Paintball Hall of Fame - a question from John Amodea

[Old School PBaller]

2.) Marketing of Paintball

Now we really wanted to get to this subject as this is actually the one we feel the strongest about.

We live currently in an area where there are two major metropolitan areas with in one hour ; Huntsville AL and Birmingham AL . Also, Nashville, TN is 2 hours away and Atlanta GA three and a half hours. When we were doing our show here there were PB fields EVERYWHERE and all were very busy.

We could travel 20 minutes and be at three different fields. All would have from 50 to 100 players. If we drove 45 minutes to Mt Doom, Alabama's oldest field there would be another hundred players .

The sport was great. Paintball Mags were in bookstores, Paintball was on TV with the "ESPN 2006 Championships" show , the "Smart Parts Championships", our show "Paintball World TV News" and the "Beyond the Paint" show. It was being promoted on many different mediums and the public was seeing it and trying it.

Paintball was huge. You could play any weekend and there were even weekday games under lights at night at some fields within 30 minutes. There were big games and scenario games every where, there was an abundance of PB stores, PB fields, and PB stuff was in Walmarts, Dicks, Academy Sports. etc. 10 million people played in 2007!

For the first time in our lives when my wife and I said we did Paintball people did not say "Pinball"? They knew what Paintball was.

Now fast forward to 2023 : We play now at a field that was our home field during our show. It is still fairly busy but not like it used to be, maybe 50 or so people tops. And that is because it is the ONLY field in our area within an HOURS drive now !

Mt Doom? The oldest field in Alabama? Closed to Paintball now. Airsoft only.

We decided to try another field here 1 1/2 hours away past Birmingham AL. It looked great on the website. Woodsball fields, a castle, a town, speedball, hyperball.... We called.."Yep should be a couple groups". Drove all the way there ..No players. One lone guy showed up and left. Not to waste the trip we called another B'Ham field..Nope..no players. We called a third, same story, just open to airsoft!

We then spoke about it and decided maybe we should try the Nashville area. Go play Saturday, spend the night dining out , partying and dancing in Nashville and staying at a hotel, then play Sunday at a different field. We like making PB fun and turning it into a real good weekend. That is the great thing about us playing as a couple.

We looked and found three great looking fields. Two had woodsball, Hyperball , speedball and more. They looked great ! We decided to set a date in a few weekends to go . We then got a call and an invite from a few of the guys we play with now that were going to make the two hour drive last weekend. They were going to play one of the fields we were looking at , but we could not make it as we had other obligations.

They called ahead.."Yes..we have a few groups coming". They drove there, and you guessed it..No Players. They then headed to one of the other fields we liked as well..No Players again. They headed home without playing after driving over 5 hours. And that was drawing players from Nashville..a very big city!

I am sorry to say but we have NEVER seen so little paintball being played as right now. The sport is dying sadly. The latest Paintball participation numbers are at just barely over 2 million people playing in the whole year.

There is currently zero MARKETING of the sport. Anything not being marketed is bound to die, and that is what we are seeing here.

Even when things are bad a company has to market. The industry used the crash of 2008 as an excuse to not market the sport and now this is where it is. The only thing that is going to save Paintball is marketing and even that may not work now. It may have fallen too far sadly. The industry needs to step up and SPEND money to promote the Sport. The Lord knows with the cost of markers, loaders etc they have the money . The prices are obscene these days to be honest !

That is also another big reason it is dying. A competitive marker costs more than my first car! The cost of playing is extremely high compared to most things. Just a beginning electronic marker like a Rail or GS Mini is $350-450 . A cheap electronic loader over $100 and a cheap tank $70. Add your pods, carrier and a mask another $200? It costs over $700 for a basic set up.

And a lot of fields have mostly speedball type set ups so you need those basic markers to even be competitive and not get hammered off the field.
Woodsball is hard to find, at least in GA, AL, MS and TN. We have looked hard. Gone are the days of your back 40 acres and a couple rolls of flagging tape and you can have a Paintball field. Now you have to buy Sup Air Bunkers, Netting, telephone poles and pay to have them set up. A field costs a fortune in itself.

This is a non sustainable business model in itself, but when you put it against Airsoft with its much lower costs to customers and far less mess, and the video games such as Call Of Duty and other first action shooter games Paintball is losing the battle.

Can it be saved with Marketing? We do not know but we sure like to hope that it can be. We would sure hate to see it die even more .

The question is how do they market it now? No more magazines in PB now other then online though we do not get that. Other sports like hunting, fishing etc still have magazines. In print , not online like Paintball. The only people that see online PB mags are PB players. That is not going to recruit more players unless Print media gets done again and in Bookstores. And as of now we do not see anyone ready to venture down that path.

So that really leaves TV and streaming ,though like online PB Magazines... online PB streaming really only reaches PB Players.

So we come back to Paintball on TV as the only solution marketing wise. And as we see a lot of you are dubious about that but that is another subject in itself. We believe it is a good way to go if it is done correctly. The only problem is will the industry do it correctly? As of yet they have not in there many tries.

