Gups, come on mate, I have owned a site and if they cost upwards of £80,000 to set up you'd hardly have any sites in the UK whatsoever...
Do the maths Robbo. 300 new guns plus co2 cylinders @ appx £100 per setup = 30k, 300 hoppers, 500 overalls, 300 goggles, 300 packs, 1200 pots = 10k, a van = 15k. Now we're down to 25k to tap into mains water supply and electricity where available and run necessary pipework/cables, clear the site, provide hardstanding for basecamp and car park, build basecamp staging area, kitchen, shop, toilet block, on-site dry goods storage, plus offsite storage for guns/gas and vehicle, safety netting, fences, 6 fields, (eg pyramid bus, military vehicle, 2 storey castle, fort, village (4 huts) barricades, buy kitchen equipment, generator (if no electricity). You try that on 25K...The building crews wages alone are appx 25-30k!
I think it's been a while since you set up a site Robbo, or else you took the budget route, no offence
And this is an average centre. Centres like Birmingham, Essex, Glasgow and Hemel cater for more than 300 players.
Re VIP seller in shopping malls. I dislike some of tthem too, but it's a very effective method of getting bums on seats, or guns in hands... All ticket sales can be traced back to individual salespeople in IPG. If someone has a genuine complaint re a book of tickets after they have purchased them, they can contact the ticket seller for a refund. If they refuse then they can contact IPG who monitor complaints they get from customers. A couple of complaints about the same agent will send alarm bells ringing and they won't work for IPG for much longer, so i am told. All tickets sold are clearly printed with a 7-day cool off period, so if a ourchaser changes their mind they can get a refund frrom IPG.
Re no smoke without fire, Robbo, the old stories on which the rumours are based, stem back to the early days. In those days there wasn't the legislation or awareness over safety as there is now. Paintball was new and mistakes were made because no-one had the experience to know better. Tourney players used to punch disks out of coke cans to use as burst disks and they used to play in lab type specs. Both players and sites did a lot of stupid things in those days that none of us, with the experience we have gained since then, would do now, one would hope!
We go to a lot of expense to make sure DF is one of the safest places to play paintball in the UK. I should think the fact that i'm sitting here on Xmas eve, on day when i'm not getting paid by DF, when i should be eating dinner right now with the other half, should suggest to you that i'm pretty passionate about my work and DF's rep.
Re Baby Dave's player numbers, yes his site does get those figures regularly on a Saturday, a little less in Dec, Jan and Feb but otherwise he's spot on, week in week out. Our largest centre is Hemel hempstead who hit 500 every saturday during the summer and currently hit 400. Yes that's one site on one day. I think our largest week this year was 14k players through the gates across the 19 centres and we get a lot of repeat custom.
Re chronys: Every DF site has one, we buy them from Phoenix and NPS - ask them if you think i'm ****ting you. It's possible that on a particular day a chrony may have been out of action, although they all have spare batteries so i'm not sure why.
Re guns in basecamp, yes that's true, but all centres have (and should be using???) barrel socks. Do let me have photographic (if possible) evidence of any DF manager who isn't
