Paintball on TV? - Yeh right !

[phillips]

I think there are two main problems, firstly through experience people in general have no interest in watching a "sport" they know little about.
Secondly look at this country, how many ballers are ou there? we would need seriouse viewing figures to kepp it on T.V.
Thirdly paintball weather you like it or not is not recognised as a sport( sad I know).
Snooker once had viewing figures that equated to over a third of the population of the United Kingdom, one of the biggest factors is because many people participate in snooker( viewing or playing) on a regular basis, there arn't enough ballers to really spark an interest in paintball from the "big cheeses of T.V. programming.


Lets look at what gets televised in this country:
Snooker
Pool
Bowls
Olympics
Darts
Rugby
Football
Poker

They are all highly viewed or have a high participant number, nothing like what they could hope for with paintball.
It is just such a small market, paintball is small in most respects.
Woodland play is hard to watch, Sup air can get extremely repetative( IMHO), it would take a gargantuan miricle to get high viewing figures.
My 2 pence.

 

[Lucky]

Hush - please explain what you mean by this statement...

I think hush may actually have a small point there. If you take two novices that didn't know anything about paintball at all, and drop one at a woodland event and the othere at a sup-air event, then it's pretty obvious that the woodland guy will get the following instructions, gun, bad guys, go shoot, have fun. and off he trots, runs himself ragged in the woods and feels like rambo for a day.
Meanwhile the sup-air guy will have to instantly digest a thousand rules, learn specifics on how to hold his gun, how to shoot fast, how to minimise his target profile, how to move on the field, how to supress a player/players, and after he's been shot to **** in his first ten games, he may if he's not to sore or confused agree to come back again when the bruises have healed.
But did he have as much "fun" as the woodland guy, i very much doubt it.
The complexity of the modern sup air game makes it almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated and without proper explanation it would remain very confusing.
So armchair joe, flicks thru the channels after eastenders has finished and comes across "paintball on TV", what do you reckon his first thoughts are going to be? "my, this looks exciting"? "somebody pass me a gun i want to go play"! or more probably "what the feckin' hell is this all about"?
For all the banter, self hype, and back slapping that goes on when people talk about "paintball on Tv", lets get real here..................................
Will it beat strictly come dancing.................no
will it beat eastenders................................no
Will it ever make a mainstream channel..........no
will it make some obscure channel at 3am......maybe
will it get viewed by anyone other than us.....no
As much as i'd love to see paintball outstripping match of the day, it's just never gonna happen.
The costs involved in any form of paintball make it prohibitive for 95% of the population to get involved with, the other 5% with money to burn have a whole collection of extreme sports to choose from before they get to us.
until paintball is bought down to an affordable level it will always remain a fringe sport which sustains itself rather than attracting outside sponsorship, and until external money is introduced into the sport we are never gonna make a viable tv presentation

 

[Matski]

The Germans do actually manage to get people straight into the tournament scene but I think that's pretty ethnocentric. The Germans have a very different mentality, and in some respects a very different approach to life, than the 'British' (whatever British is anymore). If the only thing paintball (in the UK) could offer was inflatable fields, we'd probably see paint prices rise rather steeply.

 

[phillips]

I may be wrong here, but it was my understanding that due to their laws Germans were not allowed to play woodland events, so tornement paintball is all they have?
Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Matski]

I may be wrong here, but it was my understanding that due to their laws Germans were not allowed to play woodland events, so tornement paintball is all they have?
Correct me if I am wrong.

Yes, by 'manage to get into' I meant paintball hasn't fallen flat on it's arse due to a lack of woodsball. Should have been clearer, appologies.

 

[Raffles]

The only way to get any British paintball on TV - is for a British team to actually win something in the USA.

Let's not forget the 'UK champions' Manc Union have been on prime time TV - all be it for 20 seconds (and that JR shot was priceless).

If you think UK paintball is lacking TV coverage - look at the other sports that we tried to adopt - Ice Hockey, American Football...

These both had/have structured leagues and sponsorship - but are now soooo yesterday that a lot of the early teams no longer exist.

Publicity will not come to you - you have to go and find it.

 

[Jasper]

"he made it into the snake; i dont think anyone saw... oh whaddya know, he has 4 guns on him, how did they ever see him get in there?.. oh thats a shame, he's eliminated..."

"thats the last man standing now and he appears to have marker trouble; centre back can. the other team just need to communicate and let each other know this... oh its a 3 man run-through, i wonder how they worked out where he was?!"