But I do believe you may be about to find out ! . Because it appears the industry just may be ready to do just what I mentioned and invest into the sport with two different TV Ventures possibly. If you have not yet, please listen to the Spick and Span Podcast from last week and the week before. They do a 2 part series on Paintball on TV and it appears that two different entities in the Sport are about to try their hand at it.

And that leads us to the third and last subject..Paintball On TV.

[Cyberpyr8]

I'm in SE GA and we have one field around here that is always busy and has players, regardless of the heat or rain. We have a few others within an hour drive that are hit or miss. I know in FL there are fields that are thriving and some that won't make it if the real estate they sit on gets too valuable. It's really sad because 15+ years ago they were all pretty busy.

I had an idea for a podcast where I would travel to fields and basically do a field review to help people feel comfortable going to a new field and knowing what to expect when they got there. Something like how the overall field was in terms of what they offered, a brief review of what the fields to play on looked like, do they cater to parties, regular players, tournament players, do they have restrooms or porta-potties, how big is the staging areas, what can I rent and what should I bring. As I started asking a few of the local field owners if they would be interested, they all were very reluctant. They wanted to handle marketing for themselves. Let's be honest, most field owners are not marketing experts. I think most fields survive only because it is the one source of some type of outdoor entertainment in the area. The field owners don't want to advertise but somehow they want to be prosperous without spending any money to let people know they are around. All paintball marketing is the same and other than a few fields having something cool like a Nuketown field or big games, all seem to be the same methods. We need someone to find a way to attract younger players. Just having low impact isn't enough. Gellyball isn't going to save the industry. It needs to be that along with X. Something that is different and cooler to a young audience.

You're right about the cost. I have people ask me what my setup costs a lot. I laugh and tell them I just like to spend dumb money on my hobby, but they could get away with a lot less. But the truth is, they will need to spend decent money to play and compete, even with most rec ballers. Sure for a few hundred dollars you could keep up with the 12 year olds coming once a year for a birthday party, but you are not going to have great gear to play against the 20+ people at my field every weekend that are running minis on ramping.

[Old School PBaller]

3.) Paintball on TV

Ever since the late eighties and early nineties Paintball has chased Paintball being on TV. It always, and unrealistically been pursued as "The Holy Grail " for Paintball.

My wife and I from 1995 until 2010 worked in the Outdoor TV Industry. We produced Hunting TV Shows and commercials that aired on four national Outdoor TV Networks; the Outdoor Channel, The Sportsmans Channel, The Pursuit Channel and the Mens Outdoor and Recreation Channel.

We produced five National hunting shows and hosted three of them. We ended up doing a Paintball Show that was a Network presentation. We were relucatant to do it as we had a top 5 hunting show on at the same time but after meeting with the Programming Director and getting a very good offer we could not say no.

As I mentioned earlier we did the Paintball TV show the " Paintball World TV News Show". It was a national TV show that started on DISH and cable with around 36 million households. When we ended it was on almost every cable provider as well as both DISH and DIRECTV. It was reaching 68 million households. There were only around 100 million Television Households in the US at the time.

It was the highest rated Paintball show reaching over 860,000 viewers every airing. We aired Prime Time both Fridays and Saturday night when people were getting ready to play the next day. We had a 1.0 rating meaning almost One Milliom viewers everytime we aired..and we aired twice a week. Time slots mean everything in TV.

It was also the longest running Paintball show running six seasons. It ran in 2006 and 2007 and ended first quarter of 2008.

We took a different approach to PB on TV . We did a " Variety Show" that showed the entire sport...not just tournament Paintball. This was hard initially as we were tournament players and that was what we knew, however our first scenario game seeing the number of players, the RVs, trailers etc we knew where the real player base was. In the woods!

It was also to be a watered down "Family type of Show" to show that ANYONE could play Paintball , women and kids as well. The show had two goals: Recruitment of new players and directing these new players to our sponsors products which were all at Walmarts.

We were very successful in both instances.

We showed the whole sport, from recreational PB and explaining the sport, to Big Games, scenario games and even games at military MOUT sites.


We showed the Castle Conquest at EMR, OK D Day, Wayne Dollacks Mad Maxx game at CPX in Chicago and several of Ben Torricellis and Nosler productions big scenario games.

But we also covered the "NPPL Super Seven man series" and the "PSP Five man " events as well as regional leagues like the CFOA.

Every week we went to a different events from Boston to Florida, the East Coast to the West coast. We showed Landing craft landings, smoke grenades, helicopters and pyro techinques as thousand of people played against other teams equaly large. And guess what...? People loved it.

And it recruited players as we were airing it on networks that aired SHOOTING SPORTS like hunting, Airgunning , Three-gun shooting , and outdoor activities. People of the type that would want to watch and maybe try the sport.

And lets face it , the elephant in the room : Paintball is a SHOOTING SPORT.

We owned that and embraced it. We certainly did not get politically correct and run away from it. And it is also an OUTDOOR SPORT.

It also simulated war in those big games . I mean there were Paintball tanks !

And Yeah..we owned that too.

In fact we even did one show at a huge scenario game in SC just on PB TANKS! We showed them in battle shooting people, we showed their tactics, we showed tanks taking out tanks , we even showed them getting taken out with PB Bazookas and satchel charges. And guess what..PEOPLE LOVED IT!

