Canada is not Immune

I sometimes get involved in “discussions” on forums with paintball players regarding the virtues of higher priced/lower volume paintball over lower priced/higher volume paintball. Often when they find out our field is in Canada, they shrug my opinion off because our field is in Canada, and apparently Canadian fields are more expensive because the Canadian dollar is worth so much less and Canadians are dumb enough to pay the high prices.

Recently a fellow Canadian paintball field owner (not here in BC) contacted me asking me for my opinion about a couple of things. He informed me that a field not too far from him had recently lowered their prices. Their outdoor field was selling paintballs for $40/case and a $10 field fee (or for $20 you can bring your own paint and play). 500 paintballs are $15. Rentals are $15. (All names are being withheld to protect the innocent)

So a first time player needing rentals could spend $65 and get everything he/she needs and a case of paintballs to blast away. Our average customer spends almost that, so I am sure that lots of players are doing just that (buying and shooting a case of 2,000 paintballs). Gear owners only need to spend $50, so I am VERY sure that many of the gear owners are shooting a case. The field owner that contacted me was concerned because this field had these very low prices and another field even closer had also just lowered prices to extreme lows.

I have always assumed that it wouldn’t take too long for some “entrepreneurs” in the paintball industry in Canada to provide paintball to the masses at low prices in hopes of attracting lots of players just as fields in the USA have done. Will it work? Sure, sort of. It will attract a higher number of players that like, or at least don’t mind, playing in a high volume paintball atmosphere; those players that want to be able to shoot lots of paintballs but not spend a week’s salary to do so. But the number of people in the general population that prefer that style of paintball is limited.

It’s daunting when you are the field owner that does not want to, or can’t drop prices to match or beat those prices. I’ve been in those shoes. But when it happened to us, we dropped our prices anyway. It was a knee jerk reaction and we were naïve and didn’t know better at the time. Of course, that’s when we found out that dropping prices of paintballs doesn’t increase overall attendance. It increases the amount of paintballs players purchase and it increases the number of players that don’t mind playing in that environment; but only temporarily. After a while, very few players come more often because the prices are lower. Offsetting that (several times over) are the players that don’t like that environment and end up not coming at all.

My advice to any field owner facing a situation where their competitors have dropped their prices to ridiculous levels is to ignore them. There is no point trying to compete to attract a share of the relatively small number of participants who enjoy that environment. I suggest those field owners do exactly the opposite. Build some fields that are visually appealing and look like they would be fun to play on. Price paintballs so players are encouraged to only shoot about 500 or so per day (about 700 maximum). The market for “regular people” in the general population that will prefer to participate in that environment is much greater than those that want to play in the 1500 to 2,000 paintballs/player environment. This means if the competition is charging $40/case, raising prices to $80/case is probably not enough. At $80/case, many players will still shoot over 1,000 paintball/day. When we dropped our prices from $160 to $100/case, our attendance dropped from what it was in previous years during the same periods. It wasn’t a drastic drop, but a drop nevertheless. As the drop in prices decreases below $100/case, the drop in attendance will drop further and more dramatically.

The hard part for a field owner that decides to go this route is to weather the storm until a natural customer base forms. As could be imagined, if one field is charging $120 to $160/case of paintballs while various competitors are charging $40 to $60/case, many unknowing customers are obviously going to choose the cheaper option. Most people don’t understand that the price of paintballs is not like a regular commodity. Who would go somewhere to buy their milk for $8 when they get it everywhere else for $4?

This is where the field owner needs to make sure they understand they are in the business of selling fun and not in the business of selling paintballs. Once they understand that, they can market fun rather than trying to attract players with low paintball prices. One way to do this is to not even mention paintball prices in the marketing. A new potential customer doesn’t really care how much paintballs cost. They want to know how much their day of paintball is going to cost in total and most importantly, they are going to want to have fun. New players have no idea how many paintballs they will be shooting. When I tell people who ask how many paintballs they will use and I tell them that our average customer shoots about 500 paintballs, many are amazed that people shoot that many paintballs.

The majority of people paying $60 for a day of paintball will have more fun playing in a group where most are shooting 500 paintballs in a session than they would in a group where most are shooting 2,000 paintballs in a session. In both scenarios, they have paid exactly the same for their day of fun. But at the end of the day, what is important is how much fun they had, not how many paintballs they shot.

I no longer worry when my competitors drop their prices. I make sure my customers get good value. That means they are going to spend a certain dollar amount and feel they have received their money’s worth of fun. A long as my customers are leaving with smiles on their faces and stories to rehash with their friends and at the water cooler, I know we will be OK.

So as Canadian field owners follow the trend most US field owners have been following for quite some time now, I will sleep well knowing that I am going to keep providing a fun environment and not fall prey to others who are more worried about selling paintballs than providing fun.

