Over the last year or so, I have been documenting the inexorable slide of our ‘sport’, both on the field and off.
For once though, the state of UK paintball is gonna be nudged unceremoniously toward the back burner for the purposes of this post because of a much wider industry problem.
I have been speaking quite a lot to friends of mine in the US and this has always been my major source of information. I hear rumours and gossip all the time, who the hell doesn’t in paintball? Sometimes, we seem to thrive on it but I have never allowed rumours or gossip to become the bedrock of anything I write. But I’m afraid those somewhat depressing posts on here and articles in PGi that I have written in the past were not so much predictions (though they did came true) but rather a forerunner of even darker days.
The industry of late has gotten used to the ‘doom and gloom’ rhetoric the media have immersed themselves in, but to be fair, it’s quite difficult to report on events positively when those self-same events are anything but.
Incidentally, some recent financial inspections have been commissioned to take a close look at the paintball market and they reveal there is no light at the end of the tunnel for a couple of years; and the slide has steepened more than was feared.
It wasn’t so long ago, Paintball was on the right side of a billion dollar business but we have now contracted to one third of that figure, yes, that’s right, we’ve lost approx 66% of our business.
Unless you’ve downsized appropriately and / or tailored your company accordingly, you are gonna go out of business, that’s about the size of it.
This horror story is not however, gaining too much traction over here in Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
And so, should we worry too much if the Yanks are having a hard time of it?
It is of course worth acknowledging at this point, the vast majority of our source industry is based in the US and it seems reasonable to assume we (Europeans) must soon be on the wrong end of that well know phrase, ‘When America sneezes, we catch a cold’.
We have already seen a quite drastic cutback in team sponsorship but the back teeth have yet to bite too deeply into European event support and that’s mainly due to the fact we are still expanding.
It makes little sense in cutting back these support packages if the market is doing relatively well, for some of those companies, it is extremely important to support the European tournament scene because this is where their customer demographic lies, but for others, it means a lot less.
In our heyday, the vast majority of the big US companies attended these events but some of them are taking a close look at just what return they get for their event investment ..... for some, it was close to nothing more than a company presence.
If these recent market predictions are anywhere accurate then we are going to see some big guns muffled for good, of that I have no doubt.
I suppose the question to ask when considering these commissioned predictions is, ‘are they Mickey Mouse financial institutions doing the analysis or are they a serious outfit’?
Well, unfortunately for us, Mickey Mouse seems to have left town.
Of course, for the people left standing after this thinning of the herd, it will free up substantial slices of the market previously fed upon by those companies who’ve just bitten the dust.
A feeding frenzy will begin every time someone takes the unceremonious walk to the dead-box;
the effect of all this will be to make our industry ‘leaner and meaner’ which in itself is a good thing for paintball overall and in this sense isn’t unwelcome but I suppose I’m loathe to look forward to any time where I see one of our companies wither on the paintball vine just to make us healthier.
I have grown up with most of these guys, and have had dealings, and became friends with, the vast majority of our industry’s owners and personnel, this is not a good time for any of them.
The point of this post?
Well, I certainly do not want it to sound like a requiem; I do however want it to provoke a debate because it sometimes does us good to get the carpet out and give it a ‘damn good thrashing’.
I think the main discussion points be left to you but to kick start it, I think it might be interesting to see how you guys think this killing field in the US is gonna affect us over here in Europe when we bear in mind, we are doing quite good thank-you.
For once though, the state of UK paintball is gonna be nudged unceremoniously toward the back burner for the purposes of this post because of a much wider industry problem.
I have been speaking quite a lot to friends of mine in the US and this has always been my major source of information. I hear rumours and gossip all the time, who the hell doesn’t in paintball? Sometimes, we seem to thrive on it but I have never allowed rumours or gossip to become the bedrock of anything I write. But I’m afraid those somewhat depressing posts on here and articles in PGi that I have written in the past were not so much predictions (though they did came true) but rather a forerunner of even darker days.
The industry of late has gotten used to the ‘doom and gloom’ rhetoric the media have immersed themselves in, but to be fair, it’s quite difficult to report on events positively when those self-same events are anything but.
Incidentally, some recent financial inspections have been commissioned to take a close look at the paintball market and they reveal there is no light at the end of the tunnel for a couple of years; and the slide has steepened more than was feared.
It wasn’t so long ago, Paintball was on the right side of a billion dollar business but we have now contracted to one third of that figure, yes, that’s right, we’ve lost approx 66% of our business.
Unless you’ve downsized appropriately and / or tailored your company accordingly, you are gonna go out of business, that’s about the size of it.
This horror story is not however, gaining too much traction over here in Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
And so, should we worry too much if the Yanks are having a hard time of it?
It is of course worth acknowledging at this point, the vast majority of our source industry is based in the US and it seems reasonable to assume we (Europeans) must soon be on the wrong end of that well know phrase, ‘When America sneezes, we catch a cold’.
We have already seen a quite drastic cutback in team sponsorship but the back teeth have yet to bite too deeply into European event support and that’s mainly due to the fact we are still expanding.
It makes little sense in cutting back these support packages if the market is doing relatively well, for some of those companies, it is extremely important to support the European tournament scene because this is where their customer demographic lies, but for others, it means a lot less.
In our heyday, the vast majority of the big US companies attended these events but some of them are taking a close look at just what return they get for their event investment ..... for some, it was close to nothing more than a company presence.
If these recent market predictions are anywhere accurate then we are going to see some big guns muffled for good, of that I have no doubt.
I suppose the question to ask when considering these commissioned predictions is, ‘are they Mickey Mouse financial institutions doing the analysis or are they a serious outfit’?
Well, unfortunately for us, Mickey Mouse seems to have left town.
Of course, for the people left standing after this thinning of the herd, it will free up substantial slices of the market previously fed upon by those companies who’ve just bitten the dust.
A feeding frenzy will begin every time someone takes the unceremonious walk to the dead-box;
the effect of all this will be to make our industry ‘leaner and meaner’ which in itself is a good thing for paintball overall and in this sense isn’t unwelcome but I suppose I’m loathe to look forward to any time where I see one of our companies wither on the paintball vine just to make us healthier.
I have grown up with most of these guys, and have had dealings, and became friends with, the vast majority of our industry’s owners and personnel, this is not a good time for any of them.
The point of this post?
Well, I certainly do not want it to sound like a requiem; I do however want it to provoke a debate because it sometimes does us good to get the carpet out and give it a ‘damn good thrashing’.
I think the main discussion points be left to you but to kick start it, I think it might be interesting to see how you guys think this killing field in the US is gonna affect us over here in Europe when we bear in mind, we are doing quite good thank-you.
