I seem to be missing something here when I read a lot of these posts because when I see some people remarking about the expense of playing paintball (and I am sure for them personally they are being 100% honest and it is a real problem for them) I then look abroad across the rest of Europe.
I think the UK is the 4th richest nation in the world (per head) and if you try to reconcile this information with the fact other European nations who are a lot worse off than we and yet they churn out not only more, but better teams than us (across the board) then I think we got a problem peculiar to us that transcends any knee jerk defense of expense.
Think about this point guys because it's important we nail this problem down.
And to be honest, I wish it were just a matter of expense because that means if the economy lifts then it would also mean we would have an increase in not only the number of competitive teams we would have but also the quality.
Anyway, thats the implication but I am saying that's bollocks because I don't believe money is the real problem here.
Sure, it is a problem for some because Paintball society reflects real society and some people will have more money than others but it cannot explain away our malaise because other, less well off European countries are doing better than us, and considerably so.
We need to scratch a little deeper I think to get closer to the truth of the matter.
Now I am not arrogant enough to believe I will always get it right, or even my next suggestion is 100% right but I honestly think that what I am now about to suggest is closer to the real truth than money being the root cause of our Paintball problems.
I reckons we got about approximately 750 (+ or - 150) tourney ballers over here and yet we have over 300 sites.
I also believe, and this I stated some time ago, that our tourney population is made up of a majority of rec ballers who cannot find sites to play on.
In other words, other countries have hoards of rec ballers who go and play walk ons etc and have a great time but they ain't really into competitive Paintball, but over here there are no real opportunities (generally) for those type players to do that and so, they come and play tourney ball, think abuot this, if they don't wanna continue playing rental and wanna step up a level, the normal step up point is recball or walk on and if there isn't this option available then all that is left for them is tourney ball.
This is an extremely important point here because it implies that our population of tourney ballers doesn't parallel with other Euro countries.
And once we acknowledge this, then we begin to unlock the main reasons why we suck and trust me, we suck.
Our tourney population is made up of a few teams who have drive commitment etc and a lot of teams who really don't give a fuk, they just wanna play, and good luck to them, I respect that in them.
They can't go and do their thang because we just don't provide the facilities for them in the form of walk on sites.
And so we are looking toward a lot of these guys (because they are part of our tourney scene) to step up to the plate and get serious; bottom line is, they don't wanna get serious for god's sake, they just wanna have fun playing ball.
Why on earth would these guys even wanna train every week, why would they wanna turn up at Campaign, in essence they ain't serious enough about paintball, they just wanna have fun, that's all.
The answer to this, if in fact we are looking for any answers is to try and educate our site owners (ha 'frikkin' ha) into a more sophisticated approach of doing business and then to be patient because this ain't no short term resolution here.
And before these site owners start jumping up and down declaring 'Robbo's a nut and don't know what he's talking about' I will remind people of what some of the industry big hitters have remarked about UK scene.
And these guys are Dave YB ((Dye), Billy Ceranksi (PMI) and Avery (National Paintball), all of whom have stated in one way or another that our average site owners need to expand their facilities (walk ons etc), become more sophisticated in their business philosophy in developing rentals into walk ons and to become a lot more responsible when dealing with both customer base and supplier with terms like loyalty being consistently thrown into the mix.
Basically the point being made here is that a lot of site owners would change supplier at the drop of a hat for a tenth of a penny a ball, and yes, a lot of our site owners are that greedy and short sighted.
I have had many a conversation with all these 3 guys and to be honest, I felt quite embarrassed to be part of the UK scene when some of these comments were made regarding the way our site guys do business.
We can never make a 'silk purse out of a sow's ear' or so the saying goes and to look toward our tourney base to produce a competitive representation of teams is much like trying to polish a turd, it ain't gonna happen guys, it just ain't gonna happen.
We need a grass roots change at site ownership level to make a difference .... or a more sophisticated approach to marketing our sport (tourney ball not rental) directly to the public (instead of hoping or trying to generate a trickle though from rentals).
The Germans actually gave us all a great blueprint from which to work in that the average German doesn't come into contact with rental Paintball (it's banned in Germany), the average German's first contact with Paintball is tourney ball and thus their Paintball demographic is exactly the right demographic needed to generate teams, and consequently they have a huge team base over there.
The answer isn't money guys, lack of money prevents some people for sure, the answer is, we haven't got the right demographic of players populating our tourney scene, that's all... I say again, we can't make silk purse out of a sow's ear...pure and simple.
