Paintball is a Sport. Please support.

[Soul Doubt]

Ok... you're using Chess and Darts to justify your argument is absolutely perfect. Paintball in the UK is basically a blend of the 2. Unfit, beer-drinking men trying to get an angle on their opposition in order to "kill" them. Perfect.

As for bog diving... when was the last time you risked using a portaloo at a site or tournament?

Come off it! You'll have to use some better examples than that to justify your argument! I hope your dissertation is better than that

Well, my point was more generalised than going in any depth on the subject, but the originality of "sport" derived from the pastimes of activities such as hunting etc etc hence "he was good sport" the development of social pastimes into sport is a natural progression. Paintball fits into all of the characteristics of a sport, like many other supports. For example: Sports and there association with weekend play was due to the fitting in of working hours, football was played Saturday afternoon and Sundays because people generally worked Mon-Fri and Saturday morning, Paintball has developed in the same llight. Also to add that other rules of football and similar sports where developed through the working environment, i.e whistles, warnings, lines etc etc you can link paintball in parrallel to other sports, paintballers wear paintball related gear (t-shirts, hats etc) , 70% of people who wear sports wear is for fashion purposes, therefore commercialisation and paintball is similar to many other sports. Baseball in America and basketball used to have much longer game times and fewer points/homeruns etc, but globalisation and commercialisation wanted to see faster games with more points to attract more fans in, the same is with X-ball, this list of comparisons truly goes on....

Now for those people saying it isnt a sport because it isnt "recognised" or has international rules etc etc well, then that seems ignorant to a culture other than the western bureaucratic establishment of sport, it is apparent that in the west sport has developed initality from a past-time activity into a sport (with the professionalisation of players E.g paid players not "gentlemen" who played for enjoyment such as cricket) now into a multi-billion commercial enterprise with the focus on global profit margins. What about those small unknown sports in villages in Indian, where 4 villages come together to participate in an ancient sport (similar to football but has hundreds of players etc) or the Mongolian horse racing but local villages, they dont have any of this international infrastructure, but do we dictate to them if it is a sport or not? we make not like it or be interested in it, but ultimately to those people who care about the competition and strive to win it is more definitely a sport.

This is what makes a sport, its the people who make it.

 

[Ellis90]

here are a couple of "dictonary definitions" for you
(spôrt, spōrt)
n.
Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively

"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature"

if i could be bothered i would post up links to the rule books of the PSP, Millennium and NPPL.. just because different leagues/formats use different rules doesnt mean that they dont have rules. i dont see anything in there about having governing bodies, in these cases the leagues themselves serve this purpose.

these formats of paintball fit every aspect of those definitions and therefore so do any event played under these rules. paintball has been ( so far unsuccesfully) been on TV, and is deemed by most to be pretty much unwatchable by joe public, has players that are paid to play paintball exclusively as their job, is officiated strictly.

i agree with you stan, the vast majority of players and therefore a large amount of the people on here are overweight, unfit men whos hobby is once or twice a month, they go to a field, and shoot each other with their thousands of pounds worth of gear, in between munching burgers and talking about their latest upgrade on their spotless equipment.. this may sound harsh, but is very evident if you go to any local UK event.

on the flip side of this you have the players that completely devote themselves to this thing we do, they train and scrim and drill every weekend in all weathers, work out and run fitness in the week. the russians train full time and that is their job, if you had ever seen them play or train you would see these guys are athletes in every sense of the word. i would love to see one of you guys call them a "hobbiest"

this is the same in almost every sport. a good example of this is the average football loving 30 year old man in the UK, who likes going down the pub to watch the game, and having a kickabout in the park or for the local 5 a side team, does this mean the professional player who is paid 80 grand a week to play football isnt playing a sport, just because hes in the minority? of course not.

but at the end of the day, you are fighting over a label, personally i would call paintball an extreme sport, but i really couldnt care less what you want to define it as, its the most addictive and intense thing i have ever done, and my life pretty much revolves around it, everything else takes second place to paintball, and my striving to competitively excel in it. it seems a lot of people are clamoring for recognition, just sack it up and play, fighting on a forum wont help you.

what will however, is orginisations like the Federation, PSP, NPPL etc that are taking steps to bring paintball to resemble a sport more. its awesome that there are people doing this, but i will leave it to them, as they are far more qualified than just a player like me.

enjoy your internet squabbles!

 

[Dskize]

Pete's right which makes this post moot but hey I'm bored.

The only argument that stands against Paintball being a sport is the fact it is not recognised as one, it may be cool to be cynical and suggest that 'it's just a hobby get over it' but that's crap , plus the (90's) unfit fat-guys argument is long dead too , you seen a group of unfit fat guys win an NPPL/PSP event recently ?

I played sunday morning pub football,usually after a night on the pish and 2 hours sleep amongst other things but all that made me was undedicated ,unfit and quite content to play a sport as a hobby, kinda like kicking a can around.

I would surmise that anyone who has played paintball to any kind of decent competitive level would see it as a sport ,those that don't, either don't want to or can't take it to a level where it most definately is.

EDIT: Ellis kinda got in first...I type at a hobbiest level.

 

[Stan]

The only argument that stands against Paintball being a sport is the fact it is not recognised as one, it may be cool to be cynical and suggest that 'it's just a hobby get over it' but that's crap , plus the (90's) unfit fat-guys argument is long dead too , you seen a group of unfit fat guys win an NPPL/PSP event recently ?

