Quite a few places DO cater for walk on's but DONT promote the fact that they exist. This is what I think we have to change..
Pete, please don't take this the wrong way, but I think in this instance your level of experience may not always help... Let me try to explain.. You've been in the world of paintball for a long while and you've played tournaments as long as they've existed. You made the step out of the woods and onto the tourney field as part of the evolution of tournament level paintball. If we run a delta force style promo event focussing on sup air it will make people *aware* of tourney ball, however I dont think many people would step up to play it. People would think "wow, cool" but also be intimidated by it. The step up from rental to Sup Air is huge without a walk on (even a woodsball walk on, which is the path I have taken) somewhere in the middle. Because you've been involved in it pretty much from the start, you've never had to make the step up from rental to where we are now. This is why I think our efforts need to look at promoting walk ons etc to generate more regular players than we have this could be coupled with the kind of promotion you are talking about. But then atleast if someone is interested they should also realise that there is a middle step, they dont have to make the leap in one bound.
Andy, I hope I never take intelligent posts the 'wrong way', only agenda-ridden ones, which of course yours is not.
To answer your question :- I have never believed the natural evolution of tourney players (woodsball to walk-on to tourney) is without merit.
As things stand, I would think this process accounts for the vast majority of our tourney demographic.
What I am actually suggesting is that tourney ball is intrinsically more attractive to the average young male than woodsball.
Now, I don't just like stating my opinion that isn't in some way substantiated and I would draw upon the 'German' phenomena that I have mentioned here many times before to do just that.
Germany has no recball, it's illegal over there and they are forced to market paintball along tourney lines ...and here's the kicker...they have more teams in Germany than any other European country.
Think about this Andy because it's improatant, really important, because here is a country who boasts the largest number of teams but doesn't have the same evolutionary path as the rest of us in that they just go straight into tourney.
When i sat down and thought about what was going on over there, the penny dropped and I realized what we had to do.
I had long since believed tourney ball was sooooooooooooo much better than wannabee-Rambo ball but as you said, this may have been because I was always involved in tournaments from the first one over here in 1988 in Hatfield.
And so, when I begun to understand what was going down in Germany and considered its true relevance,a relevance that for some reason seem to have past most people, it didn't take much for me to start preaching the gospel according to tourney ball.
Andy, I take your point mate, but in this case I honestly don't think it invalidates what I am suggesting we do in terms of the direction we take when it comes to promoting paintball.
