Well Pete
My point is this:
Having one unified format that is generally adhered to by all, will automatically help relieve the general confusíon in the public about what paintball is.
No other team sport is as fragmented as paintball, and that creates several problems:
1) When we can't even define ourselves - how can we hope to define the sport to tv audiences?
2) When various entities are competing with eachother for tv time, on products that are entirely different, if negates part of the positive effects such tv coverage could have on the sport as a whole.
3) For paintball to truly gain growth from tv exposure, viewers have to be presented with the same product over and over again.... not one thing one show - and another the next.
To me this is basic marketing... How on earth can you expect to market a product you don't even know yourself what is?
The problem I see is, that all the many benefits paintball as a whole could derive from being on tv, are to a great extent lost as long as the sport is as fragmented as it is.
... My interest in this debate is not whether 10 teams make it to tv on ESPN2 and thus end up with endorsements from outside sponsors... that is of little consequence to the sport as a whole... what DOES matter, is the impact that regular tv exposure of paintball may (or may not) have on the sport.
There is a reason most every other sport has gotten rid of their segmentation in the past (well - except for Rugby
).... and it baffles me that nobody in paintball has learned from that yet.
Nick
