Paintball and Joe Public
- Thread starter Barsteward
- Start date
To Liz, I had no idea about those games as I have literally got into the sport in the last couple of weeks.
But I do know about organising and I do know about marketing.
The main problem I would imagine is the extreme anti-gun groups who would insist we are teaching people to be mainstream murderers.
The two main cities near me are Edinburgh and Glasgow, I am sure if you held an event within the public parks of both these cities (Princess Street Gardens/the meadows and Glasgow Green) it would be a massive success.
There are numerous grants that can be applied for as well as money that could be raised via sponsorship of such events.
It was just something I was thinking about as a high impact method of increasing the amount of people playing paintball.
But I do know about organising and I do know about marketing.
The main problem I would imagine is the extreme anti-gun groups who would insist we are teaching people to be mainstream murderers.
The two main cities near me are Edinburgh and Glasgow, I am sure if you held an event within the public parks of both these cities (Princess Street Gardens/the meadows and Glasgow Green) it would be a massive success.
There are numerous grants that can be applied for as well as money that could be raised via sponsorship of such events.
It was just something I was thinking about as a high impact method of increasing the amount of people playing paintball.
As I said, I wasn't knocking your idea in the first place, just pointing out that people HAVE been trying to do this kind of thing for the last couple of years. Unlike you I've been in the sport an awfully long time and have watched it going all the way from splats through pumps, semis & now electro markers. I've also been on the other side of things helping with the organisation of tournaments so I have a fair idea of some of the problems. Probably the biggest problem is getting permission to use high quality venues - the Gods only know how Niall persuaded the management at Crystal Palace to let him run the Campaign Cup there but we all owe him a big debt for that. Many local councils are also anti due to the image and as their permission is needed to run any events in public places that prevents the use of many otherwise good venues.
Then we get to cost. Someone recently looked into the cost of running a big tournament at a London park & was told the fee for using it would be somewhere in the region of £100,000. OK, that was a major London park & many places come much cheaper, but not even the Millennium organisers make much from their tournaments. The more public the place the more important the health and safety aspects are, and therefore the costs of set-up and facilities; also the cleaner the place has to be afterwards - have you ever seen the mess even a small tourney can make with paint soup in the corners of all the fields & where the chronograph is, and ballers aren't exactly the tidiest people in the world.
Another problem is the good old Sports Council. Despite enormous efforts by Hotpoint & Steve Bull on behalf of the UKPSF they still refuse to give paintball accreditation, despite it fulfilling all their criteria as a sport. Without that accreditation, it's even harder to get permission to put on events in public places & you find that it's hard to get any media interest - check out the "Narrow minds" thread by Tom Tom.
As I said earlier, great strides have been made by people like Niall, Hotpoint/Steve Bull and Gillie & Hatts (who ran the PA Cup & so got paintball on They Think It's All Over recently). If you feel you have something to contribute to the efforts of these people then contact the UKPSF (Hotpoint/Steve) or the Paintball Association (Gillie/Hatts) & offer them your help, they are all nice people & won't dismiss what you have to say without listening to you first and are likely to take on board and new ideas you have. But don't be surprised if they come back with "been there, tried that" as they've been working on this kind of thing for many years.
On the other hand, please don't stop trying to think of new ways we can bring our great sport to the public. You'll find that most of your ideas will have been tried in the past but you never know, you could come up with the next big step forward for us all!
Lets go around again........
Hey Craigpil, Id love to have my own Nike Air Stongle sneaker and apparel deal, but unfortunately I doubt the revenue generated from producing a line of paintball kit from the big sporting manufacturers would barely scratch the surface of the R & D costs. Even if you throw in all the tournament players in the US, the market place is just too small (and currently oversubscribed anyway). Rec or woodsball is still bigger business than Tournament, so if your ever likely to see anything from Nike, it'll probably be the Nike Dri-Fit ghillie suit. Shame but that's business.
This is something that keeps going round in my head, so I'll give you my 2 pence (for what it's worth). There's probably two ways to advance the sport, the first is through the media, more specifically TV, and the second is make it more extreme, or radical.
