This should be interesting - The business behind Rec vs Tournie

[Beaker]

Right,

In another thread, I have just been told by Tyger (a bonafide rec "personality") that there are no (or very very few) Rec players who are sponsored by the industry.

Now - answer me this.

"If Rec is such a huge industry compared with tournies (as is generally accepted), and most rec players don't care for tournies (as has been stated many times). Why why why do tourny teams get so well sponsored by the industry?"

If the above assumptions are true - most Rec players don't aspire to be tournament players so therefore don't care what gear they use. Therefore, isn't the ENTIRE paintball industry is completley stupid to plough so much money into tournaments (which they surely do) if their market is as limited as suggested?

So over to you!

I think Rancid might have something to say on this from our previous exchanges

 

[Buddha 3]

Here's what I think.
Fact is that the tourney boys get way more coverage than the rec boys do. A heck of a lot of rec boys read the magazines too, because they love paintball, and probably don't mind reading about the tourney scene. Because the tourney boys get all the coverage (which by the very natures of rec and tourney makes sense, since a lot of rec players try NOT to be seen whilst playing, which would make some boring photo coverage), they get all the sponsors, because that's where it will be seen!
Most people don't drive formula 1 race cars, yet those are the exact cars that get all the sponsorship. See what I mean?

Nice thread subject.

 

[Beaker]

Hmm, i kinda get ya

But taking your F1 example. F1 is generally regarded as being the pinnacle of the motor sport. 99% of drivers would like to race F1, and a good result in F1 makes great promotion as a company's products can be seen to perform against the hardest possible opposition. While there are very few people actually participating in F1, it is still generally regarded as the top of the sport.

Now, transferring that the Rec vs Tourney. If these other posts are to be believed, why would a Rec player care if GZ used timmy's or Angels, wore JT instead of Raven? they don't think the tourney scene is "valid" and they don't translate NPPL/Millennium success into aspiration for a product. Plus, as you say, as the Rec scenes needs are different, camo vs designs etc, a lot of products aren't even transferable.

So either the whole industry has completely missed the boat (which I find hard to believe) or the Rec players do indeed look up to and aspire to be part of the tourney scene so the marketing dollars aren't being wasted.

Either the 2 scenes are entirely seperate (as a lot of posts/articles have said) and therefore, given the greater money in rec, they should have the lions share of the sponsorship/promotion money. Or, the tourny scene really is the pinnacle of the sport and these posts and articles are wrong

I have a couple of other questions like this I will keep up my sleeve in case things start flagging again round here

 

[Tyger]

Ok, it's like this...

Originally posted by Beaker
"If Rec is such a huge industry compared with tournies (as is generally accepted), and most rec players don't care for tournies (as has been stated many times). Why why why do tourny teams get so well sponsored by the industry?"

You wanna know why? Let's talk about your average rec player.

The AVERAGE rec player plays 3-4 times a season. They show up alone, or with a few buddies they talked into showing up. They have their own gear, possibly. If they do, they own goggles. A 32 Degreees head casre, JT nvision or V-force Shield, depending on what hte store had that day and who their distruibutor is. Their gun is a Spyder or a Tippman or of that variety. They shoot 500-1000 balls an outing from a 200 ball tub on top of their gun. If they have pods at all, they use a belt pack with 3 tubes they got at Walmart. Or they stuff it into their pocket and play.

So the average rec guy will not be intrested in a jersey (Camos work good), pants (BDU's work good), headband (bandana works good), or in fact anything of the sort. They're playing to just play, nothing more. The industry knows that sponsoring players like this is not a sound investment. They just buy stuff as they need it, and aren't really into the fashon plates of tournament play.

Now people like me ar an anomaly. The sludge players who managed to avoid the 3-5 year burnout phase are the hardcore rec guys. We have the jersyes (for looks, becasue they look cool, or becasue we're going ot events that require us to have them), the pants (Animal skid plates rule!), the gool goggles, the whole kit and kaboodle becasue we've just horded it over they years.

