what is professional paintball?

[JoseDominguez]

they get payed to play, hence "pro" otherwise I'd be a national lottery pro wouldn't I
Look, in most sports, a pro is a paid "proffessional", but the term pro has also gone into general use to refer to someone really good.... "he plays like a pro" you don't mean "he looks like he gets payed" you mean "he's really good".
In paintball we just mean someone good, in the pro division.

 

[ThunderCat]

I'm that bored, I looked it up.

pro·fes·sion·al ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-fsh-nl)
adj.

Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.

n.
A person following a profession, especially a learned profession.
One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation: hired a professional to decorate the house.
A skilled practitioner; an expert.


So Professional can officially just mean an expert. thats that cleared up then...

Anyway, we'd still like to get to a stage where there are ballers who are paid to play (particularly me cos I'm really skint! )

 

[Rich S]

Originally posted by ThunderCat



So Professional can officially just mean an expert. thats that cleared up then...

as this is one of the dictionary definations i will appologise to the people i have argued with. as long as people know this defination then people not in the know should understand the paintball structure. all we need to do now is get lots of people watching paintball so people can start earning a living.

 

[ChiZZerS]

Originally posted by Liz
Quite simple really - there just isn't enough money in the sport to pay them! The income to pay Professional sportspersons in other sports comes from things like spectator entry fees, branded products and external (to the sport) sponsors either for teams or individuals.

Lets take David Beckham in his Man U days as an example. He was paid a salary by his team, which was in turn generated by them from income from gates, selling replica jerseys and outside sponsorship from various non-football companies.
He also received personal monies from companies like his boot supplier and from advertising/endorsement of stuff like coca cola.

Now we can compare that to the income that paintball generates. No income from gates, as there's few enough spectators even with free entry & I've never yet been to a tournament that charges for spectating. No (or very little) replica jersey sales, as there are probably fewer tournament players in the whole of the UK as there are Beckham fans in any major city. No non-industry sponsorship at present, or as little as makes no difference.
Yes, there's a little bit of "income" in the way of free kit/paint etc for the top players in paintball, though I don't know anyone in the UK who actually gets paid to use or endorse a particular paintball product - how many markers does a manufacturer have to sell purely because a particular player uses one to make it worth while to pay them to use it? And as for external endorsement - as probably nobody outside the sport has even heard of the UK greats, having an advert on TV saying a baller uses their product isn't really going to generate millions in sales is it! (Not even Pot Noodle being advertised by Ledz ).

So I ask the question - where is the money to PAY "professional" paintballers supposed to come from?

ok then would you say skiing has a big income? ERRRR NO!
you still get pro skiers?!

and snow boarding! snowboarding is about the same level as
paintball and you get pro snow boarders?

 

[ChiZZerS]

Originally posted by ThunderCat
And yeah the way we use the term professional is essentially wrong, because we call people who are not professional "pro-ballers".

thankyou!
ths wa exactly my point!

cheeers thunder cat

 

[ThunderCat]

Originally posted by Sephiroth
thankyou!
ths wa exactly my point!

cheeers thunder cat

My pleasure , I thought that sounded like what you were getting at.

However the dictionary definition seems to say that you can be a professional without getting paid if you are an expert. Although it also says that a professional sportsman/woman is paid to play and thats what I think most people assume you mean.

 

[Liz]

Originally posted by Sephiroth
ok then would you say skiing has a big income? ERRRR NO!
you still get pro skiers?!

and snow boarding! snowboarding is about the same level as
paintball and you get pro snow boarders?

Sorry Sephiroth, but you're talking a whole different degree of big here. No, skiing and snowboarding aren't in the same league as professional soccer but they are still way, way bigger than paintball. There are tens of thousands of people in the UK alone who go snowboarding or skiing every year and own their own equipment, whereas you're looking at maybe a (very) few thousand who own their own paintball markers. Then you have to add in the fact that you really have to buy your own clothing even if you just go on a skiing holiday once in your life, whereas no-one buys paintballing equipment or clothing just for the one Sunday a year when they play with their work mates.

Just ask around & find out how many people you know who have been skiing or snowboarding in their lives and bought any products specifically for that activity, then compare that to the number of paintballers you knew before you started playing regularly and therefore started hanging out with ballers to a large degree. Another way to look at it, is that it's worth their while for most general sports shops to stock skiing and snowboarding stuff but I don't know of ANY who stock any paintball equipment or clothing, and if there was any money in it then I can assure you they WOULD stock it!

Believe me - I've been in this sport a very long time & I know an awful lot of people in the industry, and in the UK at least the money just isn't there.

 

[Hotpoint]

Originally posted by Sephiroth
ok then would you say skiing has a big income? ERRRR NO!
you still get pro skiers?!

and snow boarding! snowboarding is about the same level as
paintball and you get pro snow boarders?

Both Skiing and Snowboarding also enjoy the benefit of lots of TV coverage which does bring in a reasonable income in the form of television rights and advertising



Edited to add

To concur with Liz I'd point out that around 750,000 in the UK people go skiing every year and 400,000 people play paintball. That's a lot of ski gear being sold and a lot of Paintball gear being hired

 

[Liz]

Thanks Hotpoint, thought I'd forgotten to put something in my post but hit the submit key without thinking! I think I was just getting a little bit irritated by people who know very little about the economics of paintball trying to tell me I'm talking cr@p

 

[ThunderCat]

I'm a snowboard instructor and Snowboarding is hundreds of times more well known than paintball, almost everyone in the world has an idea of what goes on in a snowboarding competition. Almost no-one knows how we play tournament paintball, even I didn't until I'd been Marshalling for a few weeks and saw Nexus training. I'd been rec-balling quite a bit and though THAT was paintball (oh how wrong I was!)