But what we really showed..up close and in focus was people getting shot with paintballs. You could see the hits and feel the excitement. That is WHAT the viewers WANT to see. They do not want to see people from so far away you cannot see a hit nor even undertstand what is happening. It is just too sterile and very boring!

We even showed the tournaments in an abbreviated form where it was short, sweet and just the action but from the start to finish. We just edited out the mindless shooting and not moving. And we showed the players getting hit UP CLOSE as we had Paintball players from Atlanta Film school as our cameramen as well as ourselves. And we filmed on the field...not from above it

We could tell when someone was over exposed or moving at the wrong time and could tell they were about to get hit and we showed it. And from Multiple angles and in Slo motion . We would use six cameras on a field and ALWAYS show the teams facing one direction as otherwise it is confusing.

And for the first time the sport actually got behind a show and sponsored and financed it. For the most part the JT Sports brands, which at the time was JT Goggles, Worr Game Markers, Viewloader feeders, Brass Eagle Monster Ball Paint and a new brand they were rolling out : Stryker Paintball. The President and VP of marketing were luckily NOT from the sport.

The reality of PB is the sport and Industry has always been friends promoting friends and each others teams and brands. The marketing people in PB rarely had marketing experience. They had Tournament Professional level PB experience. Most still do.

The JT execs were Professionals from OUTSIDE of the industry that understood TV marketing.

Gary Reminsnyder, the President of the JT Sports brands at the time, was from the Fishing Industry and was very familiar with the Outdoor networks as he had been with Shakespere reels, Berkely rods , Rogue lures, Strike King and other fishing companies and had sponsored several fishing shows as well as produced In Fisherman TV.

David Jones the VP of Marketing at the time had come from Russell athletics and was used to the NFL, MLB etc. he also understood Television.
With those five JT Sports companies support as well as support from Sup Air, Crossfire Air tanks, Paintball Sports Magazine, The Paintball News and a few other great companies they financed the whole thing.
So the show was born, but as with any TV its survival depended on how well it did and what its rating were. That again is how TV works. And luckily our ratings were great the entire time until we pulled the plug because it was so exhausting with all the travel.

History of Paintball on TV:

Paintball actually has been on television many times starting in the late 80s, early 90's .The first real national level show was the ESPN show. It was held at the World Cup which at that point had moved to Florida, having been held at Jerry Brauns field in NY before that.

It was filmed with ESPN cameramen who had never played paintball. They knew nothing about the game. It was also a poor venue choice as it was VERY thick. As in "Palmetto thickets" that Florida is known for. Not the best place to try to film Paintball in at all. I was there and remember it well.

It did not do very well at all. In fact the ratings were so low that they moved the time slot and the show to an obscure time after midnight in the early AM hours.
That first venture was financed by Jerry Braun in fact. He in turn raised money for the show from sponsors who were to put commercials on the show. The original time slot was good so some PB Comapnies actually did it and financed the show within the INDUSTRY. Because that is actually how TV works. It has to be paid for, and that monet needs to come from the INDUSTRY.

However when the time slot was changed, the PB companies were mad and Jerry in a tight spot. Since he was a lawyer he sued the ESPN Network. That is a whole other story but you can look it up. That in turn left a black eye on the sport with ESPN.

Paintball was not on TV much after that until later in the early 2000's. Shows like like the Smart Part Championship where it cost a LOT of money to do. Smart Parts footed a lot of the cost as TV costs a lot to do. That is the point the PB industry does not grasp we believe. TV is EXPENSIVE!

This is HOW most of Television actually works:

A show is put on by a producer. The producer provides a PILOT to a network or networks and tries to sell his product and get it on that Network. When one agrees to air the product they put the show on that NETWORK.

The Producers then PURCHASE the airtime from a Network . The price varies per network based on the number of Households that the network not only reaches, but actually gets viewers from.

The viewers provide ratings. Ratings determines how valueable ADVERTISING SPOTS or commercials are worth of each production. There are usually 12 commmercial spots on any 30 minutes of TV. A producer usually gets any where from 6 to 8 but more are available..at an ADDITIONAL COST. If you do not purchase them the networks airs commercials that advertizers buy in blocks during available commercial spots.

The network than pays to BROADCAST the show and ALL the shows on their Network via sattelite through a Satellite provider. This entails a Satellite Uplink service to get the actual signal to a satellite, which in turn costs money. This satellite provider than can provide the Networks programing on the Satellite and cable providers.

That signal and programming then reaches your house via the provider of your choice, cable or satellite.

The producer signs a contract for purchasing the airtime. As a Producer you NEGOTIATE your time slot, how many airings, how many commercial spots you will get and how many the network will keep and sell ad space on for themselves as well as other contractual details.

All those are VERY IMPORTANT and also effect the COST. Your time slot, your commercials spots retained, and how many airings you will get all matter.

As a producer you then sell those commercial spots you have secured to advertisers. In most instances the advertisers are endemic...within the industry or sport being shown.

This has long been the problem in Paintball on TV. The sponsors/industry all getting behind a product. They never seemed to unite and do it based on too much history, competition, as well as the want to control the actual programming.

