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Uk National Paintball league

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
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2,157
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London
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but there are people like myself who want to climb the tree. but how do we make the moves up each branch. i have the love for the sport but dont even know which tree i want to climb. i have always thought how can i as a single person make the moves ?

i want your job one day ;)

Lump, you and the other half have an enormous amount of enthusiasm for our sport, that much is obvious and I can easily understand the need you feel to 'get involved' but the positions you talk of, were never targeted.
The people who hold these positions of power and / or influence didn't necessarily set out to acquire them.
Of course they determine their jobs etc but their influence is as a consequence.
Lots of people have power and influence within our sport and the road to acquiring influence is a long and varied one.
Some people think they have a lot of influence, some wield it and never really think about it but it is inevitably closely linked with money and the industry.
For somebody in your position who has no industry links, no pro team linkage, no media position etc etc (i am in no way disrespecting you here, I am just stating the case) then the only route you can hope to take if influence is what you crave, then representing the player base is really, your only option.
And as for how you achieve that?
Well, it's all a matter of gaining the player's respect and galvanizing them into some form of representation .....but how many times has this been tried before?
If this is what you want mate, then it's gonna be hard, real hard but then again, you don't get summink for nuttin', not in this game :)
Good luck Lump !
 

john251282

Platinum Member
Oct 4, 2005
1,212
23
63
Bristol
www.google.co.uk
Are there any professional sales-people in the house?
As it happens I am, I was headhunted into a corp. sales job a little while back and have been working with large banks, legal firms etc since.

If you are looking at this as a way to push uk paintball forward I am extremely happy to help. However you mentioned trying to open this up to "joe public", which from what I have seen seems to be sensible. As Robbo has brought up before places like Germany ONLY play tourny ball and this has lead to some good teams coming out of there recently aswell as things like the X5 tournaments.

In the future if we want UK balling to progress we need to be looking at key selling points for our sport, why do people not want to play paintball over football, rugby, etc etc. The obvious answer would be the stigma of those that have played rec ball before seeing paintball as a very expensive sport aswell as the large initial outlay on kit for those that try to start . Therefore we need some big benefit to overcome this hurdle. This being the huge excitement, some form of primitive love of war and boys toys.

Firstly we need a cheap way of introducing people to the sport. This could be done in a number of ways, the obvious suggestion would be to have better site kit (especially colourful jerseys NOT camos), then a nice clean safe airball field with plenty of room for spectators (mostly parents probably), combined with £30 a box is certain to go down a treat. The big problem with this would be the initial outlay on the site owner, new guns, hoppers, kit, etc. Also adding things like tourny ball DVDs on a loop in the reception area also helps boost the appearence of paintball as a sport rather than wanna be rambo.

What I think would be a better solution would be some form of summer camp type thing. Working with schools, or perhaps cadet schemes, get them to sign up to a month long course or so, where they play a few times a week for a month learning from suitable people while also playing lots. You would not get them all day everyday as throwing them in the deepend with tourny ball will not give good results, at least to start with. Then when we can work with them (i.e. tell them what tourny ball is all about) and they get a huge adrenaline dump and it is relatively cheap, in comparison to rec ball, then they can go do whatever and hopefully spread the word. Then depending on how much you might charge for all this they could perhaps go home at the end of the course with a decent basic knowledge and perhaps some basic kit to get further into it i.e. goggles, jersey, maybe marker setup again depending on cost.

Other things that need to be considered, general awareness of the sport, poster campaigns when local events are on ESPECIALLY showcase ones like Campaign Cup. When I went this year all I saw was direction things with Millennium in big letters on them, which is totally meaningless to mr. bloggs.


Those were just suggestions there are probably quite a few ways this could be done but the key point is that we need to get tournament paintball to be seen differently to rec ball, like American football and football.


Once this sort of initiative has some weight behind it, there will be enough tournament players to be able to form a players union and more importantly a specific tourny ball council ( perhaps a branch of the UKPSF or maybe a totally seperate unit). Then we can start looking at rules, leagues, etc etc.



Lets get some ideas bubbling with this and between us maybe we can do something to turn tournament paintball into the sport it deserves to be.
 

Russell Smith

The Paintball Association
The only way I see Pete's scenario happening is if somebody would hire an outsider to land "paintball, the sport" that sort of deals.

The guy that lands the FA all the sponsorship deals ain't a footballplayer, he's a trained professional at marketing and such.
And them "professional outsiders" cost a fortune with pre-meeting cost agreements and percentage deals with follow on charges if the agreement is extended ect.

We have people lined up to do this for us but we can only do it when we get to a "real" sports status because at that point the possibility for genuine sponsorship does exist.

