So the answer is "No". Thought as much.
To me, there are some clear advantages to being recognised as a sport, if that can be achieved:-
1) Access to funding from Sport England to help a national governing body
2) Sport England assistance in establishing places to play in local communities. Possible funding assistance to existing sites that sign on to a national governing body.
3) Making the game acessible to people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who may not be able to afford to participate otherwise
4) The possibility of encouraging it into school/academy curriculums under the remit to encourage school childrens participation in competitive sport. Also the possibility of inter-school and inter-county competition as with other school/acedemy sports.
5) Support at College and University level as above, to create more oportunity to participate in sport. Think of the success of college level American Football.
6) Help with wider acceptance of paintball by the general public and allowing greater public exposure. It would allow use of public awareness campaigns to start along the lines of 'Paintball - Did you know it's a proper Sport?', maybe in sports and leisure facilities plus librares and other public locations.
7) Government & Councils would have to take notice of any requests to use public facilities in connection with the sport
8) The possibility to apply for public funding, such as National Lottery money
9) Local sports and leisure centres could be used to expand awareness and participation in paintball.
10) Paintball sports clubs could become a reality, in the same way as other sports amateur clubs, to promote players into the game. Also, similiar to the school/academy point above, inter-club and inter-county type competition.
11) There is also a commercial benefit from all this. Greater uptake means more income for fields, organisers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers, which has the knock on effect of creating more competition and variation in the market for players.
All of this would help massively in expanding the uptake, and general acceptance, of paintball, so yes I do have some idea of how it could affect the game.
We all know that the public perception of paintball is of weekend awrriors running around the woods shooting each other. Many of us have that reminder first hand in their partners every time we say where we're off to the next weekend.
Do a general survey and paintball, to most of the population, is Stag, Birthday and Corporate Team Building played for a day. Regularity at most would be once or twice a year at a 'punter' day. Even new players (or even ones that have played for years at punter sites) that start Googling and find these type of forums are amazed at how much more there is, and they are the ones that already enjoyed it enough to actually put some effort into going and looking into it further.