Lets face it..the sport has a serious control problem and always has. A HANDFUL of people have controlled this entire industry since it started. They are the ones that decided we had to be "made for TV" and came up with the whole speedball idea , the "Football" type fields and the Air Bunkers. Now that also is a whole another subject but was the WORST MOVE ever made for the sport in our opinions. Especially seeing how it has NEVER worked yet.

All other sports and shows are sponsored within their own industries.
Hunting TV is sponsored mainly by the Hunting Companies.
Fishing TV, the fishing industries.
Moto cross..the industry.
ATV TV..ATV companies .
Car and Driver and Off Road shows ..car companies.

I think you get the picture and sadly that has been the main crux for getting PB on TV for decades now. The industry has not all joined except for our show which luckily had the fortune of JT Sports umbrella of multiple companies buying multiple spots and making the show viable financially.

In the past the PB show ratings of tournament PB has been pretty poor. All have been below a .5 rating..meaning less than 500,000 viewers . Some have been VERY bad.

That low of ratings is hard for a network to swallow. Tournament PB is just hard to follow in its current form. Most people have no idea what is going on, you cannot see people getting hit so after a while people change the channel.

But it seems that now as the sport is in serious decline that there is an interest in putting Paintball on Television again. As I mentioned in the other post check out the Spick and Span show about Paintball on TV .

It appears that two separate entities are about to try to get on TV.

One is with Alex Fraige and the PB Company Homesis. They are teaming up with Dan Napoli to do a documentary about Dynasty . I am not sure on the particulars but they are trying to work them out. I dont know where they will find a Network to air as of yet but we wish them the best. It is to show the team Dynasty from its beginning until now and that IS a great story line to be told.

The other is GoSports and Bart Yacimec the owner of the Pro team Impact. They are trying to get one of the MLP ( Major League Paintball ) properties on TV . They are the umbrella company of the NXL, WNXL, NXL Europe and the ICPL.
Tom Cole from MLP is big in it as well and it seems they have realized the short falls of filming tournament Paintball and are trying to fix it. It seems they are going to run short 4 minutes points and I think best out of three points wins the match.
They are also doing away with "Throwing the towel" as that was very confusing , a game just ending . Viewers had no idea what was going on.
Hopefully they will do away with the buzzer as well as that is confusing. They need to go with a Center flag again as people understood that.

Also in the argument of other sports having one center of attention like a ball or a puck moving down the field and people mistakenly comparing the PAINTBALLS to those that is the wrong correlation. The Center of Attention is THAT FLAG. It it progressing up the field exactly like a Football or a hockey puck and needs to reach the other teams goal to score a point. They need a large flag and to make THAT the "Ball" .

Again they are trying to find where to air it as well. They approached NBC I believe but that is just silly. Paintball has NO NUMBERS to support any big network like that. They deal with ratings of millions of viewers for shows they air.

We think PB needs to STAY IN ITS LANE. The UFC did not start on a big network. It started small and grew. Paintball needs to do the same and lose the idea of large networks. They also need to understand that their production value and costs have to be budgeted and within the industries ability.
The industry cannot support high production costs for a show. They have to be realistic and again understand their place in the scheme of things. They ARE NOT the NFL!

They need to focus on the National Sports networks of which their are 36 currently according to Wikipedia. The Outdoor Channel , Sportsman Channel and Pursuit Channel among them and one of those would be a easy and logical first step.

Those channels especially the Sportsman and Pursuit are on Hulu and most streaming networks as well as cable and Satellite. That would easily get them exposure to 100 million households.

Another viable option would be the regional Sports networks of which there are currently 13 according to Wiki. The old Fox Sports regional Networks we felt would be a good and AFFORDABLE option for Paintball . They would I think be open to the sport and reach all of the major markets by airing on five regions.

They are now called Bally Sports as Fox sold them but a good option, though the shooting sports networks are a much easier sell for the sport. They already have GUNS on those networks!

However in watching the Spick and Span show it was readily apparant that they quite do not understand how TV works. They talk about getting "picked up" by a network and a network paying them to air their league. I would be extremely shocked at that happening as they just do not have enough NUMBERS for a network to take a financial risk on.

Heck, they couldnt break 500,000 viewers in the peak of the Sport and 10 million participants. With only 2.3 million participants now it will be tough to get any good numbers from within the sport..so they HAVE to draw viewers from outside the sport.

They even state sadly in the Podcast that the Go Sports airing of the tournaments are only getting between 7,000 - 10,000 Viewers. That is SAD and those numbers are a JOKE for TV Networks.

The way to do that is like we did on an Outdoor Network where the are over 26 million hunters that love the outdoors and shooting, the Perfect place to recruit new players. Also the Hunting Industry is a huge industry, with over 26 million participants and according to the Sportmans Alliance has contributed $149 billion to the national economy, supported nearly 970,000 jobs and created over $45 billion in wages and income in 2020.

Why Paintball thinks these networks are below them with their 2.3 million participants and under 2 billion in sales is mind boggling to us..hence us saying they need to "Figure out their lane and stay in
it ".
These grandiose ideas of huge networks and expensive production costs neither make any sense nor is the airtime affordable for such a small sport and Industry.

