a national level as they do, and have the success they do, especially when you think of the product they actually sell, then it's truly unbelievable how the industry hasn't responded.

I have listened to some of our site owners (some quite successful) bemoaning Delta Force and their methods but bottom line is this, they (DF) shamed the rest of our so called professional site owners in coming up with a national program for expansion that makes the rest of them look like Muppet's.
And the real irony is, even when the rest of our site owners have been shown a successful working blueprint, they elect to default to a policy of negative opinion rather than learning ... in this world you can learn from anyone, even a bunch like DF.

 

[JoeJr]

nobody cares

whats that got to do with this thread.....ash22 hasnt even posted in it

 

[Samurai]

I may have come across a bit wide of the mark here..

but the intent of my post is not to say that the millenium isn't promoting itself or to have a pop at anyone not promoting things in the sense of the industry.

merely to suggest that there's nothing stopping us players/teams at a base level from starting to promote ourselves and our sport!

personally i think it'd be great if pb industry co's were in the high st with DF - and what I was attempting to convey was that there's nothing to stop tourney teams from doing that themselves

it's just the effort that's required!

 

[ash22]

whats that got to do with this thread.....ash22 hasnt even posted in it

i had joe but it got deleted