[bmoney003]

Everyone keeps saying what they feel will make the sport of paintball grow..

The past few questions from 4x4 aka Josh D. in our Q and A have been about sponsiorship..

It got me to thinking about major corporation sponsorship and how everyone thinks these outside paintball companies will blow the sport up..

my question is WHY? why does everyone think this? what would they sponsor? individual teams? leagues? players?

what do they get out of it? logo on a jersey? advertising?

what does everyone have to say..

discuss........

[sumorai]

It'd be nice to see some large outside sponsorship of teams / leagues. I assume there just isn't enough of an audience for them to bother. Sponsorship for companies like that is just marketing. Put the name/logo out there and get your brand in front of lots of eyeballs. There aren't enough eyeballs at paintball events to make it worth it for them.

I'd love to see Intel's internal analysis of their sponsorship of Dynasty back in '06.

[pgFILMS*]

Yeah, honestly what would big brands accomplish within paintball. They would use us for more ads, marketing, and thats about it. Dye seems to be doing well and branching out in to snowboard products which is great. They are opening up more opportunities for themselves. However, large outside companies having nothing to do with paintball wouldn't really benefit paintballs growth.....IF you think about it though a lot of major motor sport teams are sponsored by energy drinks which I see as something that could be associated with paintball teams. But you also have to let paintball grow with what it has. There's no need for large outside companies to contribute because paintball as a whole has a lot of companies that support the sport already. Paintball needs to lets those companies grow like dye, PE, and even HK. HK started as a group of paintballers, now there making money off clothes and sponsoring musicians, MMA athletes, creating gear for party animals (haha) and allowing there brand to still represent their first love of paintball. A lot of these companies have great innovators and minds that could easily allow them to grow even more outside of paintball. So I don't see a need for 'outside' companies to help paintball grow. It has been growing.

[VSOwnage]

Is it even feasible for large corporations to 'invest' (and I say invest loosely) in sponsoring paintball? I just don't feel like a little logo on a jersey is money well spent for a company whos goal is just that..to make more money. I will be honest..logos on jerseys really have never influenced me purchasing something in the sport of paintball..especially non-paintball related.

[amontoya]

i think the guys on shipyard have the best sponsorship in paintball. Hands down

[pgFILMS*]

good example^^ beer haha ......but products that would be relevant to paintballers during tournaments..... powerades, gatorades, energy bars, nutritional granola bars or something to that nature. or like I said with motorsport teams-energy drinks- I can see that as more practical. what happened to BAWLS ??? haha

[bmoney003]

What about athletic companies. Like puma or adidas that could produce jerseys and footwear?

Paintball is a multi million dollar industry. Any piece for them would be beneficial

[sumorai]

Is it perhaps the stigma of players shooting each other with guns that keeps them away?

[Shecki]

Originally Posted by amontoya

i think the guys on shipyard have the best sponsorship in paintball. Hands down

No complaints here, that's for sure

[pgFILMS*]

Originally Posted by bmoney003

What about athletic companies. Like puma or adidas that could produce jerseys and footwear?

Paintball is a multi million dollar industry. Any piece for them would be beneficial

ohh for sure definately I totally disregarded athletic companies ! footwear, jerseys, all that type of stuff....for sure I think that would bring great things to the sport

[Skunkable]

I think a company has to see some sort of profit in the long run of a "sponsorship". Some of the larger main stream companies I feel like could make a huge impact in the sport if they chose to. I feel like some of them might view paintball with the stigma of it's a violent misunderstood sport but if the proper marketing and research was put into development then a viable investment could be made of paintball.
Basically sponsorship = money, for both the team being sponsored in either cash or goods, and profit for the sponsor in marketing and profit from increased sales due to the team being sponsored. If a major company ie Puma, Nike, Adidas ect deemed paintball a viable sport then they have the means (disposable income) to pump into a sport, but it has to make financial sense for them in the long run.

[pgFILMS*]

anything is possible with the right marketing tactics and team to produce something, it's whether or not they want to..... and the want to be informed about the sport

[shock2k3]

It's easy, a sponsorship is *supposed to be* a business relationship. I.E. party A gets X from party B in exchange for Y. (lol sponsorship equation... but I dont think some companies do the math) So here's your homework, what is y?

'Y' is something you can sell or garner interest towards in a valuable enough amount that you can charge $ or other service for your team.

In a paintball team to paintball company scenario, the math is easy. 187 gets gear from eclipse in exchange for some sales and reputation.

With an outside paintball company scenario just fill in the blanks. Hostile Intent gets sponsorship $ from corporation B in exchange for ???

