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A Wind of Change

KitsuneAndy

Platinum Member
I suppose there's two ways it could all play out....

When these kind of businesses are formed, they have one goal in mind, money making, and lots of it. To do that they are going to concentrate on the most profitable market.

So I see either:

A: They turn their attention more to recball/walkons/scenario, the market is bigger there, more potential customers, therefore more profit from this market and even less emphasis on the Sup Air side of things.

Or,

B: Recognise the full potential of what Sup Air could be and come up with ways of promoting the sport in order to get more players and therefore a higher customer base. If this happens then I'd expect to see more entry and mid range markers being released to make it easier for people to get into tourney ball. Taking into account which markers have come onto the market in the past few years this is *hopefully* what people are gearing up for. The Ion, PMR and Mini have made it a lot cheaper to get a brand new setup that can easily hold it's own against more expensive markers.

Or, I could be completely wrong on both counts in which case one of you will most likely slap me into place ;)
 

Jonny 03

www.carlisle-reball.co.uk
Personally I would of said money and much more focus will be put into woodland and scenario (with the consistant return in popularity in the format). After all these people want money, they dont care for the love of the game, it doesnt speak to them the way it does to us, its all about the dollar.

Edit: Oh pants, just read AndyDanes comment fully after writing mine and would instead simply say I agree with the woodland comment.
 

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
13,116
2,157
448
London
www.p8ntballer.com
Lump's, Andy Dane's and Element's posts are nudging where I'm at looking at here but I wanna let this thread flesh out a little more before I jump back in.....mind you, I'm quite pleased some of these guys seem to have their heads switched on anyway...
 

john251282

Platinum Member
Oct 4, 2005
1,212
23
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Bristol
www.google.co.uk
Generally I see some of the recent takeovers as being good. With no disrespect ment to current or previous owners but some of the major companies in our sport have been run by paintballers rather than business men. They could have started as ballers and then shifted towards business men but they will not have as much experience as a dedicated business team. The other positive thing about this is that it means paintball is being recognised as a sport with potential to be very large and more importantly for the business people, a very profitable sport.

Hopefully this will lead to increased focus on making these newly acquired businesses as profitable as possible. There are a number of changes that could happen as a result of this.

As mentioned above this could lead to an increased focus on recball, i.e. where the biggest margins are, more margin means more profit! However that is really just on paint as turnover of on camo, markers etc is fairly low.

If we look at the tourny scene there is a very different dynamic in how players act in comparison to recballers and maybe scenario players(correct me if I am wrong, as I am not very into the scenario scene). Most tourny players have a massively high turnover of kit, new marker most years, new team kit, maybe new loader and new accessories. And there are many people who could go well above this. Just checkout how active our "for sale" area is.

This offers the business community a very different angle to attack the tourny area. What I really trying to say is that there is definitely a chance that the big boys could get more involved in recball but please do not get too disheartened as there is still plenty of money to be made in the tourny scene.

The other couple of areas that these big companies will hopefully be able to influence are:

Hopefully the long awaited uniting of leagues, my guess would be towards XBall the main reasons being: easier for new people to follow, higher volume of paint used and higher wear on kit (more likely to buy new kit every season). Also some communication between the US and Europe leagues, i.e. stopping the totally ridiculous issue of conflicting event dates.
 

sumo89

Platinum Member
May 26, 2005
1,759
1
63
LANDAN
www.myspace.com
i am a great believer in capitalism so this taking over of competition and amalgamation of company's will force all of them to be more competitive and thats always better for the consumer, us.