They also need to lose the idea of any Networks or Non endemic companies paying for their ideas ,the sport and any Televised presentations. I hear again and again that is what is needed. Well that is a PIPE dream. It just aint happening. No one is going to say.."Hey you know what..lets spend a million promoting Paintball. This should work out well".

It will be up to the INDUSTRY to support the sport and the Industry , not others, just like every other industry does.

They need to find a network that they can afford and will TAKE THEM, form a budget based on the airtime costsand realistic Production costs that the Industry can afford. Then they raise the money by selling commercial spots from within and get it done , as like I said before That is HOW TV actually works.

We believe that with GI Sportz now the big Umbrella company with multiple brands, one being GO Sports I believe still that they are the ones that need to take the reins and put commercials on for their brands, Empire, Tippman , JT, VForce, Spyder ,and GI Sports paint.

If the get a couple more companies to purchase commercials as well even better. They are pulling in over 140 million in Sales from the numbers I saw. It would be wise of them to put back into the sport to maintain market share.

If they had anyone who had actually done TV on their podcasts it would have been better. It was basically a bunch of people with no idea on how it works or actual TV experience talking about getting the sport on TV. One person on it actually said " screw what others outside the sport wants..we need to show what we like ".

Well with only 20,000 to 30,000 tournament paintball players and only a max of 10,000 people watching their GoSports stream good luck with that approach.

Another thing they mentioned on the podcast is showing the PITS at an event. I would give that a big NO!
When we filmed the PSP we basically had to edit the audio out and add music as the SWEARING was ridiculous.
The pits are just as bad. Matty Marshall always gives a warning when showing the pits about the language.

They want to do a LIVE show and that would prove disasterous. The FCC fine for swearing was $250,000 when we did TV. That fine will break a show. It is now $325,000 . If they show the pits live they will not be able to handle the fines!

We wish both projects the best of luck and will be anxiously awaiting seeing one if not both. Will they happen it the big question and that will depend on them actually figuring out how to do TV.

My wife and I are totally retired but we still know programming directors and luckily recently Tom Cole from the MLP company moved here to Alabama. We are old friends as my wife and I played him often when he was Captain of Bad Company at Pro Tournaments. He was also on our show a couple of times with the Ultimate Woodsball League and when he was the Marketing guy at Spyder.

We are trying to meet up and we will definitely let him know what we think and try to help him in anyway we can.

We have spoken after initial contact via "Linked In" and have spoken and texted and are trying to meet up in the Birmingham Area. We will be happy to offer any advise or contacts to him and anyone else free of charge as after spending so much time and energy promoting and helping grow the sport we HATE seeing it dying.

Hopefully one of them will succeed and hopefully we will all be seeing PB on TV again!

Hope that was not too much info but there was no way to say it in a shorter post or we would have!

[ford]

Damn, this was all crazy insightful. Thank y'all for taking the time to share your thoughts.

[Levi]

Old School PBaller Good read, very interesting look behind the scenes.

I realized something just this past weekend. I think maybe a lot of kids these days don't even know that paintball exists.

My sister brought the niece & nephew over for a visit Saturday. At one point I was showing them pics & video I took at Supergame and they had confused looks. Then my sister asked if they knew what paintball was... and they didn't.

[DocsMachine]

OSPB, thank you! I have to admit my eyes glazed over a couple of times at that wall o' text, but I read it and will read it again.

But, we can summarize:

1) Participation is down, due to a variety of factors.
2) There is little or no advertising for the sport in general.
3) Good, workable advertising is difficult and expensive.

For #1, we're on the same page. Lack of advertising isn't helping, but there's other causes for the low participation- such as video games, streaming TV, even the pandemic lockdowns. That's also a catch-22: Why advertise if there are no fields for the people to go to, with the flip side of that being why open a field if there's no players in the area?

2 and 3 go together. In today's world, basically all advertising now is digital. Newspapers are shrinking and folding every day. My local one is two sheets of paper- four 'leafs' or eight 'pages' in total. Half of it is advertising for local grocery stores. And it costs a buck and a half. And it just tells me news I'd already read the day before... online.

There are no magazines- and even if somebody tried printing one, nobody would buy it. Even "digital magazines" don't do all that well.

TV is too expensive, which just leaves online advertising. And even that has less and less effect these days- more and more browsers have ad-blockers, and even then, as you note, in most cases, you're advertising to existing players. Preaching, as they say, to the choir.

Would "outside" advertising help any of this? I have no idea. I think the chances are poor- I agree, it may be too late- but I also think it ought to be tried.

One thing that used to be a "thing", was showing paintball on other TV shows. Everyone remembers the infamous Community episodes, the early days had movies like Gotcha and Combat High- and slightly more recently, ones like Failure to Launch and Man of the Year. Heck, Audi had a car commercial featuring a sort of paintball. How about the famous Entourage episode?

But that's when it was new and popular. It's neither now, so there's no real cachet to it, no "wow factor" for a video or commercial.

And, for that matter, I can't really see there ever being a "paintball episode" of, say, Mandalorian or What We do in the Shadows.