Imagine this scenario, your team plays a weekend event and the winner of that event wins a decent cash prize say £10,000.
The cost to enter F.O.C.
The cost of paint you use F.O.C.
Think it's not possible, you would be wrong big players in the sponsorship market have money to burn and all they want is product/name placement because they don't give a monkeys about what they are sponsoring as long as the the guy who brokered the deal tells them what they need to be told and they are going to get the exposure they are promised.

Russ
 

Freddie Brockdorff

Olva the Berserker
Aug 22, 2005
752
0
41
Copenhagen, Denmark
I have nothing really to say about this matter, so just gonna throw in a small side note to proove how BAD we are "advertising" our sport:

Other things that need to be considered, general awareness of the sport, poster campaigns when local events are on ESPECIALLY showcase ones like Campaign Cup. When I went this year all I saw was direction things with Millennium in big letters on them, which is totally meaningless to mr. bloggs.
We actually pursuaded our "hosts" at the small hotel we stayed at to go down and watch it - the day after we talked to them at the hotel, and their response was "It looked like aliens running around shooting at each other, and we had NO idea what it was all about!?"....

So yeah first off: They would have NEVER known about this tournament if we hadn´t told them, and it was only like a 8-minute walk from their place - and second: Why is it SO hard to make something like an "info booth" where total foreigners to our sport can go grab a folder and actually get a clue what is going on - as the hosts said "If only we had known what the game was about, we would have prob stayed for longer - cause now when you explain it it really DOES sound like a lot of fun!".

:)
 

Buddha 3

Hamfist McPunchalot
And them "professional outsiders" cost a fortune with pre-meeting cost agreements and percentage deals with follow on charges if the agreement is extended ect.

We have people lined up to do this for us but we can only do it when we get to a "real" sports status because at that point the possibility for genuine sponsorship does exist.

Imagine this scenario, your team plays a weekend event and the winner of that event wins a decent cash prize say £10,000.
The cost to enter F.O.C.
The cost of paint you use F.O.C.
Think it's not possible, you would be wrong big players in the sponsorship market have money to burn and all they want is product/name placement because they don't give a monkeys about what they are sponsoring as long as the the guy who brokered the deal tells them what they need to be told and they are going to get the exposure they are promised.

Russ

Russ, I know what that sort of guy costs, believe me (used to be one of them).

What do you mean by real sports status? I can tell you that the likes of Coca Cola don't give a damn about official status, as long as their brand is represented to the right people, in the right way and in large enough numbers.

For the rest, I agree with your post.

Unfortunately, I don't see it happening in the near future, as there is very little out of the box thinking going on. People still think too much within a "what paintball is like" frame of mind.
 

Russell Smith

The Paintball Association
Russ, I know what that sort of guy costs, believe me (used to be one of them).

What do you mean by real sports status? I can tell you that the likes of Coca Cola don't give a damn about official status,
Wanna Job......:)

And the benefits of being an approved body in the UK is purely the tax situation if you are looking at it from the financial viewpoint and companies do have there own benefits if they are giving cash to a recognised sports body, still be hard to get it though, but we live in hope.


Russ
 

Raffles

Going....going....not quite dead yet...
Jun 21, 2004
2,766
1
63
56
oldham - lancs
...but the key point is that we need to get tournament paintball to be seen differently to rec ball, like American football and football...
AMEN!

I still think a UK Paintball (or a nice new shiny name) Expo is the answer.

Imagine having a 'fair' like event - with tourny'ball (we really do need a new name) as the centre-piece. There could be stalls from all the major 'ball companies - along side stalls/info booths for absolutely anything else (maybe even some forces recruiting caravans ;)).

I have never been fortunate enough to go stateside - but from most of the DVD's I've watched of the larger tournaments - they have huge tents full of stalls (especially the World Cup).

The main thing that they seem to have is somewhere for the spectators to sit and watch the games (out of the cold and wind and rain).

We still need to make tournaments a family day out - rather than a field for paintballers to shoot at each other. I know this, due to the fact that I've dragged my poor missus (and son) to more than one event - for them to be bored 30 mins in!
 

JoseDominguez

New cut and carved spine!
Oct 25, 2002
3,185
0
0
www.myspace.com
The 40 teams playing on the same day format is the big problem, it means every paintball event is almost a complete league.
Isn't there some way of making it more like football etc... Maybe four teams playing each other three times on a day? Then later in the season repeat at a different venue?
Instead of one massive central location, a number of smaller venues could be 'approved', then one big event at a single venue at the end of the season?
How much easier to have forty teams split over ten sites? Maybe do this on a local level and then have the 'North East, North west, Central etc...... champions at the play off. I don't know, but I see the main problem with tourneys is just that, they are tournaments not matches feeding into a league format. The league is an afterthought really, only considered once that full day of paintball is finished.