Thoughts

[Dskize]

Ill be interested to see how this works out -using the promotion ideas suggested with the micro-climate example of our sup air walkons - we are lucky enough to have the backup and support of the Edinburgh Skirmish site with its boss giving us everything we could need to run our walk-ons - its his field for a start (and he recieves and asks for very little in return) we will be promoting this in the summer using tourney DVD's as well as any other ideas that will make the punters take a second look and hopefully come along - two points im trying to make here -

1. None of this would be available to us if it was not for the site owner - who was previously in the Keltics and therefore is aware that doing this can only add to the interest and credibility his site generates in the paintball world - and in the end will generate financially for him .

2 People are out there trying to move things along - but cant do it without the help from the establishment.

Well maybe thats only one point - but its the most valid one for me and what im trying to do - which is ultimately provide a weekly sup air site in Scotland - which as Sid has already pointed out - due to the amount of tourney ballers oop oop north i may aswell piss in the wind

 

[Ronnie Hollington]

i think people like Mark Warren Dave need a pat on the back its not easy to start up what they are trying to do and make any money. if it was you would see a lot more venues.

 

[elsancho]

LIZ


i say bollocks.

you cant blame the state of our tornament fields on how much cash the site owners make. if your a business man your in it to win it, as im sure the guys robbo mentioned are. and if your in it to make cash then you'll do anything to make a little more cash i.e investing in the PROPER facilities and bringing in the crowds and making s much cash as poss, not just in it to give little davey his mashed spuds and carrotts for the week.

look at CC05, how many players did that bring in !? ok its a millenium event but so what, the principals are there, they managed to pull it off. they found the resources and they did it. there is NO reason why CC cant be held all over the country 4-5 times a year (and by that i mean an event of its size).

the UK needs a league whereby that if you as a player dont enter then you are no one and arnt as committed to paintball as you think. NOT tornaments where the farmer can take the cows off the fields for a few minutes so we can get some ball in.also these events need to be run by proper crews NOT a part time paintball team who run an event when they have spare time, it needs to be a proper 9-5 mon-fri job.

and dont say that there isnt space in built up areas, i was looking on PBN (i know, the shame !!) and it seemt that they run some of there events from college playing fields. and we all know how hard up college/unis/schools are for cash in our country, all you have to do is offer them some cash and there eating out of your hand


man i could go on all night....


agggghhhhhh



p.s i look forward to being flamed.

 

[Tha bunker monkey]

I agree with Robbo on this.

The other day some of my mates from college asked me what did you do at the weekend and I said "I played paintball"

It really annoys me when they turn round and say "i have always wanted to go paintballing. Dressing up in camo and running round the woods shooting at each other seems like a right laugh."

Then i have to go into great detail explaining that paintball is not just dressing up in camo putting on war paint and shooting at each other but its a sport!

A couple of days later I went round my mates house and took a paintball dvd round just to show him what I was on about.

After watching the dvd i think his response was "Wow do you really play like that? Forget the woods...I want to play like that that looks awsome"

 

[Markie C]

Originally posted by elsancho
LIZ


i say bollocks.

you cant blame the state of our tornament fields on how much cash the site owners make. if your a business man your in it to win it, as im sure the guys robbo mentioned are. and if your in it to make cash then you'll do anything to make a little more cash i.e investing in the PROPER facilities and bringing in the crowds and making s much cash as poss, not just in it to give little davey his mashed spuds and carrotts for the week.

look at CC05, how many players did that bring in !? ok its a millenium event but so what, the principals are there, they managed to pull it off. they found the resources and they did it. there is NO reason why CC cant be held all over the country 4-5 times a year (and by that i mean an event of its size).

the UK needs a league whereby that if you as a player dont enter then you are no one and arnt as committed to paintball as you think. NOT tornaments where the farmer can take the cows off the fields for a few minutes so we can get some ball in.also these events need to be run by proper crews NOT a part time paintball team who run an event when they have spare time, it needs to be a proper 9-5 mon-fri job.

and dont say that there isnt space in built up areas, i was looking on PBN (i know, the shame !!) and it seemt that they run some of there events from college playing fields. and we all know how hard up college/unis/schools are for cash in our country, all you have to do is offer them some cash and there eating out of your hand


man i could go on all night....


agggghhhhhh



p.s i look forward to being flamed.

I dont think you will get flamed mate,

You sound like a player who is just p**sed with the state of some of the tournament's and venues that are about.

with your point regarding the cc and the getting some one to do it full time i am with you there as well but do you think it could happen,We do need full time people involved with setting up a big uk tournament scene maybe on the line's of the pro tour and have it in one place instead of going to other run of the day site's if you are going to watch the pro's you would expect a top venue to watch them in.

Then maybe you could have lower div's running along side it with the chance for the winner of the season to go up to the pro bracket.

We do need to do some thing along those line's or it's just going to be the same old same old if you get my drift.

I dont know because i have never been but the nppl's and other tourney's over there they have all div's running in the same place that's why they might have the phone line's jammed with people trying to book in to play in the same tournament as the big boy's.

Do you think this would work ?


As robbo said in a post a bit ago we need to create our own destiny ( as in Europe ) maybe i am wrong but it does sound like a good idea.

Start with the flaming.....

