Post by GDX Paintball on Aug 29, 2005 1:01:22 GMT -5
Lots of interesting discussion on the board as of late. A lot of people have claimed two things that are just not true however: That there's no reason to try and be on TV, and that paintball can't be presented in a viewer friendly manner.
Paintball has just shy of 10 million participants per year; 9,640,000 in 2005 according to the SGMA. That's:
Exactly the same as Baseball (9,694,000, -10.9%)
5 TIMES Ice Hockey (1,998,000, -28.4%)
Two Thirds of Soccer (15,900,000, -10%)
8 TIMES Boxing (1,140,000, +20.6%)
More than Snowboarding (7,110,000, -9.1%)
5 TIMES surfing (1,960,000, -7.2%)
2 TIMES Mountain Biking (5,334,000, -23.1%)
4 TIMES BMX (2,642,000, -21.5%)
About the same as Skateboarding (10,592,000, -4.5%)
More important than the participation numbers are the trends - paintball declined 2% last year, better than all of those sports except Boxing. Paintball also has a 6-year growth of 62.8% - the third highest of ANY sport surveyed.
The fact is, most traditional sports are in a state of decline, and have been for years. They're being replaced by the "action sports", of which paintball is the last one to make the jump to mainstream. (And none of which have balls.)
The numbers are there. What HASN'T been there is the presentation. But paintball can be produced well - and I know, because we've done it. The NCPA produced a show out of our NAtional Championships last year, and the feedback has been that it's 10x better than anything that's been done before. How'd we do it? For starters, we went and got a television producer formerly from USA sports, and we paired him with an award-winning editor. We also fixed a lot of the problems. It's not rocket science:
- Put more cameras on the field, and more cameras in the air.
- Get cameramen with balls, and get them filming from behind the players so you can see where they are shooting and who is shooting at them. (Compare this to the NXL show, where 4 of their cameras were on booms in the corners.)
- Get commentators who KNOW HOW TO COMMENTATE. Bea Youngs did great for us for a paintball expert, but we ALSO had a seasoned sportscaster from the network who did play-by-play.
- Have segments that explain the sport. Watched Poker or Dodgeball shows? Every show has a segment that goes over the basic rules. So did we.
- Show things *OTHER* than the game! Ever watche dthe olympics? 50% of it is Bob Costas talking about the obstacles each athlete had ot overcome to be there. Think about it - a sports show that is half NOT about sports. We broke up the action with payer interviews, shots of teams talking strategy, etc. A cut of Illinois explaining how they're going to play the next point vs. Florida, and then another cut of Florida explaining how htey're going to play that same point against Illinois.
We did all this on very very, very inexpensive budget (about one 15th of the NXL budget). There's other things we need to fix that we just didn't have the money for (editting costs money) - game time and hte number of players remaining on each side of the field being displayed, for example. Ever watch baseball? They don't try and keep all the runners on camera, they just put a little diamond diagram up there so you know how many people are on base and where they are.
It *CAN* be done. We'll have a DVD of the three shows out in a couple weeks, pick it up (plug, plug), show it to your mother, and we guarantee she'll have a much easier time taking paintball seriously.
So we know we can put paintball on TV. But why should we?
Well, we all have our own reasons, but for the NCPA, it's simple: Pay the bills. We run about 30 events per year, and about 50 teams who compete nationally. The industry simply does not have the money to cover that. And obviously our players would be a lot happier if they were playing for free (although some are already pretty close.)
So why is paintball on TV important for our teams? Because the vast majority of the money our teams get comes from one place: Their colleges. Our TV deal, despite being VERY limitted in distribution (College Sports Television Network) has allowed many of our teams to double, triple, quintuple the budgets they get from their schools. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the sport. This is important: from OUTSIDE the sport. When Dynasty gets money from Smart Parts, that money ultimately came from paintball players buying paintball stuff. When Penn State writes a big check, that came from the State of Pennsylvania.
Why is the school writing this check? Because the school wants to attract students, and the school attracts students by providing activities that interest students. Themore peple that hear about Penn State because of the aintball program, and because the paintball program is on TV, the more people will consier going to penn state, and the better students penn state will ave to choose from. This is one place paintball is ahead of the game: You can pay paintball in college. You can't really play any other action sport in college.
The same thing is true in a different way for every other paintball league - and I'm not just talking PSP/NPPL/NXL here. We're not really trying to put paintball on TV just to get people to play. We've got enough people playing. We're trying to put paintball on TV so the people who DON'T play REALIZE people play. Would you think anyone walking down the street would realize there were just as many paintball players as baseball players in the country? Probably not. And that's something we need to fix. Local businesses will sponsor baseball teams because local businesses believe baseball is a real sport. TV is an avenue to start changing the perception of the public towards believing paintball is a real sport. When that happens, maybe your local paintball team playing in your local paintball league goes to your local bar and gets some money. Maybe it's the car dealer. Maybe your local league or your local field starts selling signage space just like your local park district does. The importat thing is, the better the image of paintball to the public, helped particularly by televising the sport, the more money businesses are going to be willing to spend on paintball to reach customers - both directly, and as with Mountian Dew, by association. "Young men think paintball is hardcore, even if they don't play, so if I associate my product with paintball by sponsoring paintball events, young people will think my product is hardccore."
It's all about image. Mountain Dew doesn't care how many people actually snowboard - there's only 2 million of them. But Mountain Dew has plenty of snowboarding commercials - because lots of people still think it would be cool to BE a snowboarder, and envy snowboarders, and if they think snowboarders all drink mountain dew, will be more inclined to buy mountain dew themselves.
