WARNING: Long post ahead.
I came over to the UK from the East Coast of the US. I had airball two fields within a 20 minute drive of my TINY little town, and I played for a team that would do tournaments and other events at these and slightly further away fields.
When I got here, I was crushed to find that the only fields available to me were woodsball fields. I have been looking for an air ball field to play on since I got to this country, and while I still haven't found one, I finally found a field in Edinburgh that has a speedball feel to it.
I managed to find a group of guys from both Edinburgh an Napier uni and we're finally getting a team together with the aim of playing tournament ball. The only problem is that we have to travel down to England to play any events.
We have a local field (Urban Paintball) who was kind enough to offer us the ability to play as their "home team" on their field to make sure some of our newer players have the basics down, but we still have no place to practice on an air field.
As far as the cost being prohibitive to starting up new teams, you better believe that is the main concern with all our players.
Until it is financially viable to do so, there can be no sustainable or real change. This requires hobbyist and tournament players to pay more, simples. The one constant you are unable to change (and shame on you for not mentioning it) is the ridiculous entitlement felt by Paintballers in the UK and that entitlement is fed by access to cheap bullets. The Fed needs to legislate here, otherwise people will always look to play for the cheapest possible and there are retailers whom do sell Paintballs at, close to or below trade (it's human nature, init). You only have to look at responses in this thread to see how far the player base is detached from reality and unable to view UK Paintball holistically. Just because you spoke to a few punters does not entitle you to discounted bullets, well certainly not to 35quid a box.
Let's take your £35 a box and do a little math here. If we have 15 people on the team, let's say 10 make it every week for training. Since we're just starting out, we've been trying to limit ourselves to shooting 1 case between two people at training so that's £175 spent on paint per week.
Now, we also show up once a week to walk ons at the field to encourage the punters to get more involved in paintball (and we get to play in between punter matches while they're resting or getting more paint or whatever). Since this is actual games and not drills, we can easily go through a box of paint each. Let's say 5 of us show up to that as well. That's another £175 on paint that day.
That's £350 on paint EVERY SINGLE WEEK. That comes out to £1400 a month just for training. Point me toward another team sport that costs the team £1400 a week for training without including their kit cost.
Add on to that the cost of a decent marker (let's say another £200 for a used DM6 or something) that's £3000 in gear costs for the team. Now you need packs, pods, bottles, jerseys, playing pants, shoes, etc.
Now we're finally ready to play a tournament! We have entry fee (not sure how much this is in the UK as we haven't been yet), more paint, travel down to England, hotel, food, etc.
So, really, I think if you start charging more for paint, you're going to lose a LOT of people.
Everyone is complaining about the state of the sport in the UK, but no one seems to mention that not a single sup'air field can be easily found in the entirety of Scotland
The second track requires you be outside that system. The second track is local 3-man events or for 5-man woodsball events or anything else that is happening on a local or field specific level that could attract any sort of paintball player--other than the guy already commited to the national track.
The local track scene can be as diverse as all the different areas of the country and over time you discover what works where (and what doesn't) as the national people more or less leave the grassroots types alone. Meanwhile, some portion of the local track people will eventually choose to participate in the national track.
This is how it worked near me when I was getting started. You did all the local competitions with your team and when you were FINALLY good enough you would go and hit a local CPL, PSP, or NPPL event.
I think the UK market is now split, a situation which didn't really exist back in the day. Back in the early 90s everyone wore camo regardless of being a punter, walk-on or tournament player. Aside from the odd arena event, 95% of tournaments were in the woods, so there was little difference between the three styles of play, just a difference in aquired skill level and commitment. Today a player has to make a clear choice - do they want the camo and military trappings of scenario play, or do they want the lairy colours of tournament play?
I guess this has to do with the market size being relatively small here in the UK as opposed to the US, but the market is definitely split in the US. Scenario players have their own events, etc.
One of the fields I went to even had two sets of refs: those to ref the woods guys and those to ref the airball fields.
The bottom line is that if we want this sport to grow in the UK (which I would assume we all do), then we need to get together and get organized as Robbo says. There are plenty of people willing to pay the high cost associated with breaking into this sport, and there are even people who are willing to travel a couple hundred miles for the chance to say they've participated in a tournament.
The CPPS is doing a great thing this year in having a separate rookie bracket with a paint limit and different play format for people to cut their teeth on, and they're VERY willing to help new teams to be able to attend these events.
Robbo, if there is anything myself or the players on my team can do to help kickstart this sport and get it back to it's rightful place PLEASE let me know. The idea of regional leagues which then have an overall tournament with the best from these leagues is the first step in my eyes. If we can get people playing LOCALLY then it will greatly reduce cost for them, which means they can save up for the bigger national cup event(s).
