BMX racing is a very good example to use, as a sport it has been around probably twice as long as tournament paintball, if not slightly longer, but try to remember that cycling, and racing on bikes is still a very mainstream thing to do, therefore BMX racing had an advantage from the start compared to other "extreme" sports, in that it may be considered more acceptable as a sport compared to say paintball because people can relate to it and the format as it is very similar to other cycle racing sports, there is a race, there is a winner, the fastest person wins, simple right ?
They also have an organised World series/competition structure/whatever you want to call it, they had/have big name sponsors FROM OUTSIDE THE INDUSTRY involved for a while before they were even considered for the olympics, they had regular TV coverage, before they were even considered for the olympics. All of these advantages over paintball and it still took around 3-4 years of campaigning, meetings, promotion, presentations before BMX racing made it into the olympics. A more realistic short-term goal would be to make it into the X-games, attract big name sponsors outside of the industry, and get big name tournaments and organisations to sit down and communicate with each other to further the sport.