Both the NXL and NPPL through various means are in discussions to put Paintball on the goggle box, is this the holy grail of where we want to be, maybe, but to what cost is unknown. At present to us what is the "technical magnificence" of certain of moves, is likely to be lost on the general public, as it appears to be a load of blokes sitting behind bouncy castles shooting paint at each other with the odd 15 yard dash. Not going to make a great 60 minutes of TV. It is conceivable that that to make Paintball more commercially successful through greater market appeal, the TV moneymen are going to want to dick around with the format, well they bought the rights so they can pretty much do what they want. This may be a good thing or may not if they turn it into a new form of American Gladiators, who knows. In the other corner we have the Pure Promotions NPPL tie up with Fox Sports. This will show the current 7 man super sevens in it's current state. Again possibly a good thing, but can the current format generate enough outside interest. Again what Dynasty do may seem great to us, but to the layman...........
On a smaller scale, many in the UK are striving for similar media attention, and such like. Again an admirable objective, but in my opinion potentially flawed. The reason for this is, we are thinking as ballers for ballers. Of course we want to be popular and gain social credibility, for what is essentially, a tainted through gun association, pretty alternative activity. The whole make paintball a mainstream sport, gentlemen's betokeners at dawn, wiping should be punishable with death attitude may have to go out the window. Think about what the general public at a base level really wants. Why is it programs such as Wife Swap and reality TV in general etc are popular. People want to see the negative side of human nature, danger, aggression, competitiveness etc. It may be necessary to populise paintball we have to make it more extreme and cultivate the bad boy image. Although we may all decry Lassoya's, Salm's activities etc, it may not be that much of a negative as far as the wider appeal goes. Bit of scandal, bit of woo bit of sheisty behaviour etc. Now I know that some of you are going start flaming saying I advocate cheating, not at all. Cheating should be punished, but when the penalties are in place for it, the player themselves makes the choice. Couple this with making the game more radical in an extreme manner, and people might say woo. check that out, in the same way many of us reacted when we saw the fruitcakes doing free riding or extreme downhilling. Now that is an extreme activity, and in many ways more watch able than paintball. We as humans want to know if the "mountainside is going to come up and smack him in the nutz", not "oh that player got a 50p splat of paint on his shoe, as he simply wasn't playing tight enough". Starting to see the difference. The technical magnificence of playing tight generally will not make great TV (IMHO), but hey I maybe in the minority.
Maybe Sin Bins, Slam Ball, depleted uranium blaze at 1000 fps, Viet-Cong style Spike pits etc is the way forward, I'm not sure, but we really need to think out of the box. You can guarantee that when the Millennium organisers started putting tourneys in Sports Stadiums etc, that was pretty radical in itself, in many ways we in Europe innovated and the States has followed. looks like they've got all the initiative at the moment though.
I think this is a worthy debate at the moment, and one worth having, but it's round and round the mulberry bush as far as ideas go, but you can guarantee that if you can get Command and Conquer or Time Commanders onto primetime TV, paintball has got serious credibility problems in it's current guise.
Right to the caveat, for all those which are no doubt about to blow a gasket, accuse me of being a wipey wipey whore, this is up for the purposes of debate. If you feel obliged to flame feel free, but perhaps you should get out more, enjoy the company of women, hey maybe even have a drink. Flame and pontificate if you want, but it's coming back in spades. Peace.
Hey Craigpil, Id love to have my own Nike Air Stongle sneaker and apparel deal, but unfortunately I doubt the revenue generated from producing a line of paintball kit from the big sporting manufacturers would barely scratch the surface of the R & D costs. Even if you throw in all the tournament players in the US, the market place is just too small (and currently oversubscribed anyway). Rec or woodsball is still bigger business than Tournament, so if your ever likely to see anything from Nike, it'll probably be the Nike Dri-Fit ghillie suit. Shame but that's business.
This is something that keeps going round in my head, so I'll give you my 2 pence (for what it's worth). There's probably two ways to advance the sport, the first is through the media, more specifically TV, and the second is make it more extreme, or radical.
Both the NXL and NPPL through various means are in discussions to put Paintball on the goggle box, is this the holy grail of where we want to be, maybe, but to what cost is unknown. At present to us what is the "technical magnificence" of certain of moves, is likely to be lost on the general public, as it appears to be a load of blokes sitting behind bouncy castles shooting paint at each other with the odd 15 yard dash. Not going to make a great 60 minutes of TV. It is conceivable that that to make Paintball more commercially successful through greater market appeal, the TV moneymen are going to want to dick around with the format, well they bought the rights so they can pretty much do what they want. This may be a good thing or may not if they turn it into a new form of American Gladiators, who knows. In the other corner we have the Pure Promotions NPPL tie up with Fox Sports. This will show the current 7 man super sevens in it's current state. Again possibly a good thing, but can the current format generate enough outside interest. Again what Dynasty do may seem great to us, but to the layman...........
