It was one of those evenings when it all starts off fun, a quiet night in with a few friends and inevitably after a few beers the conversation turned to paintball and predictably, bearing in mind the company I was in, the "discussion" turned into heated debate on the industry as a whole.

The argument was about our ability to dip below Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) as advertised by DYE when we launched a special offer. It is notoriously difficult to dip below MAP on DYE products in Europe as DYE maintains high control over MAP pricing whicj helps keep the industry afloat. Although I was arguing against the difficulties we had in launching a promotion I commented at the end:

"In fairness I love MAP pricing, I think it will save (Tournament) paintball, now if only someone would introduce it for the guys that sell paint, it might just save the (punter) industry."

The argument raged on and it became obvious that my opinion wasn't shared by one of my colleagues. My point being that without some kind of MAP scheme for paint prices to halt this spiraling downturn in paint prices then ALL the sites will suffer in the long run. My colleague didn't agree. He was assuming that there was no way that ALL the site operators would benefit long term unless MAP pricing became prevalent.

My assumption is based on the fact that as prices spiral onwards and paint quality suffers heavily, either the quality will become zero (unusable) or all the paint manufacturers/retailers bar one (the last one) will realise that there is no point selling paint any more as they are making no money, put up their hands and give it all up (probably go back to pharmaceuticals where the margin is good). If there is only one main company left selling paintballs, what is the motivation to continue to sell them so cheaply? Clearly they wont and the prices will rocket back up.

This instability of paint prices and ultimate re-ramping of the prices will ultimately damage ALL site operators long term.

Or will they?

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this. It's something that came to me when my boss (for day job) finally noticed my own company's moto.

"Work Hard, Play Harder" it read at the bottom of an email I sent him.

"Shouldn't it be Work Hard, Get poorer" he asked amid his fits of laughter.

It got me thinking and I actualy realised he was right. I left university almost 2 years ago now. I have worked like a slave every day of my life. I get up early (6 O'clock at the moment) and I go to bed really late and all the hours in between I strive and I obsess about doing things right, being productive and working hard. I work so hard it makes me ill sometimes and when Im done, I go to the gym to work out, clear my head and prepare myself to be better in work, love, physically and mentaly. All this and I look around me now and what do I see?

Most of my friends, from uni or before take it easy, relax, don' stress. They get home at 5:30 and if they're too tired after their 8 hour day they take it easy. I look around and they all have positive bank balances, nice places to live, good social lives and well paid jobs. I get angry.

So my question is this. Does anyone else ever get the feeling that they are working so hard, and driving so fast in their lives that when you step back and look at all that energy they have expended they feel like they may have been driving in reverse? I know I do.

Well not quite. Or though if it gets the success, popularity and finally goes “main stream” as we have so desperately and expensively forced the progression of tournament ball to head for, then it might.

Well, at the least that is my conclusion. I’m not sitting here as a post modern Nostradarmus marching proudly down the road waving my red flag of impending ‘baller armaggedon. Au contrair, I love the sport/hobby/pass time whatever you would like to call it (that’s another story altogether), just the carefully and logically progressed results of the last few months investigation my company carried out. One of the most interesting exercises actually involved sitting down with another industry “bod” and having an “…and then what” conversation where we took each scenario and progressed it to the next level, which unturfed realities that many people have chosen to ignore when campaigning for the idealised Nirvana of our “sport”. In a way, that’s where it might all end; a kind of paintball heaven, where, by definition once it is reached we’re all dead…. Or rather the “sport” is.

Let me explain. A few months ago, whilst sitting with an industry “outsider” but established businessman / entrepreneur, we were discussing the implications of retail with the UK/Europe tournament paintball market. He was understandably obsessed by the “market size”, market “demographic” and our “market penetration”. These are really the staple factors for retail progression and I, and as (it turns out) many other “industry professionals” couldn’t answer many of the questions. I turn specifically to the UK tournament market as this is our home turf. Just how many people were there we could sell to? I asked many sales reps, industry friends, business owners and tournament organisers and got answers ranging from 800 “tournament players” (people who have, or do, buy their own equipment) to 5000. Ok, so nobody knew. We went away and did our sums and came up with a number just under 2000. Now in reality this isn’t really a market. It was looking as though people were expecting to spend an average £500 per annum on equipment (this is a high estimation) but even so, the UK tournament equipment market was apparently worth a whopping £1m. Now bear in mind that’s an available total turnover amongst ALL companies.

