Delta Force... good for the sport or not?

[Tony Harrison]

What @Missy-Q and @Al Woods say is quite correct - Delta is doing what they need to do for a business to make money and survive.

My point is that I've known Steve Bull for a long time - about 26 years. He's a good man, and ran the UKPSF for a long time on his own.

He's done a more for the sport behind the scenes than I could ever do, but never talks about it.

So, when some organisation pretends to be representing the sport, or tries to ignore what Steve has done, it sticks in my craw.

My early experiences as a rental and walkon player were all at independent sites, and I enjoyed every minute. I didn't need some guy in a shopping centre to tell me to go there, I chose them myself.

I think we can agree that the staff Delta use in shopping centres tell a number of untruths in order to get customers.

But imagine if someone else representing a business displayed the same lack of knowledge in order to convince you to sign with them. You wouldn't be too impressed, would you?

 

[Tony Harrison]

What @Missy-Q and @Alwoods say is quite correct - Delta is doing what they need to do for a business to make money and survive.

My point is that I've known Steve Bull for a long time - about 26 years. He's a good man, and ran the UKPSF for a long time on his own.

He's done a more for the sport behind the scenes than I could ever do, but never talks about it.

So, when some organisation pretends to be representing the sport, or tries to ignore what Steve has done, it sticks in my craw.

My early experiences as a rental and walkon player were all at independent sites, and I enjoyed every minute. I didn't need some guy in a shopping centre to tell me to go there, I chose them myself.

I think we can agree that the staff Delta use in shopping centres tell a number of untruths in order to get customers.

But imagine if someone else representing a business displayed the same lack of knowledge in order to convince you to sign with them. You wouldn't be too impressed, would you?

I would recommend any new players to go to a site like Skirmish Nottingham.

Nick and Sally cater for all levels of players, from first timers to walkons and tournament play.

 

[Al Woods]

I get where you're coming from and don't disagree with what you're saying.

It was Steve Bull's site we first played (no offence Steve) and it was because of him and the Kellys that we started to play, set up our own team and still play today.

I think sometimes we live in our paintball bubble but don't always realise that people genuinely don't have a clue where to go to play paintball, so they hit up Google. They then find a sack full of terrible websites that look like they were done in 1997 which makes paintball look awful, old fashioned and really unappealing. They're a mess. The likes of Delta Force are a great example of what should be done. Yes, they obviously spend a LOT of money on their marketing, but the content is good too and to do anything properly costs money, or time (which arguably IS money). As a designer – who doesn't do any coding at all – I know you can get your hands decent cheap web templates that (if thought-out and researched properly) can do a good job in giving a strong visual identity. Yep, good graphics are needed and a decent business brain too but in general theres no excuse for not having something that looks half way better than garbage.

The UKPSF has always been the biggest secret in paintball. I still reckon most players to this day will struggle to explain what they do. And this isn't a dis on the UKPSF by the way, I'm a card carrying supporter and have been since 2000 and I DO know what they do, but I know this is a general consensus.

For me, and I'll take as much **** from the powers that be that I deserve over this, but I think if the UKPSF really put a push on promoting themselves, telling their story more and looking like a sexy organisation then it would make a LOT of paintballers happy. Olympic committee style profile, but without the massive corruption.

My 2c is if people and businesses took inspiration from those who are smashing it then they will improve. Their product will be more appealing, they'll get more customers, earn more money and make things even better for themselves and the industry.

And yes, I absolutely LOVE Skirmish and Nick & Co. It's been too long since I played Hyperball.

 

[Tony Harrison]

Thanks for the reply, Al - I'm with you on the website design point!

I agree with you about the UKPSF being the best kept secret.

What they need is someone dumb enough to volunteer to deal with that..... sounds like a job for me.

I'll drop them a line tonight.

 

[Balls of Fury]

I don't have a problem with delta force at all

So many peoples first experiences of paintball are through places like it. And how many who played there only went having been chased down by some high street sales man, would they have ever considered paintball otherwise?

Even if only a tiny fraction of those who attend delta after being pestered by high street sales me carry on playing, that is a bonus to the game

Paintball doesn't advertise well at all, other than delta i have never seen a paintball advert out in the wild or in non paintball media. Someones gotta get the word out otherwise its just word of mouth

As for the UKPSF... that website is horrible, so much blank space, walls of text, and I still cant work out what they do..

 

[Tom]

What @Missy-Q and @Alwoods

I think we can agree that the staff Delta use in shopping centres tell a number of untruths in order to get customers.

But imagine if someone else representing a business displayed the same lack of knowledge in order to convince you to sign with them. You wouldn't be too impressed, would you?

I don't entirely agree

Some do - and if they do lie / give untruths then they open you up to a refund on the ticket book you bought.
But if they boast, big it up and give 'traders puff' then that's being a salesman.

They don't need a great and wide knowledge of paintball, they are selling an experience day playing paintball on a punter site. When paintballers play clever games with DF/IPG staff the dickhead in the story isn't always the one the storyteller thinks the dickhead is.

 

[Tony Harrison]

This kind of discussion is good. It's what's been missing from the forum for a while. 10 years ago, tons of people were on here talking about stuff. Now you just don't see that.

 

[Mark Vickery]

Thanks for the reply, Al - I'm with you on the website design point!

I agree with you about the UKPSF being the best kept secret.

What they need is someone dumb enough to volunteer to deal with that..... sounds like a job for me.

I'll drop them a line tonight.

Great stuff! Everyone else steps back except the "volunteer".

Hansel... he's so hot right now!
The paintball community needs to start communing again I think... too few people doing too much work.
This documentary my partner and I are doing is about giving back to the sport and hopefully making people aware of what is going on in the sport as a whole.

 

[chris jones]

What Delta Force are doing works for them, so I can't see them changing. They seem to get lots of punters through the gates.

The gripe I have with DF is more personal. I lived next door to a DF site and got p****d off with people knocking my door looking for the place. They gave my post code as it was the nearest to their woods. I was always up their site asking them to put up a sign but got nowhere. In the end when asked where the site was I'd send them to another site across the road or tell them DF had gone bust and weren't giving any money back

 

[chris jones]

I took a walk around the above site with my son recently. It's been there probably ten years and now it looks very very tired. Is it DF's business plan to put in only X amount of investment and then that's it just take the money out ?

I would describe the place as a bad accident waiting to happen, there are fallen pine trees everywhere. These trees have basically 9 to 12 inch barbs on them, just waiting for someone to fall on to All it needs is someone to spend a morning with a chainsaw and sort the the problem out.

Another things is, there are a lot of dead trees still standing that need to be taken down. We had walked across a field and a few minutes later the top 20ft of a tree came down where we had been. There was no wind and no warning and after that we took notice and could see how many trees were potentially ready to come down.

I don't know if this was typical of a DF site and the easiest job in the world is criticizing other peoples work. But is it the site management not having the pride in the site or is it an executive order to cut back on maintenance. .Delta Force are a major player.and I can't see that they would willingly risk people at their site. Maybe it's just a short term oversight or maybe DF have got too big and are overstretched.

I was at Campaign over the weekend not having been there for many years. It was clean and tidy and you could see money was being spent to keep it that way. I know there has always been a vast difference in the quality you find at paintball sites but surely a big organization like Delta Force has someone going around their sites checking that the sites meet their standards.