What you need is accessibility.
When I recently graced a punter site I was horrified to see white box paint being sold at over £140 a box.
If you want to grow a sport it needs to be cheap to get into. For what you spend on a days paintball could last you a year in other sports.
What it needs is someone with deep pockets and a lot of future vision to buy up the expensive outlays, and provide them at a next-to-free cost at key locations so a days balling isnt a thing that takes 2 months of prior planning and saving for your average school going teenager. It's something they can hop onto a field for a £20 sign on and buy a box of white box paint at a sensible markup (eg, double, not in the 10x figure) with the aim of getting large footfall through the door regularly.
Lets take casual motorsports for example.
If I go for a days drag racing at Shakey or Santa Pod, its a £10 entry to the venue, and £25 sign on to the strip. Thats it, £35 is my outlay for the entire day if I want it to be, the extra being if I need to fill up.
However, a day at silverstone is £250, plus track day insurance at £112, factor in new brake pads about £75 worth of use per event, the same for tyres £75, 2 tanks of fuel, £160.
Paintball needs to move to the first option.
If you want to grow the audience, you need to make the games watchable. Watching most formats are just twists on the same old same old, fast paced deathmatch.
Average joe needs objectives that people work towards, so they have a focal point, X-fire was a great idea, if poorly executed because it made it watchable. You need something similar, a larger field, with larger teams split into groups and a top down view to see what is going on, highlights via action cam / ground level, but an obvious "oh look team A is trying to do this, but team B is moving to stop them" type stuff.
It might be boring to those of us who like the current fast paced tournament stuff, but it has no meaning to anyone but the hardcore paintball frat.
When I recently graced a punter site I was horrified to see white box paint being sold at over £140 a box.
If you want to grow a sport it needs to be cheap to get into. For what you spend on a days paintball could last you a year in other sports.
What it needs is someone with deep pockets and a lot of future vision to buy up the expensive outlays, and provide them at a next-to-free cost at key locations so a days balling isnt a thing that takes 2 months of prior planning and saving for your average school going teenager. It's something they can hop onto a field for a £20 sign on and buy a box of white box paint at a sensible markup (eg, double, not in the 10x figure) with the aim of getting large footfall through the door regularly.
Lets take casual motorsports for example.
If I go for a days drag racing at Shakey or Santa Pod, its a £10 entry to the venue, and £25 sign on to the strip. Thats it, £35 is my outlay for the entire day if I want it to be, the extra being if I need to fill up.
However, a day at silverstone is £250, plus track day insurance at £112, factor in new brake pads about £75 worth of use per event, the same for tyres £75, 2 tanks of fuel, £160.
Paintball needs to move to the first option.
If you want to grow the audience, you need to make the games watchable. Watching most formats are just twists on the same old same old, fast paced deathmatch.
Average joe needs objectives that people work towards, so they have a focal point, X-fire was a great idea, if poorly executed because it made it watchable. You need something similar, a larger field, with larger teams split into groups and a top down view to see what is going on, highlights via action cam / ground level, but an obvious "oh look team A is trying to do this, but team B is moving to stop them" type stuff.
It might be boring to those of us who like the current fast paced tournament stuff, but it has no meaning to anyone but the hardcore paintball frat.
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