[Reef 223]

Recently, There has been alot of changes throughout the industry. Some of these changes are good, and others are bad.
One of the major changes going through the industry, is Sponsorship. Sponsorship is becoming more and more harder to come by, and even less for the players.

"The definition of sponsorship: to be responsible for, or to vouch for someone or something. Now, that is far off, I mean, when we ask a company to help us by sponsoring us, we are asking for them to help us buy into what we are doing. Why they do that is totally up to them. Whether to garnish attention to their products or because they simply can and want to help, it doesn't matter. It’s that these companies and people want to help you as much as possible and beyond then they want to help themselves. Sponsorship in our industry is getting far and few between and there is talk that the vendors want to make it even more scarce, taking us back to the days were everyone paid their own way, which for me is ok, except for the fact that it will considerably shrink our already taxed ranks. Many teams are gone because they couldn't get the help they needed, so I can only imagine where it will go if it keeps going the way that it is. Outside sponsorship is the answer, but sadly, we are too small and fractured to have a chance at getting anything, unless of course you have the hook up or inside track.

Who is to blame? Everyone; the sponsors, the teams and everyone in between. If it costs a pro team $75,000 to play a season of paintball and be remain competitive, and the team can’t raise that money from within the industry and they can’t get it from outside the industry- then what happens? This isn't about greedy players looking to get paid- it’s teams that can’t compete because it simply costs too much. So what happens if teams can’t get support from the industry and the cost to compete is still too much? Well, frankly, they go away, leave the sport and someone else moves in and then the cycle repeats again. Does this sound familiar? Unfortunately, the state that things are in right now, as well as the direction things are going is only going to get worse. There aren't enough pro players that can pay their own way, so we are going to lose them. If the industry simply can’t or won’t support the pro teams and players, then that sends a very clear message. We as players need to rally behind those few sponsors who are helping the teams and ignore those who won’t. If it’s tough for the pro teams, you can imagine what it’s like for the lower ranked teams. Good luck…"

Quoted from Rich Telford, FaceFull Magazine

So, after all said and done, what are the companys, that are helping the players?
And
Are we (the players) giving these companys are full support?

[barndawg]

Plant Eclipse
Furious Paintball
Exalt
ANS
Oring Monkey
APX
PB warehouse
Disruptive Paintball
Paintball Gateway

are definite ones

[Bo43]

It's not only about helping players or promoting products for some companies. Take paint sponsorships into account for example. For the sake of simplicity, let's say RPS has a 50% markup margin for all cases of paint they sell, an established national divisional team approaches them in pursuit of some type of sponsorship. RPS looks over the team's history and future goals and sees the team has played quite a few events and expects to keep doing so, at this point RPS offers the team a 25% discount on all paint they buy through them. The team is happy because all of their events and practices have just become cheaper, RPS is happy because even though they are selling paint at a lower price, they have a guaranteed customer and still make a 25% profit on every case sold. Now that the team can practice more, they will hopefully become better and begin promoting RPS by winning tournaments. But regardless of how well the team does, RPS is still profiting if the team keeps playing, which is more likely to happen as the sport is now a bit cheaper for them.

Gear/gun sponsorships work on basically the same premise but aren't nearly as great if you already have guns and gear as all established teams should. But a team looking for new, discounted gear will benefit from a company looking for any kind of means of promotion and profit, because as stated earlier, any profit is better than none.


The REAL sponsorships are theoretically only reserved for the best teams, (not necessarily only pro teams) as winning teams, (pro teams especially) tend to offer substantial promoting/advertising benefits for a company. So if the benefit is greater than the cost, a company might choose to offer monetary benefits so that the aforementioned teams are still able to compete and therefore promote said companies.