Suggestion from Customer

I had a suggestion by a first time player yesterday at the end of the day when he handed in his gear.

“You should charge by the amount of fun each person had. I’d owe a lot!”

Changing Demographics

In a recent interview with the Paintball Business Journal, Richmond Italia is quoted as saying, “Our sport is hurting and needs a cure fast. And I believe this is it [cheaper .50 calibre paintballs]. Most don't realize the number of players we lost to airsoft due to the fact that it is cheaper. Or how many are gone because they just can't afford it [to play paintball].

In a survey conducted by the Paintball Business Journal, the change that more players would like to see than any other change is lower paintball prices. I guess that confirms what Richmond is saying.

Does anyone else find it ironic that some think that players are dropping out of the sport during times when paintballs have been cheaper than any other time in the history of the sport because paintballs are too expensive?

So when has paint been cheaper for players? The answer is never of course.

Paintball is expensive. Or at least it can be expensive. It always has been and will continue to be out of the reach of some in our society. Lots of activities are that way. Many can’t afford to play golf. Most can’t afford to acquire everything they need to take up water-skiing. That’s just life.

We just hear more complaining (the complaint has always been around to some extent) about paintball being too expensive because over the past few years the demographics of paintball players has changed. The majority of players today are people who either get their income from mom and dad, or have jobs that are only part-time and don’t pay very well. The industry has been marketing to that demographic. And it’s worked. They are here. They are broke. And they are complainers.

In the process of this marketing change, we have changed the game completely. Fair enough. You have to give the customers, if that is who you want as your customers, what they want. But please do not complain when you have shifted your marketing efforts to a specific demographic, that you have alienated the rest of your previous demographics.

Golfers don’t complain nearly as much that their chosen pastime is too expensive. That’s because the average golfer isn’t working part time flipping burgers. Yet the paintball industry has taken it upon itself to market to the younger crowd, to do whatever is necessary to make them happy, with no consideration for those that don’t want to play in the new version of the game they have created for the new demographic.

So now that everyone has been staying away from the game, the younger crowd’s hours have been cut back further at the burger joint, all of a sudden there is a situation that we need a “fast cure” for. And apparently that cure is to further head down the road of making the impoverished sector of society our target market and to hell with everyone else.

The Silent Majority

How many people who play paintball throughout the world on any given Saturday or Sunday, are players playing for the first time or are players who play only occasionally and only for recreation? I believe that would be the majority of people.

How many people who post on paintball forums and who express their opinions to manufacturers are players who play regularly? I don’t know how many, but I am quite sure that it is far less than the number of players who play only rarely for pure recreation.

Who are the manufacturers and higher ups in the industry paying attention to? Who SHOULD they be paying attention to? The vocal minority, or the less vocal majority?

Father’s Day

I know Father’s Day was over a week ago, but I’ve been busy with moving and had limited Internet access and limited time. Also, I had a visitor yesterday that had played Father’s Day for his first time ever, which inspired me to take a few minutes to write.

Unlike Mother’s Day, which was the first day in a long time we didn’t have enough players to play a game, Father’s Day was quite busy. Actually it was one of our busier days that we’ve had and combined with the Saturday the day before, was the busiest two day weekend we’ve had in our eight year history. This was great considering we didn’t have an advertised special of any sort for Father’s Day this year. We did let dads (and moms) play free as we have every year since we’ve been open, but just didn’t do any advertising this year.

My visitor wasn’t a friend, but rather someone who had played on Father’s Day, had forgotten a hat at the field that was important to him, and came to my home to retrieve it. I found out he was retired, so it wasn’t a big deal for him to take the time to come out. It was an hour and a half roundtrip for him, but the hat was a memento from his job he had retired from, so he wanted it back. Besides, it was a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride, which is what he and his wife arrived on.

I had to stick around our new home to wait for the telephone guy (why is it those guys can’t give you a better idea when they are going to arrive?) and they were in no hurry, so I had a chance to talk to them a bit.

It was his first time ever playing and since we cater to a lot of new players and obviously want more new players in the future, his feedback was of interest to me. He said he had a great time. Both he and his wife had no idea that paintball was such a big deal. They had no idea that there were that many people who played the game. They had done some research on the Internet and stumbled upon a review site for paintball fields. Apparently our field has some good reviews so they decided to try us out. They said that during their visit they talked to several people at our field and everyone. They heard nothing but good comments from everyone there. It’s these kind of conversations that really inspire me to go on with what I’m doing, even if I’m never going to become a millionaire running a paintball field.

The only negative feedback I got was that the porta-potties were a little rank. I told them that it was probably the busiest weekend we’ve ever had and that combined with the hot weather, definitely wasn’t a good combination. I apologized for that, although I’m not quite sure what I can do about it, but I will give it some thought, and see if we can’t at least improve the situation. A paintball field owner’s problems vary greatly. Who knew that one day I would be pondering how to make porta-potties smell better?