...etc

Had that done to us in toulouse in the final in 2004. The french guy thought he had the game won an was waving at the crowd while collecting the flag till he was told there was still one of our guys left by the guy on the pa and where he was, suddenly he brought his gun up an ran to get our guy! we found out much later what had been said as it was in french

 

[Buddha 3]

I think hush may actually have a small point there. If you take two novices that didn't know anything about paintball at all, and drop one at a woodland event and the othere at a sup-air event, then it's pretty obvious that the woodland guy will get the following instructions, gun, bad guys, go shoot, have fun. and off he trots, runs himself ragged in the woods and feels like rambo for a day.
Meanwhile the sup-air guy will have to instantly digest a thousand rules, learn specifics on how to hold his gun, how to shoot fast, how to minimise his target profile, how to move on the field, how to supress a player/players, and after he's been shot to **** in his first ten games, he may if he's not to sore or confused agree to come back again when the bruises have healed.
But did he have as much "fun" as the woodland guy, i very much doubt it.
The complexity of the modern sup air game makes it almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated and without proper explanation it would remain very confusing.
So armchair joe, flicks thru the channels after eastenders has finished and comes across "paintball on TV", what do you reckon his first thoughts are going to be? "my, this looks exciting"? "somebody pass me a gun i want to go play"! or more probably "what the feckin' hell is this all about"?
For all the banter, self hype, and back slapping that goes on when people talk about "paintball on Tv", lets get real here..................................
Will it beat strictly come dancing.................no
will it beat eastenders................................no
Will it ever make a mainstream channel..........no
will it make some obscure channel at 3am......maybe
will it get viewed by anyone other than us.....no
As much as i'd love to see paintball outstripping match of the day, it's just never gonna happen.
The costs involved in any form of paintball make it prohibitive for 95% of the population to get involved with, the other 5% with money to burn have a whole collection of extreme sports to choose from before they get to us.
until paintball is bought down to an affordable level it will always remain a fringe sport which sustains itself rather than attracting outside sponsorship, and until external money is introduced into the sport we are never gonna make a viable tv presentation

I agree with a lot of what you say here, except for the new guy on a Sup 'Air field. In your secenario it seems like he gets dumped in between well established players. Yes he would get murdered, but so would a newbie in the woods if he gets dropped in between a bunch of guys who have been playing a long time in the woods.
Drop a newbie on a Sup field amongst other newbies and you have a level playing field.

Now here's some first hand experience: I used to work at a site that has a lot of big woodland fields, as well as two tournament sized Sup fields. Whenever a bunch of rentals came along, they also got to play a game on the Sup field. After they had seen and played all the fields, we always asked them what field they wanted to play next. Many of them voted for the Sup field. It seems that, despite the weird colours and shapes, people like being able to see their opponent from the get go, as this means that they can get shootin' and tootin' from the start signal and it seems that the funnest part is pulling the trigger.
Having said that, there is also a good proportion that doesn't like it and would rather go for the whole Rambo fantasy.

Point of this post: Though a totally foreign concept to most, playing Sup 'Air ain't as inunderstandable (I'm sure that's a word) as it might seem.

 

[HUSH HUSH]

Hush - please explain what you mean by this statement...

Robbo,
Sorry for my late reply.
In my personal view woodland/ scenario can be spread to so many stages, buildings, woods, trenches, tanks, airplanes and I’ve even seen advertising for a rigid raider beach landing craft scenario.

Now tell me that your average person would rather stand behind an inflatable coke can??

For the first time baller this seems to be more exciting living the week end warrior role than running around the inflatable side of this game.

Now I can only speak for personal experiences but when a group of 20+ of us started playing in the woods 6x years ago due to work related activities I’m the only one to have moved onto sup air. I love the game and will only leave it when my body says no more, but I am the only one from this group. The majority have quit but a small few still play in the woods and I’m not talking about 40-50 year olds, these guys and girls are in the early- mid 20's and sup air those not appeal to them.

You have a lot more options available in scenario to keep the 1st timers interested and coming back too.

Also like Shamu Stated:

Let face it, the woods are comforting - there's lots of cover and you don't have to run if you don't want to. If you're an overweight father of four, you can still feel like rambo in the woods. Supair looks like it takes more work and requires better physical condition, which can be intimidating to a new player.

one more thing - when you add in the ubercool tournament players, ripping their gats and generally acting like complete asses to each other, is it any wonder most new players want nothing to do with supair?

Very true.

 

[Dazdread]

I ill say what i think but it might not be right but it is what i think.


I think paintball is to fragmented at the moment we need one league and that's it then maybe feeder leagues and so on.....

We have the same problem with the sports council with why they will not look at us as a sport because of how all over the place it is.

We need to have a referee board were there the only ones that can Marshall i mean how can we take this seriously when some tin pot team is marshaling and maybe makes a call for the team they like or know i think from that angle it is a joke we need some sort of rules codes of practice for us all.


We all need to be under one banner then we can promote our selves to the world to me for people looking in at us they just think we are weekend warriors who get camoed up and its not organised.

If we could get some sort of sports council ( yes i know about bully and i and the nq support him in what ever he does) but to have them as say like football has the FA then the media might take us seriously ???????

Dare I say it that the PA should be the ones to push this forward, if the water has not been too tainted by pollitics already, but as Andy Hatton has said he is standing down as chairman and the new one will be appointed through an open vote, maybe now is the time to move forward with no adgenda.

I dare say that if the appointee is not already big in the industry then he will be ignored and thus defeating the point of a non-partisan leader.

I have long felt that there should be a single governing body, a single unified league that should be build in regional cells and that the "Premiership" should be qualified for and travel the country. Again we have the issue of having to commit to the season but there is nothing stopping the existing private ventures continuing.

Won't happen... How about Robbo for chairman, from vocal critic to captain of the ship... I know your attitude has changed over time but just completing the full circle of life