I wish my history essays flowed out as easily as this did...
I tend to come into these threads too late, but it seems that little has been said about the lack of new blood in the sport. Hopefully this thread still has some legs in it and this post isn’t in vain!
Of course there are problems with apathy and general disunity within the tourney players themselves, but if the vast majority of UK ‘ballers are quite content with their mediocrity, where will we find those who are actually going to take things forward?
What do you do if you want to “play the paintball”? Go down to your site! They have the guns, the masks, the scenarios and the paintballs!
Let’s consider Fred, the local field owner. Fred has a patch of woods, which he rents from a farmer (who would have no use for the woods anyway). Now, Fred’s patch of woods are very easy to look after, aside from spending a few weeks of hard graft at the start, hammering planks about and positioning shells of burnt out cars and other cheap obstacles, Fred has very little to do in the way of maintenance. Fred can also use the same fields for all sorts of different games. Stick a flag on each end, you have a game that keeps the punters happy and shooting for 20 minutes. Hide a stretcher in the middle and tell both teams to find it, and hello, another 20 minutes of fingers on triggers. Oh did I forget to mention that Fred can have all his players going simultaneously in his woods? Remember that.
Now, Barney the ‘baller wants to promote his radical extreme version of “the paintballing”, he calls it “Super Air Ball”. He thinks it’s the dogs’, and wants to get people from Fred’s site interested in it, as after all, they have at least a modicum of interest in paintball already. Fred is, of course, going to want to know how much money he can make from this before doing anything else. Barney pitches it something like this:
“Fred, you’re going to have this patch of flat, preferably grass, land. You’ll then put a set of shiny inflatable barricades on it, then you put your punters on it and they’ll run around and shoot their guns and it’ll be great!”
Fred, though, is going to say:
“Hold on there Barney! First of all, all I have are these here woods, which are cheaper to rent because nobody can do anything with them. I’m going to have to clear a patch of woods, which will be expensive and might not even possible due to regulations, and then it will completely limit me forever in what I can use the land for; or I guess I could rent some land from the farmer that he actually uses, and so he’d charge me more for it, and I’ll almost certainly have to net that off aswell.
Then, you want me to buy a multi-thousand pound field that will require all sorts of upkeep as punters bayonet them with the tippmanns. I’ll also have to dedicate time from my already busy day to inflate the things, or get a marshal to do it. At the end of the day they’ll then have to be deflated, and maybe even put away seeing as I don’t make a habit of leaving thousands of pounds worth of boating material out in the open during the week when I’m not here.
I’m then only going to be able to have, what, 20 players use it at a time? The players might not even enjoy it as they’re here to have a shooty-shooty Rambo fest, they’ll spunk all their expensive paintballs and complain that its not what they came here for.”
Barney says:
“But what about the people who do enjoy it, they’ll go all shooty-shooty bang-bang, money for you!”
At this point, Fred is probably ready to backhand Barney with a straight-shot, but he keeps his cool and says:
“The incredibly stupid ones will probably come back and play again. The other 80% will probably have spoken to one of my teenage marshals, or googled Sup’Air after seeing it on a bunker, or even googled paintball, and will see that they can buy an Ion setup and mask for less than £300, and a case of paintballs for around £25, as opposed to the £120 I could sell it to them for.
Now, remind me, the field owner, the man who is taking all the risks, who has to pay a mortgage and unlike you, actually depends on paintball for a living, why exactly I owe you my valuable customers so that you can turn them into somebody else’s customers?”
So, you’re now Barney…what do you do?
Do you:
Start your own speedball paradise?
Start your own field with a speedball section, and show Fred that it can be done?
Get a job for Fred or someone similar and talk to the interested players yourself?
Or spend the rest of your life moaning on p8ntballer and getting nowhere?
How can you convince Fred to make it worth his while? Walkons are a possibility, but I don’t believe that is the real issue as I reckon site owners in general want to protect their own interests, they don’t have the ability to risk investing in sup’air as its not worth doing in the first place (in their eyes, but maybe rightly so) and then it hurts them to alert possible repeat customers that paintball can be had for cheaper.
Certain sites I’ve played at are going the right way about it, if you look at established fields like Campaign, or Mayhem for instance, they have a sup’air field and shop on site so it immediately makes it clear that there is another side available. I’d say the same about Ambush, as I’ve trained there at the same time as punters have been playing. Aside from these, I’ve only really been able to play sup’air at dedicated sites like Dartford, Tourney Park etc. I haven’t been there yet, but I know NQ is tourney only. How did I know these places existed? How did I even get into this “sport”? I can’t actually tell you, it’s probably a mere matter of luck. Once you’re in, it’s a whole new world and set of problems that this thread has covered, but where do these people come from?
I know its very short sighted, and I have taken a fairly defensive side of the field owner here, but look at it through their eyes. How can we makes these people want to promote sup’air? We cant count on the established punter sites, they’re grand hubs of paintball on their own but pale to insignificance when compared to the volume of players going through the doors at Delta Force, or all the other small individual sites combined.
Maybe the problem is prices for the owners? Its not like we have more land than we know what to do with in this country, unlike say, the States. Maybe the owners need industry support, or subsidies? I always hear that the site owners are what allow tournament players to have their cheap paint…I don’t buy this at all. When was the last time you bought Evil or Hellfire at a field, or used an Ego at one? Tournament paintball products are specialised and made to be sold to tournament paintball players, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of movement to attract more players into the fold! This is what we get in the UK for piggy-backing on the success of the US market, and exactly why we get less in the way of sponsorship, there’s less money to be made. So infact, it is the punters who allow us to play…we just need more tournament punters.