Posted By: -raehl-
Paintball has just shy of 10 million participants per year; 9,640,000 in 2005 according to the SGMA. That's:
Exactly the same as Baseball (9,694,000, -10.9%)
5 TIMES Ice Hockey (1,998,000, -28.4%)
Two Thirds of Soccer (15,900,000, -10%)
8 TIMES Boxing (1,140,000, +20.6%)
More than Snowboarding (7,110,000, -9.1%)
5 TIMES surfing (1,960,000, -7.2%)
2 TIMES Mountain Biking (5,334,000, -23.1%)
4 TIMES BMX (2,642,000, -21.5%)
About the same as Skateboarding (10,592,000, -4.5%)
More important than the participation numbers are the trends - paintball declined 2% last year, better than all of those sports except Boxing. Paintball also has a 6-year growth of 62.8% - the third highest of ANY sport surveyed.
The fact is, most traditional sports are in a state of decline, and have been for years. They're being replaced by the "action sports", of which paintball is the last one to make the jump to mainstream. (And none of which have balls.)
The numbers are there. What HASN'T been there is the presentation. But paintball can be produced well - and I know, because we've done it. The NCPA produced a show out of our NAtional Championships last year, and the feedback has been that it's 10x better than anything that's been done before. How'd we do it? For starters, we went and got a television producer formerly from USA sports, and we paired him with an award-winning editor. We also fixed a lot of the problems. It's not rocket science:
- Put more cameras on the field, and more cameras in the air.
- Get cameramen with balls, and get them filming from behind the players so you can see where they are shooting and who is shooting at them. (Compare this to the NXL show, where 4 of their cameras were on booms in the corners.)
- Get commentators who KNOW HOW TO COMMENTATE. Bea Youngs did great for us for a paintball expert, but we ALSO had a seasoned sportscaster from the network who did play-by-play.
- Have segments that explain the sport. Watched Poker or Dodgeball shows? Every show has a segment that goes over the basic rules. So did we.
- Show things *OTHER* than the game! Ever watche dthe olympics? 50% of it is Bob Costas talking about the obstacles each athlete had ot overcome to be there. Think about it - a sports show that is half NOT about sports. We broke up the action with payer interviews, shots of teams talking strategy, etc. A cut of Illinois explaining how they're going to play the next point vs. Florida, and then another cut of Florida explaining how htey're going to play that same point against Illinois.
We did all this on very very, very inexpensive budget (about one 15th of the NXL budget). There's other things we need to fix that we just didn't have the money for (editting costs money) - game time and hte number of players remaining on each side of the field being displayed, for example. Ever watch baseball? They don't try and keep all the runners on camera, they just put a little diamond diagram up there so you know how many people are on base and where they are.
It *CAN* be done. We'll have a DVD of the three shows out in a couple weeks, pick it up (plug, plug), show it to your mother, and we guarantee she'll have a much easier time taking paintball seriously.
So we know we can put paintball on TV. But why should we?
Well, we all have our own reasons, but for the NCPA, it's simple: Pay the bills. We run about 30 events per year, and about 50 teams who compete nationally. The industry simply does not have the money to cover that. And obviously our players would be a lot happier if they were playing for free (although some are already pretty close.)
So why is paintball on TV important for our teams? Because the vast majority of the money our teams get comes from one place: Their colleges. Our TV deal, despite being VERY limitted in distribution (College Sports Television Network) has allowed many of our teams to double, triple, quintuple the budgets they get from their schools. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the sport. This is important: from OUTSIDE the sport. When Dynasty gets money from Smart Parts, that money ultimately came from paintball players buying paintball stuff. When Penn State writes a big check, that came from the State of Pennsylvania.
Why is the school writing this check? Because the school wants to attract students, and the school attracts students by providing activities that interest students. Themore peple that hear about Penn State because of the aintball program, and because the paintball program is on TV, the more people will consier going to penn state, and the better students penn state will ave to choose from. This is one place paintball is ahead of the game: You can pay paintball in college. You can't really play any other action sport in college.
The same thing is true in a different way for every other paintball league - and I'm not just talking PSP/NPPL/NXL here. We're not really trying to put paintball on TV just to get people to play. We've got enough people playing. We're trying to put paintball on TV so the people who DON'T play REALIZE people play. Would you think anyone walking down the street would realize there were just as many paintball players as baseball players in the country? Probably not. And that's something we need to fix. Local businesses will sponsor baseball teams because local businesses believe baseball is a real sport. TV is an avenue to start changing the perception of the public towards believing paintball is a real sport. When that happens, maybe your local paintball team playing in your local paintball league goes to your local bar and gets some money. Maybe it's the car dealer. Maybe your local league or your local field starts selling signage space just like your local park district does. The importat thing is, the better the image of paintball to the public, helped particularly by televising the sport, the more money businesses are going to be willing to spend on paintball to reach customers - both directly, and as with Mountian Dew, by association. "Young men think paintball is hardcore, even if they don't play, so if I associate my product with paintball by sponsoring paintball events, young people will think my product is hardccore."
It's all about image. Mountain Dew doesn't care how many people actually snowboard - there's only 2 million of them. But Mountain Dew has plenty of snowboarding commercials - because lots of people still think it would be cool to BE a snowboarder, and envy snowboarders, and if they think snowboarders all drink mountain dew, will be more inclined to buy mountain dew themselves.
Posted By: -raehl-