R
raehl
Guest
Re: Still tricky
The reason I believe I'm right on this is I'm the President of an organization that deals directly with high school paintball clubs. If I had to take a guess, 60-70% of the players who get in touch with me play paintball in a "renegade" type format. They generally have chronos and safety proceedures and what not, but they play on private land with their own equipment and paint they've purchased online, at a local store, or god forbid, walmart. Keep in mind that that's 60-70% of players who read either paintball magazines or paintball websites, because that's the only way they'd know we exist. On top of that you've got all the back-woods players who don't read paintball sites and don't read paintball magazines who obviously arn't emailing me and don't give a crap about tournament paintball.
What you're not picking up on Robbo is that the US is MOSTLY rural areas. Areas with no paintball fields at all within 2 hours, but a bunch of private, unused land. You're arguing this from the European perspective where the nearest urban area is rarely more than an hour away, and that's just not the case over here. We have communities where kids are neatly divided into the "paintball" kids and the "drugs/alcohol" kids, since those are the only things to do when you live in bumblescrew and most people can't afford both.
The majority of paintball in the US is 10-17 year olds who think the flatline is the best thing since the semi who have never set foot on a tournament field because it never occurred to them that paintball was anything other than a game you play behind the barn with some stuff you bought at walmart. Just because you don't see them because they're not at fields doesn't mean they arn't there. SOMEONE has to buy all those Talons, or Brass Eagle wouldn't still be selling them.
So, back to the original issue, why is this important?
If we're going to be successful as a sport, we have to do a better job than snow boarding, mountain biking, etc, does at reaching these uninterested players. Yah, 100k people may be interested in tournament paintball now, and it's not a small number, but why not 500k? What to we have to do to reach these other potential spectators?
That's where we're being killed by our inability to reign in cheating and combat the cheating reputation so rec players don't hate pro players before they've even seen them, or to do things like schedule an event more than 3 months in advance. What if we scheduled the X Ball world championships for next November, then started putting in sweepstakes forms for 10 free trips to go watch the championships in all of the products of X Ball sponsors? So next time your renegade baller goes to walmart to buy his 500 rd jar of marbles, he finds out that there's an actual paintball championships, and he can win a trip to Florida or CA or Britain or wherever to see it? Throw in a few cases of paint just to make it interesting.
Gotta get people to start looking at the big picture.
- Chris
Hrm, wouldn't 100k out of 1.2 million be 5-10%? So you're agreeing less than 10% of paintball players in the US are interested in tournament paintball?
The reason I believe I'm right on this is I'm the President of an organization that deals directly with high school paintball clubs. If I had to take a guess, 60-70% of the players who get in touch with me play paintball in a "renegade" type format. They generally have chronos and safety proceedures and what not, but they play on private land with their own equipment and paint they've purchased online, at a local store, or god forbid, walmart. Keep in mind that that's 60-70% of players who read either paintball magazines or paintball websites, because that's the only way they'd know we exist. On top of that you've got all the back-woods players who don't read paintball sites and don't read paintball magazines who obviously arn't emailing me and don't give a crap about tournament paintball.
What you're not picking up on Robbo is that the US is MOSTLY rural areas. Areas with no paintball fields at all within 2 hours, but a bunch of private, unused land. You're arguing this from the European perspective where the nearest urban area is rarely more than an hour away, and that's just not the case over here. We have communities where kids are neatly divided into the "paintball" kids and the "drugs/alcohol" kids, since those are the only things to do when you live in bumblescrew and most people can't afford both.
The majority of paintball in the US is 10-17 year olds who think the flatline is the best thing since the semi who have never set foot on a tournament field because it never occurred to them that paintball was anything other than a game you play behind the barn with some stuff you bought at walmart. Just because you don't see them because they're not at fields doesn't mean they arn't there. SOMEONE has to buy all those Talons, or Brass Eagle wouldn't still be selling them.
So, back to the original issue, why is this important?
If we're going to be successful as a sport, we have to do a better job than snow boarding, mountain biking, etc, does at reaching these uninterested players. Yah, 100k people may be interested in tournament paintball now, and it's not a small number, but why not 500k? What to we have to do to reach these other potential spectators?
That's where we're being killed by our inability to reign in cheating and combat the cheating reputation so rec players don't hate pro players before they've even seen them, or to do things like schedule an event more than 3 months in advance. What if we scheduled the X Ball world championships for next November, then started putting in sweepstakes forms for 10 free trips to go watch the championships in all of the products of X Ball sponsors? So next time your renegade baller goes to walmart to buy his 500 rd jar of marbles, he finds out that there's an actual paintball championships, and he can win a trip to Florida or CA or Britain or wherever to see it? Throw in a few cases of paint just to make it interesting.
Gotta get people to start looking at the big picture.
- Chris