But we don't get sponsorship either for a similar reason. Becasue I'm a rec guy, as in singular, I don't have hte buying power of a team of 5 guys. If I send a resume to JT (and I have), they'll say "That's nice, so how about this 5 man team who's part of a store?" It's economics, basically.

Your average sponsorship deal invilves buying product at a better price than you can get it elsewhere. And if you own a store, the deal gets nicer. If you buy a lot of gear in one shot from the same place, it's even better. So I buy 6 sets of goggles, gloves, masks, pants, and jerseys at one time, that's a good set of change. The full rider sponsorships are for the big names, not for the lowly rec dudes.

As far as sponsoring players on an individual basis, I wouldn't mind it. It would actually make sense to me to throw them out to some rec guys. The word of mouth exposure is just as real as a glossy ad of a naked chick, and it involves some actual interaction between players.

But it has nothing to do with getting the brand name known. It's all about econimics. I don't buy 6 full sets at a time, therefore I'm not going to get "Sponsored". What's dumb is I'm a sponsored snowboarder (http://www.carbonfiberhelmets.com), but not for paintball.

And those helmets work good too. I only broke my wrist when I crashed...

-Tyger

 

[KillerOnion]

Maybe the "average" person up in your neck of the woods is poorer or dedicates far lower a portion of their budget to ball, but what you'd say is average in terms of rec ball is below average for what we see around here. Average for us is what you'd call die hard or hardcore, your "rec" person being a renter or first time newbie...not everyone, half or probably less than that, is as mediocre as your view of them. For shame! If I was an outspoken advocate of my own, say Volvo owners, in the same sense as you are here of your fellow rec ball players, my house would be burned down, my respect anywhere lost, and be slapped into next year by anyone that saw me.

In short, not at all is the majority of the same APG reading moronity that you think them to be, or there wouldn't be as many people that have passed into the 21st century, reality, competitiveness instead of the presented notion that you indicated being that the rest of non-tourney players resent, loath, and shun. As a good car audio ad said that I read once and I (and just about everyone else should) live by, "Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. Lick it once and you suck forever."

 

[Beaker]

My point is one of economics.

While individual rec players do indeed not have the buying power of a team, surely when you lump them all together they have a larger collective clout that the tourney scene (again, I am making assumptions on the rec / tourney ratio which I've heard from various posts/articles).

E.g.

To try and simplify the total market:

Tourney = 1000 players spending $1000 = $1,000,000

Rec = 100,000 players spending $200 = $20,000,000

So surely if the 2 scenes are that disparate, then why should JT/DYE/Diablo put so many $$$$ into a scene which is 20x smaller???

Any ideas?

 

[Buddha 3]

Exposure.

Stick your gear on a top tourney team, and you'll see your stuff in every magazine. Stick it on a top rec baller, and it'll go missing in the woods for days. (joke)
Let's face it, most people do not want to read about what a single rec player did on his day out. Therefore it doesn't get printed that much.

A small quote from you here, Beaker:
"But taking your F1 example. F1 is generally regarded as being the pinnacle of the motor sport. 99% of drivers would like to race F1, and a good result in F1 makes great promotion as a company's products can be seen to perform against the hardest possible opposition. While there are very few people actually participating in F1, it is still generally regarded as the top of the sport."
Very true, which is exactly why I used it. Granted, not every rec baller wants to be a tourney guy, but a lot of them do (don't know if it's the vast majority or whatever). And I bet that even the die hard rec boys like to read about the big tourneys.
If you were running JT, how would you prefer to see your logo appear in the mags?
A) Oh look, there's a JT logo behind yonder tree....
B) 7 or 10 guys blazing downfield, all wearing the same JT tops, on a field that is made of inflatable JT logoes.....
I know where my investment would go. It's got nothing to do with what the biggest market is, it's got everything to with what will expose your product to this biggest market. Knowing who to target is one thing, but knowing how to target them is another.
For the large companies it's a dream come true! All they need to do is sponsor the smaller market in order to reach the bigger one. Sponsoring the same amount of rec playes will not get the same exposure, because a lot of recball, by it's very nature, is hidden. No use putting your name on some guy if the only picture that'll ever get printed of him shows his barrel sticking out of some hut. So if the balance is 1000 tourney boys versus 100.000 rec boys, I'd say it'll take waaaaaay more than the number of people who get sponsorship now to reach the same level of exposure as they are getting now.