On a smaller scale, many in the UK are striving for similar media attention, and such like. Again an admirable objective, but in my opinion potentially flawed. The reason for this is, we are thinking as ballers for ballers. Of course we want to be popular and gain social credibility, for what is essentially, a tainted through gun association, pretty alternative activity. The whole make paintball a mainstream sport, gentlemen's betokeners at dawn, wiping should be punishable with death attitude may have to go out the window. Think about what the general public at a base level really wants. Why is it programs such as Wife Swap and reality TV in general etc are popular. People want to see the negative side of human nature, danger, aggression, competitiveness etc. It may be necessary to populise paintball we have to make it more extreme and cultivate the bad boy image. Although we may all decry Lassoya's, Salm's activities etc, it may not be that much of a negative as far as the wider appeal goes. Bit of scandal, bit of woo bit of sheisty behaviour etc. Now I know that some of you are going start flaming saying I advocate cheating, not at all. Cheating should be punished, but when the penalties are in place for it, the player themselves makes the choice. Couple this with making the game more radical in an extreme manner, and people might say woo. check that out, in the same way many of us reacted when we saw the fruitcakes doing free riding or extreme downhilling. Now that is an extreme activity, and in many ways more watch able than paintball. We as humans want to know if the "mountainside is going to come up and smack him in the nutz", not "oh that player got a 50p splat of paint on his shoe, as he simply wasn't playing tight enough". Starting to see the difference. The technical magnificence of playing tight generally will not make great TV (IMHO), but hey I maybe in the minority.
Maybe Sin Bins, Slam Ball, depleted uranium blaze at 1000 fps, Viet-Cong style Spike pits etc is the way forward, I'm not sure, but we really need to think out of the box. You can guarantee that when the Millennium organisers started putting tourneys in Sports Stadiums etc, that was pretty radical in itself, in many ways we in Europe innovated and the States has followed. looks like they've got all the initiative at the moment though.
I think this is a worthy debate at the moment, and one worth having, but it's round and round the mulberry bush as far as ideas go, but you can guarantee that if you can get Command and Conquer or Time Commanders onto primetime TV, paintball has got serious credibility problems in it's current guise.
Right to the caveat, for all those which are no doubt about to blow a gasket, accuse me of being a wipey wipey whore, this is up for the purposes of debate. If you feel obliged to flame feel free, but perhaps you should get out more, enjoy the company of women, hey maybe even have a drink. Flame and pontificate if you want, but it's coming back in spades. Peace.
Actually Stongl, in general I agree with you (just for once ). Despite the "exteme" aspects of paintball it's really a technical sport to a large degree & most people don't enjoy technical sports they don't understand fully. You have to be able to appreciate the technique of a great spin bowler to enjoy Test cricket as a spectator, televised golf is more exciting to those who play a bit, and does anyone who doesn't ride horses watch dressage on TV? That lot said, who can explain the attraction of watching hours and hours of snooker
So we now have the dilemma of televised paintball only being attractive to players, but (possibly) the best way to get more players is to get TV viewers to take it up - real catch 22 here. The way round this isn't clear. Whether it's a change to how the sport is played, trying to drum up media interest that could snowball, or some other as yet unthought of manner I just don't know. All we can do is keep on trying whatever method we are best equipped to do or think has the best chance of sucess, and support those who do have the drive and initiative to at least try.
). Despite the "exteme" aspects of paintball it's really a technical sport to a large degree & most people don't enjoy technical sports they don't understand fully. You have to be able to appreciate the technique of a great spin bowler to enjoy Test cricket as a spectator, televised golf is more exciting to those who play a bit, and does anyone who doesn't ride horses watch dressage on TV? That lot said, who can explain the attraction of watching hours and hours of snooker So we now have the dilemma of televised paintball only being attractive to players, but (possibly) the best way to get more players is to get TV viewers to take it up - real catch 22 here. The way round this isn't clear. Whether it's a change to how the sport is played, trying to drum up media interest that could snowball, or some other as yet unthought of manner I just don't know. All we can do is keep on trying whatever method we are best equipped to do or think has the best chance of sucess, and support those who do have the drive and initiative to at least try.