What are the solutions? Online advertising, YouTube channels and podcasts are generally only targeted at and appeal to existing players. I have no idea how you'd make something like a good YouTube channel that would appeal to anyone outside the sport- I can barely get paintballers interested in my videos.

What else have we got?

Doc.

[Grendel]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/E3Umxw9cfJU

[JonM]

And he bonus balled him at that.

[DocsMachine]

Huh. Hadn't even heard of that one. (And I've only seen about half of the first season- not much of a TV watcher.)

Too bad they didn't show, like, a TPX or something- and that it was all CGI, shots and hits.

It's interesting to note, though, the change from the early days. It's no longer "hey, check it out, we're playing paintball!" and now it's just a fixture- everybody knows what it is, there's nothing special about it anymore.

Doc.

[Old School PBaller]

Hey Doc Appreciate your thought out response. And by the way, your Auto Cocker barrell Adapter for the Automag a GREAT thing!

We are at a quandary over it as well. And cannot figure out a solution which is why I said it may be too late. YouTube vids of Paintball are , like you said, only viewed by players.

I think it is up to the industry here to figure it out . I hope they do the two TV Projects as they certainly could not make it any worse. If they could show the sport in a positive way on TV and get it viewed by non players then maybe they can spark an interest . Lets hope the industry figures it out and pulls the car out of the ditch! At this point I think it is all we can do.

[Old School PBaller]

Levi , that is sad . Hopefully that will change. But if younger people are not aware of the sport we may be in bigger trouble than I thought as they changed the sport so much with speedball and marketed it to younger people . Unlike woodsball where any age can play speedball can be daunting to older people or those less in shape . With the sliding and diving, etc it is not a great game for older people unless they are in better than average shape.

I do believe that was where the biggest mistake in the sport was. Going to speedball to attract TV at the cost of the player base. Speedball is appealling to younger people but older folks we know have ZERO interest in even trying it. And when we do get some to, they dislike it.

Personally as a person whose job was basically Marketing we never could understand marketing to kids. They have the least disposable income of any demographic. And with the costs of the sport being so high just to get a good marker and gear that did not make sense to us. Men from 23 to 55 , out of college and working would be the demographic to choose. They have the most disposable income and historically are the most liberal in spending it.

We think the sport took a wrong turn and just kept going. And even later instead of pulling a U Turn..they hit the gas!

[Paintslinger16]

Very insightful, I started in mid 1988, and took a similar route without going to the national level of tournaments. Played the original Wolfs Lair when teams like the AA or Piranha’s just showed up for walk on play.

My take Paintball had its time and it while it took off, it didn’t get over the hump. Many things but the consolidation of the brands, the lawsuits that stopped many of the original manufacturers from producing or even innovating and unfortunately probably the electronic gun, not only were the guns expensive but it made paint consumption go through the roof, we used to split 2500 rd cases. Not shoot a case a game.

And with Airsoft being a much easier and way cleaner version of the same game, Paintball my not go away but I just don’t see it going back up or even being were the fledgling “sport” it was 20 years ago and airsoft was just starting.

Did we blow it or just things change and evolve? I know the percentage of young that would rather just play Call of Duty or Halo and the hundreds of other FPS games has to much higher

[martix_agent]

The truth is that Airsoft is cheaper and cleaner, plus you can cosplay easier. PLUS the weapons actualyl look real.
Did I mention it's stupid cheap to play, and there's high quality productions of it all over youtube made by players?

In the videos they're ALWAYS blatant cheaters, but nobody seems to care much, so long as it's "not too much" or something like that. I played airsot once, and it was a blast but the cheating enraged me. If it doesn't' bother people that much, I see why they're going that route instead. It's the same thrill for less price.

[Paintslinger16]

Yes Airsoft has definitely moved into the space that Paintball once occupied, undoubtedly easier to have indoor field and yes the guns are very realistic.
Paintball or back when I started Splatball it was really centered around the gun, the 007 was meant for cattle and logging. The Splatmaster was part of the Survival game Franchise. The mid 80s had new guns with the Sheridans and people like Palmer and Orr and Cassidy and Dobbins/Alexander just designing or redesigning off the platforms, and that spawned copycats, it was really gun centric. JT stepped up the Safety aspect and me being a Motocross BMX guy I always stuck to JT.

[Painthappy]

I love how this all started with a silly hall of fame thing and here we all are genuinely having a discussion on what we feel would save the sport, or at least grow it. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it certainly doesn't feel as if it is growing.

The local field "adventure games" in Weare NH which Old School Paint Baller is familiar with and he and I played at (I still do) actually is doing very well and I feel as if they have figured out a nice recipe for success there. They have laser tag for the kids. A nice course set up for them, host birthday parties, etc. Then they have the next step of "low impact paintball" which amounts to those spring cocked new style splatmasters, both pistols and rifles. They get a bag of paint, a gun, a ref, and play... They are doing everything they can to grow the sport and bring in new players.

When we were all there for slims pump game, that place was hopping!! Not enough parking for everyone in the end. They key is bringing in new blood and running a tight ship. Which goes back to our industry and their lack of advertising. They are doing nothing to bring in new players, heck they won't put in the effort to post beyond their own Facebook page, never mind other places.