 

[Tyger]

Originally posted by KillerOnion
Maybe the "average" person up in your neck of the woods is poorer or dedicates far lower a portion of their budget to ball, but what you'd say is average in terms of rec ball is below average for what we see around here. Average for us is what you'd call die hard or hardcore, your "rec" person being a renter or first time newbie...not everyone, half or probably less than that, is as mediocre as your view of them.

Ok, first of all you can have the big penis if you want it. There, I said it, I feel better.

Second, I'm going off of what I've seen all over the country. The high end rec player exists, but the MAJORITY of players don't own Angels, don't buy goods in packs of 5, and most of them don't care to buy into the jerseys / whatever.

Third, if you're going to burn down my house, slap me into next year, and defile my shoes feel free to try. I know what I know, I see what I see, I expirence what I expirence. And I call them as I see them.

Fourth, don't you even think you know what I think. You don't know what I think. If you believe that I believe that all the rec guys read APG and are ignorant, then you don't know the first thing about me.

Fifth, go to your local field, and look past your close circle of friends. You'll see a lot of rec players who own Spyders, Piranhas, Tippmans, or other blowback gun who'd just playin' ball. Perhaps your field is the anomaly, where high firepower is king. I can go to CCP in Chicago and STILL see a lot of blowbacks.

Reality check. Rec guys, for the most part, don't buy Angels. The high end player, yes. But the AVERAGE player, no.

-Tyger

 

[Darkwerks]

Ok, first of all you can have the big penis if you want it.

Blimey, I didn't know we could swop them.

If any paintball gear manufacturers have been convinced by Beaker, I'd be more than happy to be sponsored! I'd pose in front of all the nice PGI camera men, with my sparkly new E-mag xtreme with warp-feed(left feed, please)....ah, to dream..
Rec-ballers may not always aspire to tournyhood, but we do admire the guys who play at that level. We may not buy those high end markers, but we will buy gear from the same manufacturer. Advertising works. Most companies produce recreation level gear as well as thier top-end stuff.


Andy
Just think right here it could say---->" Sponsored by AGD Europe, SmartParts, JT, Dye, Raven, Brass Eagle, Planet eclipse."
You know you want to!

 

[Beaker]

Buddha :-

What I was trying (and obviously failing ) to do is to illustrate that F1 is gereally regarded as the pinnacle of motorsport, i.e all the other disciplines, karting, F3000 etc "fall in" behind it.

If Rec player do not "fall in" behind the tourney scene e.g. it's paintball's equivalent of karting, then it would be like comparing a company spending huge amounts of money to gain F1 success in order to promote themselves within the motorbike scene (not sound economic sense). Especially (as Tyger has said) the kit that most rec players use - and possibly aspire to use is not the same.

So to me Rec and Tourny are like F1 and Superbike. Both are valid "disciplines" of paintball, I was just wondering why companies spend a disproportionate amount of money on the tourney scene considering it's relative size. Using my analogy, Superbike is a big enough industry (as I think Rec is) to warrant it's own investment and promotion.

Tyger :-

I am not just talking about sponsorship so endorsements etc. I am also talking about promotion. Look at the amount of money spent on promotion at the World Cup. How does that compare to the industry support for the largest Scenario big games? Granted they may need to stock their trailors with a different types of products but wouldn't it make commercial sense to take your "store" to where a large number of players are? its just in the reports I've read in PGI I have never seen comments about NPS's trailor attending one of Wayne Dollack's games etc.

Even relatively large UK tourney like the Birmingham Indoor with what - 40 odd teams (so say 200 players) - generally attract 4 or 5 vendors minimum. How many vendors would generally attend a scenario game which, presumeably number more than 200 with ease?

Tyger, I hope your reaction was to KO's post and not mine. As what i am trying to reconcile (while playing devils advocate) is why the rec scene does not get more money spent on it considering the potential market. I am not trying to knock Rec in any way.