North East Tournament paintball centre

[zendeejay]

Hi guys and girls,

I'm currently putting up a business plan to submit in a few weeks time to a few places and i was looking for a bit of feedback if possible. Up here in Newcastle there is a failing in sites dedicated to our beloved tournament paintball and i contribute this to the small number of teams we have this neck of the woods. What I’m planning to do is setup a tournament training site in the Newcastle Gateshead area, hopefully joining with a few teams and offering a weatherproof indoor training facility with all the stops pulled out. I’ve guaranteed prices for Astroturf and netting, the building should be big enough to hold 2 field, a snap shooting cage and hopefully if all goes well a ballers cafe (nice cheap home cooked food, drinks hot or cold and a few games machines for relaxation in between matches) Once I get a greater idea from the business advisor I’ll post more details but atm it's a bit of a secret.

What I’m looking for is a bit of feedback and interest just to prove that I’ve approached my target audience and listened to what they want. All feedback welcome be it good or bad.

Regards
David

 

[Sid Sidgwick]

I'm sure the newcastle teams (Mad Monks and Lockdown) would be interested mate.

 

[Codiak]

Aint that the truth!

 

[Tony Harrison]

It may be worth your while speaking to Bernie at Go Ballistic (if you haven't done already).

He opened an indoor training centre a few years ago in Halifax - using reballs - but unfortunately it closed down.

He should be able to give you some good advice on what to do and what not to do.

As far as I know, Bernie still runs the outdoor training site at Dishforth.

 

[Parksy]

Not to put a downer on things but... these things have been attempted before elsewhere and sadly fell over pretty quickly! The main reason being that paintballers have a habit of crying out for these sorts of things, then once somebody goes to the expense of setting it up it has not been viable for them to run it as a business.

Bernie is a good example when he set up Fireball Gym. Loads of people said they loved the idea and would pay monthly membership fees. What ended up happening was a high useage for a few weeks, player apathy kicked back in again and attendances dropped to the point it was not financially viable to continue. Mario would be able to shed better light on this if you Pm him

Sid from the Clan also spent the money setting up an indoor training site in Scotland, which is probably a comparable player base to the NE if your looking at Newcastle/Sunderland area etc. He spent A LOT on astroturf, new supair bunkers, lighting etc etc. Had the promise of a load of people would use it to train, pay monthly subs to use the site as much as they liked. It ended up pretty much unused and ended up closing. Leaving him in the red to 20k or so!

All I am saying is yeah in theory paintballers will tell you how great an idea is and how much it will be used. When push comes to shove though the situation can be very different...

On a positive side we are missing that 'go to' site up in the north. Somewhere all the teams in the area go to train. The south has Bricketwood. Midlands has the CPPS site. The north (not by my defenition ) used to have the Northern Quarter, but nothing really to that degree up here, unless you count BZ which is still quite a jaunt south. So there is scope for it to happen, but a site would really need to suck in prety much all the team/player base for the area to be succesful if that was going to be its sole way of generating revenue.

 

[Codiak]

I agree with Parksy, you could well need a 2nd revenue stream to keep going.

 

[Parksy]

I agree with Parksy, you could well need a 2nd revenue stream to keep going.

The reasoning behind it Kev is if you look at the guys in Scotland say. In order to have a viable training site Terminator opened up. However it is a 'rec' site primarily and off the back of this people also train there. I would guess the same goes for the likes of BZ. It is primarily a rec site. Same went for Pointblank up here in the north. None of these could have existed if primarily a sup air site, or if the site wasn't used for other purposes.

One exception was Northern Quarter. But (Markie can probably confirm this) I think they were paying way lower rent etc for the land they were using than the going rate, and they had a VERY strong following of players and teams from that area, and it still eventually closed. Again Markie may let you know the reasons why (I have no clue BTW)

Don't take any of this as me being really negative. Just giving you some scenarios from similar sites.

 

[Seany]

R.i.p nq! =[

 

[Tony Harrison]

Correct. Ideally, you need to run the place as an indoor customer site first, and as a training site second.

The customers will be your principal source of income to keep the site open.

 

[cowface]

just speak to yorkie,

ask him if the site could survive by just us tournament ballers. He will say no despite the reguler use