I think the guys from SP will be doing everything they can to salvage what they can from one of paintball's more enduring brand names.
Lord knows why people express surprise when things like this get rumoured because the state of the economy in the US, more specifically, the paintball economy, has every single company on its knees looking for options.
We have been a misguided sport, especially our industry side and none more so than SP.
I hope that last sentence isn't received as a criticism, it is an observation borne out of years of knowing the two brothers who own that company and what they have endeavoured to achieve.
Some of what they did wasn't too palatable but I wonder just how many of their most vociferous of critics wouldn't have done the self same thing were they in a similar place?
AS paintball matured, so did the processes we all had to go through and one of those was protecting intellectual and physical copyrights and patent issues.
And they were proved damned right to do what they did in terms of protecting their assets because within 3 or 4 years, every bastid out there was stealing other people's ideas ..... and with the Chinese and far east manufacturing revolution just kicking off in the far east back then, Billy and Adam could now well be viewed as 'astute' seeing as some of those far Eastern manufacturing houses have as much moral fortitude concerning patent rights as a snake writhing in sh!t.
SP put millions in trying to develop our sport in the way we all thought it would/should go and their investments came to little when focussing on the TV work they did with Dick Clark and latterly on their own. They had the bollocks to put all that money into developing our sport but ultimately lost out like a lot of people did because of a misplaced belief that paintball could be televised ........ sad but true!
I can't see this as the end, no way, certainly not of Billy and Adam in paintball, it's in their blood, just as it is in Dave Youngblood's, Bob Long's and Billy Ceranski's (Kee).
I personally, owe a lot to Billy and Adam for various reasons and I would feel pretty sick to the gut if they were to leave paintball....I haven't always agreed with them but they always treated me as a good friend (except when Adam got a strop on) and if this is true, it maybe ushers in a new era ... I fackin hope not.
I think SP had to downsize for sure, everybody had to, but maybe it wasn't enough .... I'll find out today and let you know if it's appropriate ..............well, unless one of this site's fine reporters/gossipers/news hounds gets to find out earlier
