The figures for Airsoft seem a little exaggerated for me but I do not have any hard numbers to quote in response.
The part about the Magazines not being on the shelves of WHS, I am sure PGI is still in there along with a yank mag or two, and you can get PBUK in any public Library.
The bit about the public perception of paintball! dictating what paintball is... well thats boll%cks ...... paintball is what it is to those who play and whatever type you are into it is up to you/us to tell all and sundry to change that perception.
Hyperball was the development that put the nail in the coffin of tournament woodsball as it was, tournament paintball changed drastically when it appeared and was soon followed by Supair and that changed it to its next level and provided the opportunity to transform paintball into a sport.
Woodsball will never be a sport, and why should it, it is a great game (and the one I enjoy the most) but thats it, a great game.
The figures for recball players is accurate (ish) but the figure the writer has quoted for supair ballers is way off the mark but it is lower than most people would like to admit, around the fifteen hundred mark, and is not a reducing figure.
I love the part where he says supair stopped the growth of woodsball, I would preferred he admitted that with a tied market that the old woodsball players gave to the sites/organisers they had the opportunity to create and nurture there own growth by giving the customers a service that they would have been happy to carry on with, and the rapid transition to supair tournaments could have been slowed down.
All the things we see are just the natural development of a sport and we ourselves have an idea of what is the best depending when on that timeline we enter the game.
Woodsball for me is memory's of a time when I could cut it with the rest and part of the team kit was some pampers for Chris Edwards (I think he was only four at the time) so woodsball is the best in my opinion and requires more skill obviously
, but the future of the sport is and only will be supair or a very close derivative.
Russ