[Hp_lovecraft]

Adventure Games has been smart. They also offer .50, Orbee and Gotcha versions for younger players. While we look down on those variations, they work as excellent feeder programs to keep kids involved.

Most fields around me also offer airsoft days. Gone are the days when most towns had a small field. Gone is paintball seen as a fringe adult activity. Its not even an extreme sport anymore. Its mostly a kids activity..... and right now 3rd party sport leagues are the huge thing. In the last 20 years, 5 different arenas have been built in my area to cater to those various indoor sports leagues. All ages, all levels, etc. One actually did offer indoor paintball a while ago, but its all indoor soccer, indoor basketball, indoor martial arts.

[Skipdogg]

Good luck getting GI to take the lead on anything. They tried to be Smart Parts 2.0 a few years ago. Total scum. Most people probably dont know the 'G"in GI sports is Gardner. I know those A HOLES arnt in GI anymore, but its a company that started from A HOLES that tried to wreck the sport, and then tried to duplicate that road a few years ago. GI can kick rocks!

[THE SHOOTIST]

[QUOTE=Old School PBaller;n430296]
My name is Phil Kelly . I started playing PB in 1983/1984 . I started competing as a Pro from 1987 at the Air Pistol Open at Jerry Bruans field and played as a pro until 1996. I was fortunate enough to play with some great teams like The Wild Geese , NE Grim Reapers, NE Express and Jerry Brauns Celebrity team after I retired called the "Black Sheep". We won a lot of tournaments and placed in a lot more. I retired in 1996 after playing as a Pro for 10 years.

Phil, this is "Fred Narley". I have found you here! I've been looking up Reapers for years, I could never seem to locate you for some reason. Kevin, Forest, Rene, Bob, Shawn etc. Please PM me when you get a minute, I'd like to say "Hi" and send my regards to you and Norrie. I hope you guys are well! Do you do "Facebook"?

[Old School PBaller]

I love how this all started with a silly hall of fame thing and here we all are genuinely having a discussion on what we feel would save the sport, or at least grow it. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it certainly doesn't feel as if it is growing.

The local field "adventure games" in Weare NH which Old School Paint Baller is familiar with and he and I played at (I still do) actually is doing very well and I feel as if they have figured out a nice recipe for success there. They have laser tag for the kids. A nice course set up for them, host birthday parties, etc. Then they have the next step of "low impact paintball" which amounts to those spring cocked new style splatmasters, both pistols and rifles. They get a bag of paint, a gun, a ref, and play... They are doing everything they can to grow the sport and bring in new players.

When we were all there for slims pump game, that place was hopping!! Not enough parking for everyone in the end. They key is bringing in new blood and running a tight ship. Which goes back to our industry and their lack of advertising. They are doing nothing to bring in new players, heck they won't put in the effort to post beyond their own Facebook page, never mind other places.

Man I am Happy to hear that. It was always a great field and looks even better now! And it is right down the road to you Carter so thats even better. Hopefully the industry will figure it out. But I do believe there will always be fields like Adventure Games that will have a strong base of players in their area thankfully .

And like you I cannot for the life understand why the Industry has zero promotion going on

[Old School PBaller]

[QUOTE=THE SHOOTIST;n430625]

My name is Phil Kelly . I started playing PB in 1983/1984 . I started competing as a Pro from 1987 at the Air Pistol Open at Jerry Bruans field and played as a pro until 1996. I was fortunate enough to play with some great teams like The Wild Geese , NE Grim Reapers, NE Express and Jerry Brauns Celebrity team after I retired called the "Black Sheep". We won a lot of tournaments and placed in a lot more. I retired in 1996 after playing as a Pro for 10 years.

Phil, this is "Fred Narley". I have found you here! I've been looking up Reapers for years, I could never seem to locate you for some reason. Kevin, Forest, Rene, Bob, Shawn etc. Please PM me when you get a minute, I'd like to say "Hi" and send my regards to you and Norrie. I hope you guys are well! Do you do "Facebook"?

Hey Fred Hi to you as well. I do not do facebook, Twitter or Instagram but my wife does have Facebook. I have spoken with Forrest recently and we filmed a fishing Show out of Glouchster with one of Kevins friends on the Tuna Hunter and saw Kevin then. He was on "Wicked Tuna" for a season or two did you know?

I will PM you! Glad that you found us

[THE SHOOTIST]

[QUOTE=Old School PBaller;n430731]

Hey Fred Hi to you as well. I do not do facebook, Twitter or Instagram but my wife does have Facebook. I have spoken with Forrest recently and we filmed a fishing Show out of Glouchster with one of Kevins friends on the Tuna Hunter and saw Kevin then. He was on "Wicked Tuna" for a season or two did you know?

I will PM you! Glad that you found us

Yep, I see Kevin every now and then on Wicked Tuna, and have he and his wife on Facebook. Looking forward to chatting with you on PM, I'm happy to have found you! On MCarter Brown of all places, I've been on this place since Carter started it!

[Refoogee]

This has been a really enlightening discussion. It speaks to a lot of the issues that have been plaguing this sport for a long time. I have a slightly different view of things, as someone who has interacted with a lot of not so serious players.

