Unlimited Paintball Poll in Review

Well we didn’t have a huge number of votes in our poll, which is to be expected. I’m still amazed we get more than a half dozen people stumbling on this blog every week as it is. To get as many votes as we did, knowing that the majority of people don’t bother voting is quite amazing to me. Thank you for dropping by and double a thank you for those who took the time to vote.

Now for the voting; a small sample, but a sample nonetheless. We had two categories on each side of the spectrum, with ‘no change’ in the middle. It was interesting that no one voted that there would be no change, but the vote was pretty much evenly split down the middle whether free paintballs would increase or decrease participation.

So what does this tell us? One thing it does is confirm that we, as a community, have very little understanding on how paintball prices affect participation in paintball. If we had a poll that asked if consumption of orange juice would increase or decrease if suddenly orange juice were given away free, we all know how that poll would go. There would be no question. But half the people who voted (actually slightly over half) figured that paintball participation would decrease either slightly or a lot, if paintballs were free and unlimited for participants.

If the poll had asked what would happen to paintball consumption/usage per player if paintballs were free and unlimited, I think we would all conclude that the average paintball consumption per player would increase drastically. But I didn’t ask that as I knew that virtually every reader would come to that conclusion on their own. So the question was really, “Would paintball participation increase or decrease, if the average player would drastically increase the amount of paintballs they shot?” Over half the people polled stated that participation would decrease. Does that really surprise anyone?

So what does the raising and lowering of paintball prices do for the average paintball player? Obviously, lowering paintball prices makes more paintballs available to the player and alternately, raising prices makes less available to the player. Free paintballs (the lowest possible price), are at the extreme end of low prices and makes the availability, unlimited. But before we get to “free”, we pass some other very low prices as we head down the pricing scale.

When paintball started over a quarter century ago, paintball prices started at approximately 25 cents each. Since then, due to competition by manufacturers and efficiencies in production by manufacturers, paintball prices have continuously dropped. In some instances, prices can be found as low as 1 cent each. 2 cents is not uncommon at all. If 25 cents is at one end of the scale and zero is at the other end, 1 or 2 cents seems to be getting pretty close to the limit of the low end. Unlike other commodities, whose consumption are easily understood with raising and lowering of prices, paintballs, and their relationship to paintball participation does not seem as easily understood. So what has the ultra low price of paintballs, and the resulting availability of paintballs, done to the participation of paintball thus far? I can only conclude, that as a community, we don’t totally understand and know. So was the poll useless? No, absolutely not. I think it’s very important for all of us to realize that paintball pricing does not necessarily have a linear relationship with paintball participation.

Poll: Unlimited Paintballs

Look at this. Reiner's trying a poll. First time on the blog, so encourage my expansion of my own comfort zone by voting, and hopefully commenting.

Here's the deal. In a hypothetical situation, if recreational paintball fields could somehow provide unlimited amounts of paintballs to their customers, how would this affect participation. Now I say hypothetical, because paintballs cost money, even at the wholesale level, so to provide unlimited paintballs would also mean a field would have a limitless expense on it's hand, so they would have to charge through the nose. So for this hypothetical situation, I'm going to state two criteria that would need to be in affct to set this up.

First, the cost to play would be moderate, about the same per day cost as players spend today. We'll say about $50 for field fees and rentals if needed. Air would be included and all the paintballs a player would want to shoot are included. Whether they want to shoot 100 or 20,000, it wouldn't matter (players can't take any home though).

Second, ALL recreatioanl fields would have to offer unlimited paintballs. So this wouldn't be just one field in a city where the other four fields are charging for extra paintballs as they do now. All five fields would have the same deal. One cost, no limits on paintball use. Players could get a bag or case, use it up and then come get another bag or case, and when those are gone get more. As often and as many as they wanted to.

So how would this affect the industry and participation in paintball. Don't worry about the paintball manufacturers. They are in on the deal and found a way to produce paintballs for free. Like I said, this is a hypothetical situation.

It would be great if you told us why you think the participation would be the way you predict it would in the comment section. Thanks for playing.