The fact it isn't recognised as a sport, both officially and by 99.99% of the population of this planet is the reason it isn't a sport. End of. I'd love it to be more mainstream, more organised and more professional. But it just ain't gonna happen.

i agree with you stan, the vast majority of players and therefore a large amount of the people on here are overweight, unfit men whos hobby is once or twice a month, they go to a field, and shoot each other with their thousands of pounds worth of gear, in between munching burgers and talking about their latest upgrade on their spotless equipment.. this may sound harsh, but is very evident if you go to any local UK event.

on the flip side of this you have the players that completely devote themselves to this thing we do, they train and scrim and drill every weekend in all weathers, work out and run fitness in the week. the russians train full time and that is their job, if you had ever seen them play or train you would see these guys are athletes in every sense of the word. i would love to see one of you guys call them a "hobbiest"

Genuine question:
How many people have ever played paintball (in all the countries in all the world, over the last 30+ years)?
How many tournament players have there been over the same period?
How does that work as a percentage?
As a percentage of those, how many are anywhere near the level you are talking about?

 

[Talfryn]

Genuine question:
How many people have ever played paintball (in all the countries in all the world, over the last 30+ years)?
How many tournament players have there been over the same period?
How does that work as a percentage?
As a percentage of those, how many are anywhere near the level you are talking about?

A far higher percentage than the percentage of people who play football who play at an equivalently high level as Ellis and I play paintball.

If you don't quite get what I'm saying I'll explain in numbers. If 10 million people in the UK play football, probably under 1000 of those people play at a 'pro' level. As a percentage that works out as 0.01% of the people who play football are 'pros'

Now, for this next part I shall class 'pro' as an individual who plays and trains every weekend of the year, Lets say 1500 people in the UK play Torni paintball out of those probably at least 150 play and train every weekend therefore are as 'pro' as it is yet really possible to be in our sport. That is 10% of the people who play the sport of paintball are at the level Ellis is talking about.

So as an answer to your question 'As a percentage of those, how many are anywhere near the level you are talking about?' I answer: 10%

 

[Ellis90]

Genuine question:
How many people have ever played paintball (in all the countries in all the world, over the last 30+ years)?
How many tournament players have there been over the same period?
How does that work as a percentage?
As a percentage of those, how many are anywhere near the level you are talking about?

for the first part how many people have every played, i have no idea, but again if you compare it to football im guessing the result is tiny, but in comparison as a percentage to the rest of the questions you've raised, similar.

tournament players as opposed to rec players i would say between 2 and 5%, if you include punters. football players who play competitively on a regular basis for a team, i would say the percentage is similar, when compared with how many people have kicked a ball around with their mates across the globe.

the same goes for tournament players over that period, when you think about the millions of people that have engaged in the "beautiful game" the amount of people that have gone on to play seriously is tiny compared to the amount of people who have had a kick around..

as for the percentage of people at the level im talking about, i am talking about the players that play in the major leagues- so the millennium in europe. there were 6 divisions when i last checked, a bit of maths could work out roughly how many players that is.

if you then compare that to the way english football works, and the premiership, championship etc etc and the total number of players in these.. the result (as a percentage of total players to competitive players) will not be too dissimilar. obviously football is on a much bigger scale, so is hard to make a true comparision. also there are many more "pro players" than there are in paintball due to its popularity and money generation compared to paintball is like an orchard compared to an apple. people that play football professionally is probably in the thousands, whereas the amount that are true professional paintball players is definitely under 40 individuals, as most work in the industry. reasons for this are very obvious

again obviously this is just theoretical, maybe someone who is better at maths, and can be bothered can prove me right or wrong, but i doubt i am far off

 

[Seany]

Your talking waffles again.

You can't label a paintballer as a 'pro' just because he trains and plays every weekend. Professional footballers are called professionals because football is their profession.

Paintball is not a sport, everybody would like it to be a sprort, but nobody really sees it happening.

 

[Stencil]

Your talking waffles again.

You can't label a paintballer as a 'pro' just because he trains and plays every weekend. Professional footballers are called professionals because football is their profession.

Paintball is not a sport, everybody would like it to be a sprort, but nobody really sees it happening.

Word.

Just enjoy it for what it is; dressing up and shooting people.

 

[Soul Doubt]

Your talking waffles again.

You can't label a paintballer as a 'pro' just because he trains and plays every weekend. Professional footballers are called professionals because football is their profession.

Paintball is not a sport, everybody would like it to be a sprort, but nobody really sees it happening.

Its not waffles mate, its opinion and debate.

Now apart from the simplistic cliam of "its not a sport, so there" where are your facts to support you cliam?

There are is an army of sociological literature that points towards paintball being a sport, as well as some various other sporting acitivities.


What makes a sport in your eyes? how is darts, motorcross,cheerleading a sport but paintball not?

 

[Soul Doubt]

Word.

Just enjoy it for what it is; dressing up and shooting people.

I love dressing up and shooting fools

But all im trying to convey is that paintball is a sport, people have this assumption that it isn’t because everyone isn’t doing it, or it doesn’t have an international rule book etc etc but in reality the world is far more complex that this simplistic view and you cant therefore fit every sporting activity into these pre-supposed ideas.
Its not the idea im trying to validate paintball as a sport for my own ego and self-reassurance, im simply pointing that that the facts show that paintball is a sport, maybe a not very good one or one in a poor state of being, but ultimately it is