From the point of view of raising the profile of tournament paintball, which is what this thread was set-up to discuus, there are some very defeatist attitudes here and it is understandable why. Tournament paintball IS very much a minority activity and lives in the shadow of traditional paintballing in terms of public awareness. It is always going to be an uphill struggle to raise the awareness of tournament paintball and it is bound to seem like an impossible task at times. But that's no reason to give up.
Guppy, I was on the front line with you during the period when you were promoting tourney-ball heavilly and I am sorry to hear that you think your efforts were wasted. I would suggest to you that the most certainly were not, though measuring the results of your efforts is almost impossible. One thing I can say for certain, is that for every person you educated about tournament paintball, you raised the public awareness of our sport. A drop in the ocean maybe, but every little bit helps.
And that's the point here surely. If everyone involved in tournament paintball put as much effort in to promoting the sport as you did, we could certainly be able to measure the success of those efforts.
The thing that has to be discussed is the methods people use to promote the sport... as has been mentioned above, it is very difficult to describe our facination with the game in a conversation with someone who has never seen or experienced tournament paintball first hand. Even posters and flyers are going to struggle to get the message of how enjoyable and rewarding the sport is to play. But with a little thinking outside the box, we can achieve results if we are prepared to work hard, stick to our guns and stay motivated even when our efforts see little measurable rewards.
Of course it is easier to promote woodsball as public awareness of this format is already very high. But does that mean it is more marketable? Well it depends upon the demographic we are trying to market too, but I firmly believe that tournament, sup'air paintball is much more marketable to the average young male than woodsball if it is presented in all its glory.
The problem we face is the accessibility of the sup'air format once we have gained interest. Its no use selling someone an idea and then asking them to go hugely out of their way to give it a try - the conversion rates to getting interested players involved in the tournament scene fall down here. We need a better infrastructure of paintballing venues actively offering AND promoting Sup'Air paintball facilities. Then and only then can we measure the success of our efforts in marketing tournament paintball. We have been around this issue many times and it always comes back to needing more sup'air venues to make any dramatic improvements.
Does this mean we should give up promoting the tournament format? Of course not. Although the conversion rates of getting people interested in the sport to getting them involved in playing are low, every little helps. And for every person we make aware of our sport along the way, that raises public awareness. The more public awareness there is, the easier our job becomes and when the infrastructure is in place (and it will be sooner or later), all of this work will pay dividends.
So let's talk about how to promote the sport rather than argue over whether any efforts are worthwhile or not and therefore stiffle any good intentions that are there to start with.