Levels of Participation

I’m a bit of a runner. Not great distances, but I like to get out two or three times a week if I can. I run somewhere between 5 and 10 kilometers (3 to 6 miles) usually. Running makes me feel like I’m at least not getting too out of shape.

I like the simplicity of running, just me and my shoes, shorts and a shirt and off I go. What could possibly be simpler than bi-pedal motion? We’ve all done it (with the exception of a few) since probably before we could speak and it’s a pretty efficient way to get around, compared to crawling anyway.

There are lots of people like me but far more that use bi-pedal motion to travel slower and shorter distances. I see all sorts of people out on leisurely strolls every day, far more than I see running. Then there is the other end of the bi-pedal spectrum, the long distance runners. Those people who take their bodies to the limit on a regular basis and run marathons or even greater distances. There are far fewer that are that dedicated and willing to put up with that much effort. The participation level for the different intensity levels varies considerably.

Paintball is much the same. There are people who want to participate at all the varying levels of intensity. But the numbers vary…a lot.

When going into paintball battle, there are those that want to go real slow, much like a stealthy hunter stalking his prey. If they can reach out and tag someone out rather than shoot them with a paintball, they are happier than if they had done the latter.

On the other end of the spectrum is the player that wants to be the paintball equivalent to a gladiator. He wants intense action and he wants it right away, the more, the better. There is of course all the ground in between as well.

Just like the stroller is not very likely to get too interested in running a marathon, the paintball player that stalks his prey very slowly and quietly, is probably not too excited about playing the intense version of paintball.

The difference is, rarely do we see a marathoner dragging a stroller along with him on his long distance endurance run. But in paintball we arm everyone with lots of firepower and ammunition, so that everyone is basically forced to play an intense style of paintball, whether they want to or not. It’s in your face, gladiator style competition for everyone. Then we wonder why people stop coming. Could it be that we made them run endurance races, when all they wanted to do was take a short stroll?

Lack of Innovation

Every once in a while in my browsing of forums and blogs, I find someone who believes the lack of new innovation and technology is causing paintball industry’s slump. While I’m not saying that those companies who have built a business model around constantly releasing new technology, may not be hurting a bit with a lack of new mind blowing technology released, I can’t help but wonder how this affects the average person deciding whether they are going to play paintball on the upcoming weekend or during the upcoming season.

These people can’t possibly be thinking that people are staying home because they don’t have any new upgraded toy to play with, can they? If they are right, and that is the case, what does that say about the sport we have evolved into?

Have soccer players stayed home because there have been no significant technology changes in soccer balls or soccer cleats? How about basketball, football, or tennis players? Are they also staying home because their technology advancements are at a near standstill?

Is paintball’s technology not advanced enough for some to be able to eliminate others with a paintball consistently enough yet?

As far as companies that are struggling because players aren’t getting all excited about the new model that is basically just like the old model…wasn’t that bound to happen some time? Did they think players would be fooled forever by the new shape of the grip or body molding? Did they think players would keep getting excited about the new model that could now shoot 28 bps instead of 26 bps?

I don’t like to see any business fail, because I know how much work is involved in running a business, but in the end, for a business to succeed, the people running the business need to be able to pick up on trends before or at least while they are changing. Trying to catch up after the trend has established itself is very difficult.


We are in a transition state in paintball and have been for a few years. The game has evolved into a totally different game than when the concept of paintball started. It is a very fast, almost brutal game compared to what it used to be, both on the competitive and the woodsball side. The number of people wanting to take part in today’s type of game is limited. We are very close to the saturation point, meaning there are very few new players that want to enter the world of paintball. New players now must come from those that were too young to play a year or two ago. It’s been like that for a while. That’s why the industry has been marketing to younger and younger players. But we’ve reached the level of minimum age, so now kids have to “grow up” before they can play. And these kids that come of age and enter the sport aren’t enough to replace the exiting players.

Manufacturers will continue to fail and fields and stores will continue to close for a while, until the new equilibrium has been established. At that point, for every field and store that opens, another one will close. There are, and will continue to always be, a few more manufactures, fields, and stores operating than are needed. That’s the nature of almost every industry. New businesses start, thinking they can do things better or more efficiently than the existing ones (and sometimes they can), but eventually someone has to drop out because there is just not enough money to go around in the industry. This process is what keeps businesses motivated to do things efficiently, but it also has it’s downside. Because it keeps the money short for almost everyone involved, it also stagnates improvements and advances. This is most visible at fields. Field owners can’t afford to build and maintain fields and the infrastructure to run fields. So when you get to a field and it looks like it hasn’t been worked on for a long time, it probably hasn’t. The owner has probably run out of energy and/or can’t afford to hire anyone to do the work for him.

Seems like I’ve gotten way off track from what I started to write about, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Till next time!