the original subjected was dropped so Ill help hijack my own thread.
TV
What can be bad? Mor e importantly... Does it matter?
Here is how it works, i am using round numbers.
10million now try paintball
about 1% pick it up as a hobby. 100,000. This is pretty much a revolving door as it is droped by one and picked up by another.
out of that call it 1500 per major event. Say MS, PSP and S7 are all different 22,000 for a year. or about 25% of the 1%.
The real money is made off the 9.9 million. let that sink in.
The free goods etc comes out of those profits.
The idea is the sliding scale. Paintball doubles the top number to 20 million.
(which will happen no matter what TV does, TV just speeds it up).
As china gets richer (1% of 1% of 1% is still a big number) Japan switches to larger ball and so on. As the population grows, until a more fight or flight hobby comes along paintball will grow.
So as the market grows, the market researches for other products realize that the average alpha pup uses an mp3 player, surfs the net, eats bad food and whoa! a lot play paintball, then the outsiders aren't begged into coughing up dollars, they HAVE to because its the market they want to target.
Yeah, as more cash gets thrown around, there will be true pros. And they will probably become more exclusive. Who wants to watch guys who play everyday, and are paid to do so, pound guys who really play as a hobby?
TV? They can come watch the true pros, or not. We don't need them- it would be nice for about 1000 guys who lives would be affected. But true pros are here and they will be the norm in two years. The pros worth are only valued by how many they can influence, TV may help their worth. BUT NOT WHEN they are marketed by the retards who run marketing in Paintball. Then again, the winds of change are blowing. As people like K2 enter, they have large investments. They will want to ensure their brands are promoted correctly. IF I was a VP of marketing in paintball at a large company I would keep my resume handy, there is a big change coming and TV has very little to do with it.
I am wrong? ha. There are many pro skaters that are millionaires, just for being a pro. We are bigger than skating. Our consumer base is more diverse. TV didn't make or break skating, it made it more tolerable, but the 'product' of skating offered something people wanted.
Tippmann, BE and the others that will follow are being bought to grow the market and return investment. if there are 4 150 million dollar companies, and all are expected to grow at 20% by their investors EACH year. Those 4 will represent 1 billion in three years. They won't get there by getting more money from each participant, actually they will get there by getting less from person who plays. Which means growth.
How will they do that? however they have to. Including things like maybe advertising on the Xgames, how about tV sucking money out of paintball in order to grow it?
It's just business. The analogies to other sports we all like to use, don't mean sh@#. Money makes the world go round and the stakes are getting higher. The leaders will get smarter and the kids will still want to play. Oh, and the sport will get cheaper, realitive to other activities.
Was that off on a tangent? No, TV is seen as the holy grail of getting paintball bigger, hence the agruments. I don't think there is a reason to argue. 2003 numbers for Paintball will double in three years or less. TV or no.