The biggest issue with this sport is its identity crisis. It's not the only issue by far, but it's the largest. There's a massive divide between the game that people get into paintball thinking they're going to play, and the game that they actually end up playing. Think back to the beginning of paintball, the grassoots of the sport. What kind of guns did people shoot, what was the attitude, what was the aesthetic? It was all simulated combat. You got into the game to go out in the woods,shoot each other with paintballs, that simulated a wound that got you out of the game. Like Old School said, people are not interested in watching tourney paintball as it is. They're interested in aesthetics of big games, watching eliminations happen, and focusing on events in the game. I agree, capture the flag would be a good format to play instead of raw elimination, that actually has a focal point for a crowd to focus on.

The problem is, that the game as it developed ended up being so tech focused that the gun was the highlight, and not the game itself. Let's look at how this game is played. What's the best way to get eliminations? Well, we're all shooting smell inaccurate gel spheres at each other, and it's one shot one out. So, speed up rate of fire, and you'll get more eliminations. Faster rate of fire, and more defensive players, is the meta. This makes sense, the most optimal strategy in any game is to deny your opponent as many options as you possibly can, while preserving as many options as you can for yourself, and utilizing those options to win as quickly as possible. Essentially, to maintain as much control over the game as you can reasonably exert. And you want to be able to do this from the get go. The problem is that games that allow you to easily, and consistently, lock down opponents are not very welcoming or fun to watch for outsiders. The skill involved might be substantial, but it has this effect that, as you get better, the game becomes more nuanced to the point that nobody outside of longtime fans understands what the hell is going on. This meta quickly becomes one of the very worst examples of “unappealing meta” I’ve ever personally experienced. Partially because it’s a hyper focused grindpit, but mostly because it’s compounded by cash. Quite literally, the more paint you can go through, the better your odds of victory, given equal skill. That's why the game will always be too expensive. That's why there's no paintball equivalent of a "beer league". Often times, the most optimal way to play a game is not the way that makes the most sense.

Speedball was a fad. It got picked up by accident in the extreme sports scene of the late 90's to mid 2k's, and got left along the way when that fad died. It was the biggest mistake to make speedball the face of the sport. There's a place for it, but it's a niche. Not only did it make a niche way of play the face of the sport, the industry completely abandoned the weekend player.
One thing about this sport that I have noticed, to its detriment, is that it has consistently picked apart, both from the industry and from hardcore players, any grassroots style play. Think back to why people got involved in paintball. It was originally called “Survival Game”. Paintball, much like boxing, or martial arts, or archery, is a “combat” sport at its inception. That’s why so many lower tier markers try to replicate real guns. Why milsim is a thing. Why magfed is increasingly popular. Why so many new players want to be a “sniper” and buy 18 inch barrel, and shrouds, and picatinny bullshit. And while all that stuff I think is stupid, it’s a huge part of the community we just denied. And I do understand why the industry wanted to separate itself, paintball has been impaled on the cross of moral guardians for that “image problem” for a while. But, optics aside, what’s most pertinent, at the end of the day though, is this. Limited paint formats, and I mean LIMITED, like pump and magfed… they’re better games. New players can pick up on it fast. They open up the field immensely, they’re easier to watch. Players can make big plays, they can move, run, flank, it can actually be exciting for spectators because you can get people running for open objectives that can be the games focus point without immediately getting cut down, and it's fun for new players to play. Your options for interesting games open up significantly when you aren’t facing instant elimination from a spray of paint. Paintball grew when it was closer to that ideal for a reason.

There's major industry, advertisement, and field management problems. But, ultimately, the game that weekend warriors play should be the same game the pro players play. Paintball needs to embrace what it is, it needs to bridge the gap between wargame and sport, and it needs to work to nurture formats that aren't just designed to move the most product.

[DocsMachine]

While I agree in principle with that, one of the big issues was the land. The sport originally started in the woods, but as time went on, a lot of places found it harder and harder to find undeveloped, wooded land to play on.

Speedball (or airball or other "concept field" terms) made it easier For the woods, you needed a wooded field, but which had parking and space for the safety zone, etc. With a concept field, all you needed was open property- parking was automatic, as was the neutral zone.

It was also better for the spectators, whether visitors or players between games. It was a lot easier to follow the action than it was in the woods. (And, by extension, easier to ref.)

The other side of that coin is that, if the sport had kept the "simulated combat" angle, it would never have gone as far as it did. It's been my personal experience as a one-time field owner and multiple-time field consultant, that there's a LOT of parents out there that strongly disliked the "war games" aspect. Camo BDUs, face paint and a marker that looks like an M-16? No thank you. Purple hockey jersey, blue mirrored lenses and a splash-anodized marker that looks like a sci-fi blaster? No problem!

Paintball naturally diversified, as nearly all sports and most pastimes do. Look at motorcycling- that encompasses everything from motocross, to the Isle of Man races, to aging dentists on full-bagger Harleys. Paintball encompasses everything from one-on-one with single-shot PGPs, to 1,500-on-a-side scenarios that involve tanks, choppers, rocket launchers and fields so large you need a compass and a map.

And that 'diversification' is far more a strength and a detriment.

Doc.