I tend to come into these threads too late, but it seems that little has been said about the lack of new blood in the sport. Hopefully this thread still has some legs in it and this post isn’t in vain!
Of course there are problems with apathy and general disunity within the tourney players themselves, but if the vast majority of UK ‘ballers are quite content with their mediocrity, where will we find those who are actually going to take things forward?
What do you do if you want to “play the paintball”? Go down to your site! They have the guns, the masks, the scenarios and the paintballs!
Let’s consider Fred, the local field owner. Fred has a patch of woods, which he rents from a farmer (who would have no use for the woods anyway). Now, Fred’s patch of woods are very easy to look after, aside from spending a few weeks of hard graft at the start, hammering planks about and positioning shells of burnt out cars and other cheap obstacles, Fred has very little to do in the way of maintenance. Fred can also use the same fields for all sorts of different games. Stick a flag on each end, you have a game that keeps the punters happy and shooting for 20 minutes. Hide a stretcher in the middle and tell both teams to find it, and hello, another 20 minutes of fingers on triggers. Oh did I forget to mention that Fred can have all his players going simultaneously in his woods? Remember that.
Now, Barney the ‘baller wants to promote his radical extreme version of “the paintballing”, he calls it “Super Air Ball”. He thinks it’s the dogs’, and wants to get people from Fred’s site interested in it, as after all, they have at least a modicum of interest in paintball already. Fred is, of course, going to want to know how much money he can make from this before doing anything else. Barney pitches it something like this:
“Fred, you’re going to have this patch of flat, preferably grass, land. You’ll then put a set of shiny inflatable barricades on it, then you put your punters on it and they’ll run around and shoot their guns and it’ll be great!”
Fred, though, is going to say:
“Hold on there Barney! First of all, all I have are these here woods, which are cheaper to rent because nobody can do anything with them. I’m going to have to clear a patch of woods, which will be expensive and might not even possible due to regulations, and then it will completely limit me forever in what I can use the land for; or I guess I could rent some land from the farmer that he actually uses, and so he’d charge me more for it, and I’ll almost certainly have to net that off aswell.
Then, you want me to buy a multi-thousand pound field that will require all sorts of upkeep as punters bayonet them with the tippmanns. I’ll also have to dedicate time from my already busy day to inflate the things, or get a marshal to do it. At the end of the day they’ll then have to be deflated, and maybe even put away seeing as I don’t make a habit of leaving thousands of pounds worth of boating material out in the open during the week when I’m not here.
I’m then only going to be able to have, what, 20 players use it at a time? The players might not even enjoy it as they’re here to have a shooty-shooty Rambo fest, they’ll spunk all their expensive paintballs and complain that its not what they came here for.”
Barney says:
“But what about the people who do enjoy it, they’ll go all shooty-shooty bang-bang, money for you!”
At this point, Fred is probably ready to backhand Barney with a straight-shot, but he keeps his cool and says:
“The incredibly stupid ones will probably come back and play again. The other 80% will probably have spoken to one of my teenage marshals, or googled Sup’Air after seeing it on a bunker, or even googled paintball, and will see that they can buy an Ion setup and mask for less than £300, and a case of paintballs for around £25, as opposed to the £120 I could sell it to them for.
Now, remind me, the field owner, the man who is taking all the risks, who has to pay a mortgage and unlike you, actually depends on paintball for a living, why exactly I owe you my valuable customers so that you can turn them into somebody else’s customers?”
So, you’re now Barney…what do you do?
Do you:
Start your own speedball paradise?
Start your own field with a speedball section, and show Fred that it can be done?
Get a job for Fred or someone similar and talk to the interested players yourself?
Or spend the rest of your life moaning on p8ntballer and getting nowhere?
How can you convince Fred to make it worth his while? Walkons are a possibility, but I don’t believe that is the real issue as I reckon site owners in general want to protect their own interests, they don’t have the ability to risk investing in sup’air as its not worth doing in the first place (in their eyes, but maybe rightly so) and then it hurts them to alert possible repeat customers that paintball can be had for cheaper.
Certain sites I’ve played at are going the right way about it, if you look at established fields like Campaign, or Mayhem for instance, they have a sup’air field and shop on site so it immediately makes it clear that there is another side available. I’d say the same about Ambush, as I’ve trained there at the same time as punters have been playing. Aside from these, I’ve only really been able to play sup’air at dedicated sites like Dartford, Tourney Park etc. I haven’t been there yet, but I know NQ is tourney only. How did I know these places existed? How did I even get into this “sport”? I can’t actually tell you, it’s probably a mere matter of luck. Once you’re in, it’s a whole new world and set of problems that this thread has covered, but where do these people come from?
I know its very short sighted, and I have taken a fairly defensive side of the field owner here, but look at it through their eyes. How can we makes these people want to promote sup’air? We cant count on the established punter sites, they’re grand hubs of paintball on their own but pale to insignificance when compared to the volume of players going through the doors at Delta Force, or all the other small individual sites combined.
Maybe the problem is prices for the owners? Its not like we have more land than we know what to do with in this country, unlike say, the States. Maybe the owners need industry support, or subsidies? I always hear that the site owners are what allow tournament players to have their cheap paint…I don’t buy this at all. When was the last time you bought Evil or Hellfire at a field, or used an Ego at one? Tournament paintball products are specialised and made to be sold to tournament paintball players, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of movement to attract more players into the fold! This is what we get in the UK for piggy-backing on the success of the US market, and exactly why we get less in the way of sponsorship, there’s less money to be made. So infact, it is the punters who allow us to play…we just need more tournament punters.