So I had got this far. I knew that I couldn’t go back to my business advisor, nor bank, nor anyone that I respected and tell them that I was selling into a market that totalled an annual turnover less than the petty cash box of a medium sized building society. I mean let’s be honest, Jordan spends more than that on Boob jobs in a year. So what was the next thing to do. Get a bigger market? Ok, no problem. How do we do this? Bring paintball to the masses. Ahh, I can see through this paper now that you’re smiling; rubbing your hands in the mere thought of paintball being televised; little Jason and Elizabeth playing a “bit of ball” in their PE lessons. Be real, let’s wise up now. Paintball is not going to make you a super star if it gets recognition, and even if it does, I’m not convinced you can ride the white horse of media coverage down to the Ferrari garage as the Warrington Wippersnappers get signed up by sky in a 2 million pound sponsorship deal. Best case, we can actually expand the market, and lets say for the UK, this involves developing the much mourned after and heavily obituarised “rec ball” market. Now, how, honestly is this going to happen? Most industry experts believe that it is through grass routes progression of the low end tournament scene. This diversification has already been seen with many series starting to offer “Newbie” level divisions for the zero to 5 previous tournaments experience group. It’s the paintball equivalent of training pants, and it’s probably looking for sponsorship from Kandoo as we speak. So what’s going to happen? The SWPL / PA / MS / S2K6 / RSPCA / NPCC or whatever is going to start with teaser sessions at school offering for them to come down and tote some tournament level equipment for a few games while they get shot in the face by some sandbagging woodsmen shortly before being asked to shell out a grand to buy the equipment to come back for some more next time. OK, over dramatisation over, but let’s go with it and say they enjoyed it. They loved it in fact and next time they are going to bring Ringo and Dingo their best skater makes from back at school. Where is next time though? This is my next dilemma. When / if you get the reception you hope for, and you manage to somehow make it cheap enough to do every week / every other week, then where do you play?

There is, and I would expect tot continue to see, a total lack of “tournament sites” set up to cater with this influx of enthusiastic raw potential. We (as an industry) have always expected the site owners and operators to take up the slack in this area.

“There’s loads of money in rec. ball” most people say in order to sway the site owners. Well, b$*lox to that. I mean sure, there might well be, but why, if I was a site owner, would I want to invest in new kit, expensive to buy and maintain new kit and land to take on this rising young, broke, dangerous and fickle market sector? I have my revenue stream and it’s not rec. paintball. Why are you trying to crowbar me into accommodating these “potential” players?

Ok, well say we get round this, and my preferred solution is to bypass the sites altogether and try and establish a network of inner and boundary city mid level sites charging on a “per hour” or casual basis. This is good, we are getting a swell in interest and finally we are getting to the masses. We have a market, and it is now a reasonable size market. All this seems feasible, the groundswell of practitioners is hitting critical mass and we are getting some coverage (assuming we have finally established a format / effective governing body / solid rule book etc). Now who is our market? The people we want involved are, and this is the crux of the point, the people who will kill paintball.

Bear in mind now, that this is a government that tried to pass a bill that outlaws anything that resembles a gun (cap guns included) short of a plastic transparent toy with a red plug in the end. The kind of thing that would have made John Wayne look like a flower arranging poofter. Now, we are expecting to establish, into this society, the society which is currently trying to outlaw airsoft guns as well, a game that fundamentally encourages you to aim and shoot a potentially blinding projectile at an opponent, sometime just inches away? Not only this, but we are trying to make them BUY and store their own guns and ammunition to do this without requirement for a licence or registration (which would of course bugger the model again) and ask them, nicely, not to cause any major infringements, accidents or be a liability to the community? I’ll let you answer that, and when you do I’ll meet you back at the title. “Tournament Paintball will eat itself”.

There are some rules about what I do. Namely these:
1) I do not steal.
2) I do not sell my organs.
3) No tax dodging.
4) No selling of family members.
5) No gun running/drug dealing/pimpomg etc.

Now, maybe these make it all a bit boring, but the way I see it? You gotta have some structure right?