 

[KitsuneAndy]

Originally posted by markie c

with your point regarding the cc and the getting some one to do it full time i am with you there as well but do you think it could happen,We do need full time people involved with setting up a big uk tournament scene maybe on the line's of the pro tour and have it in one place instead of going to other run of the day site's if you are going to watch the pro's you would expect a top venue to watch them in.

I think that someone could make a business of running tournaments full time and be able to offer decent prizes for the winning teams, if it was someone who already owned a site/land that would be suitable for tournaments. They wouldnt have any huge expenses as they wouldn't need to pay for use of the land, just for the equipment.

I think if someone ran a tournament with say, 4 divisions, staggered entry fee's and prize money for the top 2 of each division (with second place say winning their entry fee back and first place winning double) then with 10 teams in each division it would surely be worthwhile for both the teams and the organiser.

I know plenty of people will say "we're not in it for the money, we dont care about prize money". Well, neither am I, BUT, I do think that by offering a reasonable prize for every 1 or 2 day event then it will be easier to attract new teams/players and hopefully more of a following.

 

[Karlito]

Well from all the replies its quite apparent that something needs to be sorted out in the UK- Bagpuss and my dad have been trying to get a site set-up and sorted for a while now -which focusses pretty much 100% on sup-air use, based in the essex area.
The main obstruction that they have run into is the local council..whether it be due to ther ignorance that paintball is growing at an ever increasing rate - or the fact that maybe they need a little more educating..
if anyone here fancies backing the cause then feel free to contact Brentwood Council... failing that i may get a petition going at every tourney..they can ignore one person but they can't ignore a few hundred!

 

[Markie C]

It's hard mate we've tryed but we didnt do to bad it's right next to the airport and just off the motor way,,,,,but with saying that its not cheep the only deal we could come up with the famer is not a set amount it was price per person......and its a lot but we are still looking for bigger and better places....

 

[Tartan Blaster]

I think this is a very intresting post and one that has raised alot of good points but I do not believe that it is the lack of advertising or woodsball holding the sport back it is the the actual product, competitive paintball.
A wee while back I managed to convince my school to allow me to organize a school paintballing trip and guess what I had huge intrest in it and I didn't have to do a drop of advertising apart from putting up a sign where people could sign up. The trip was a huge sucess and I managed to fill up my local site (pb alexandria) to capacity and I had to turn away a sizable number of people of well. Everybody loved it and I was inundated with requests to organize more and tell people how to get into the sport (the proper sport despite going to a woodsball site) but this is where our sport falls short considering it has no depth or easy access.
I will just quote my experience of trying to get into paintball
go for my birthday party after seeing a few woodsball programs on the telly

Organize school paintballing trip

Have second organized trip with those who were really keen

Got all my kit for around £300

Went to the 3rd of January walkon at PBA

Went to the keltics walkon

and am planning to go to the second walkon and for me 14th birthday in febuary

Now if you compare that to any other sport you will see it falls drastically short I could only play 3 times before having to pay a stagerring amount (from a childs perspective who had to save pocket money for an entire ****** year) and now I have been able to plan to go about 4 times more and have no prospects of playing much more than once a month after that. Compare that to my other main sport curling (if anyone dishes it for being boring to watch I would like to remind you that you have never played it) I went along to the ice rink one day saw a sign said hey that looks like fun signed up for lessons was able to play weekly for a year without having to spend more than £50 then was invited to join a club and a year later bought proper gear and began playing at a national level.
Does anyone see a difference in the steepness of learning curve? and the simple acessibility of it? I sure do and that is the number one reason paintballing isn't taking of in this country. To play paintballing you need a £300 kit no matter what. you then can only play monthly unless you make the jump to tourney (if you can as I am still struggling in this regard) and that is extremely difficult for the majority of Britains population and distances it from the norm and makes in seem more as a hobby or weirdo entertainment for agressive loons instead of the brilliant sport it really is.

The only way we are going to increase our sport is to increase the acessibility of it not just put up some fancy signs we need to make sure that people can play weekly even if it is using reballs.
We need to make it so people could play in league or inter site competitions were thwey do not need a team
we need more young guns or junior sections of teams
we need players to be more generous and let begineers play with their guns and kit instead of hoarding about 3 backup guns gathering dust in their cupboards

As these are the things putting of potential players and sure sites and industry could play a huge role in increasing the sports popularity but all the core factors can be adressed by us the players and this is what the sport really needs.



phew (takes long breath) I'm glad thats over sorry about rambling on a bit and if anything doesn't make sense I'll edit it later as I don't think I am completely thinking straight at the mo but I hope me marathon post made sense and thx for reading

 

[Sid_Clan]

Forward Thinkin

I have something that myself and the other owner of A1 Paintball want to do, but it will take time and alot of money, and if it works, it will be a massive breakthrough in paintball as a sport...but I need to get the funding together and we are talking alot, this dream is not a pipe dream, but a vision for the future, to make paintball mainstream, to bring it into the public eye.....it's not going to happen overnight, but fingers crossed it will happen.

When I first started my own site I set dream, goals if you like, these are now being met, now we have another dream and as my Dad said to me, without dreams, whats the point to life????

Robbo, if we ever get a chance to sit and have a chat I'll let you in on them......although bring a translator....for me obviously....

Sid