Firstly to Liz, I must apologise as upon re-reading my post in could have came across as aggresive and that was not the manner in which it was intended.
I belong to a large online gamin community and have done for several years. Online gaming has a user base and commercial interest several magnitudes bigger than paintball yet it receives little or no media interest except when it is being blamed for one crime or another. The reason is because it still has an image of geeks who never see day light when the truth is the opposite. (Well except for a few die-hards who still wear their Atari T-shirts from 1986)
For paintball to be successful the focus must not be about the games, as this will put it on a path to doom. The focus must be on a number of smaller segments being pulled together; the latest equipment, team profiles, gossip, rivalries etc.
Showgrounds and fairs often have air rifle stalls, but you never see paintball stalls. Males have always been very competitive and females are certainly becoming more so. Small arenas for one on ones would be ideal at these events and should be fairly easy to set up. This crosses over onto the other thread in regards to publicity as well as this thread.
There is obviously a lot more involved and I am a self admitted novice to the sport but the more ideas the more chance of success as you have already said.
I belong to a large online gamin community and have done for several years. Online gaming has a user base and commercial interest several magnitudes bigger than paintball yet it receives little or no media interest except when it is being blamed for one crime or another. The reason is because it still has an image of geeks who never see day light when the truth is the opposite. (Well except for a few die-hards who still wear their Atari T-shirts from 1986)
For paintball to be successful the focus must not be about the games, as this will put it on a path to doom. The focus must be on a number of smaller segments being pulled together; the latest equipment, team profiles, gossip, rivalries etc.
Showgrounds and fairs often have air rifle stalls, but you never see paintball stalls. Males have always been very competitive and females are certainly becoming more so. Small arenas for one on ones would be ideal at these events and should be fairly easy to set up. This crosses over onto the other thread in regards to publicity as well as this thread.
There is obviously a lot more involved and I am a self admitted novice to the sport but the more ideas the more chance of success as you have already said.
Now why doesn't this surprise me? Oh yeah could it be down to the fact that there is next to no Gun crime in Pompey. This could be due to armed shore parties as supplied by the RN, hammering around the area until the wee hours.[That used to be loads of fun, RN Landy and a loaded firearm on a Saturday nightOriginally posted by Hotpoint
The Police in Portsmouth were perfectly okay with it by the way
]
A few years ago there was an armed robbery here but Pompey is actually on an Island so the Police just waited for them at each of the three bridges to the mainland
They had to have been scummers then, they never learn.Originally posted by Hotpoint
A few years ago there was an armed robbery here but Pompey is actually on an Island so the Police just waited for them at each of the three bridges to the mainland
Give tournament paintball time, it'll catch on. How much bigger is it now than five years ago? Remember, it's still a new sport....... how many mainstream sports are played by the people who invented them? how many mainstream sports were invented in the last 100 years? Every sport will have had the same problem...... it's just that we have the internet, so we can keep in touch with the rest of our minority, that makes it look like slow development "if we all like it, why isn't it on TV?" there aren't that many of us. Look at skateboarding, blading, surfing etc...... they got made into lifestyles, that's how they caught on. We can't force this, it's got to come naturally.
As for the difficulty in televising paintball........... look at golf: whack.....sky...........ground........whack....sky........ground.......whack......flag......little whack.........hole.......repeat 18 times. As Liz says, unless you are into it, it means nothing.
The biggest thing we could do is to retain some of the rec-ballers who play at our sites on weekends........... most people leave having had a great day, they could never afford to do it regularly though, so tournament is out of the question to them....... I mean if a tourney player fires 800 rounds a game, seven games!!!!! at over £100 for 2000 rounds!!!!!!!
Can you see where I'm going with this? we can't have it both ways.....either joe-public continues to subsidise us with rec-ball or profits drop and we can introduce more players.
As for the difficulty in televising paintball........... look at golf: whack.....sky...........ground........whack....sky........ground.......whack......flag......little whack.........hole.......repeat 18 times. As Liz says, unless you are into it, it means nothing.
The biggest thing we could do is to retain some of the rec-ballers who play at our sites on weekends........... most people leave having had a great day, they could never afford to do it regularly though, so tournament is out of the question to them....... I mean if a tourney player fires 800 rounds a game, seven games!!!!! at over £100 for 2000 rounds!!!!!!!
Can you see where I'm going with this? we can't have it both ways.....either joe-public continues to subsidise us with rec-ball or profits drop and we can introduce more players.