If you want Adidas to sponsor your team you are thinking backwards. You need to work for Adidas and get them to start a branch in paintball. Then they would consider spending money in the sport to get teams to use their stuff. Also if you and every joe schmoe team gets some sort of 'sponsorship', wich is really only undercutting stores and fields... Adidas would actually be loosing face value and stores wouldnt want to carry their stuff (I'm talking Olympia Sports and Sports Authority not Boston Pb and PunishersPb).

So heres the structure problem laid out easy for you.

1 Big companies need to have a hand in pb to spend $ on it
2 They cant just 'sponsor' %70 of the market and backdoor sell **** to teams like our indusry does, otherwise big name stores (say Foot Locker.. idgaf) wont get enough business from our already small crowd. Now we are not in stores anymore and there is no full retail market worth partaking in for Nike or whoever.
3 Say that Under Armor jumps on board, they sponsor Dynasty and start making really nice $150 retail jerseys. They dont undercut themselves, they ONLY sponsor Dynasty. You'd like to think there is a decent customer base to buy said Under Armor jersey's... but this is where we beat ourselves again, our industry would backdoor the **** still and the same %70 will take the deal from pb companies.. PUSHING AWAY THE 'BIG' INDUSTRY.

No matter what they do they cant get us to make it work. If they do it legit and 'mainstream' we will undercut them and our existing structure would survive. The probelem lies in teams expecting sponsorship, if you cant offer something that is marketable or of real cash value then.. WHY EXPECT A FREE RIDE!

I have a whole other rant on how we could (not ever at this pace) get on tv but holding it back at the risk of this post becoming a mini novel.

[Kr3wpaintball]

Red bull. It gives you wings

[Fox4paintball]

So...What about NASCAR. Does TIDE really have anything directly to do with car racing? What they're getting out of it is millions of eyeballs on their logo, brand recognition. They don’t sponsor every car in the race – in fact, they sponsor only one (that I know of – I’m not actually a big car guy – just seems like a good reference point). Unfortunately we (Paintball) don’t have millions of eyes watching, so someone like TIDE would get 1000’s eyes looking at their logo. That would be worth significantly less then than what the NASCAR guy gets.

I imagine that the industry guys (Spark plugs, car manufactures, etc..) sponsor multiple cars but they still only have so much budget and it gets spread around a bit thinner. And for that they get less AD space – or less visible area to display (not the hood of the car).

What does a billboard get you? Millions of eyeballs – what does a TV ad get you – Millions of eyeballs. What does a logo on a paintball jersey get you – 100’s or maybe 1000’s of eyeballs.
.

[matty84]

When you actually take those 1000s of eyeballs and work down the funnel... maybe 3-5% of those who see 187 wearing Eclipse gear will as a direct result go out and buy a eclipse jersey, gun etc...

This is some really really fuzzy math.

Say 187 Crew is seen by 5,000 unique players over the course of a year.

5% (probably generous) of that 5,000 ends up buying an Eclipse product as a direct result. That's 250 transactions.

250 transactions
X
$100 Average transaction size (pulled this out of my ***. it's probably generous.)

= $25,000 Gross
- Opportunity Cost

There's also probably a social effect to it... another 3-5% end up buying an Eclipse product as a result of their friend, who had originally bought because of 187 etc...

To Eclipse, that's worth while. To Nike? Absolutely not. Even if those numbers are dramatically off, it's still not interesting to a company that size.

My hunch is that advertising at the league level follows the same train of thought... just not enough eyeballs to make sense.

[4x4 rider]

My thought on it is, it's not so much the money they would be dumping into the sport because you could dump in as much money as you want, if you don't have the fans the sport won't make it big. If this sport can get some major outside sponsors; such as bud light, coke, Gatorade, etc, than may be there will be more outside recognition. If these big name sponsors are willing to pay attention to us than may be the every day American than has nothing better to do on Sunday morning before football (example of course) will may be watch some paintball I have a lot more building on the whole idea, but it's way to much to type, I even have ideas on how to watch it on tv that makes it soooo much easier to follow. If you want to share ideas, catch me at fox4 sometime lol

[6o3.matty]

not to mention all those great sponsor logos just get covered with paint and mud. lol

[MagicBuss]

Originally Posted by Fox4paintball

So...What about NASCAR. Does TIDE really have anything directly to do with car racing? What they're getting out of it is millions of eyeballs on their logo, brand recognition. They don’t sponsor every car in the race – in fact, they sponsor only one (that I know of – I’m not actually a big car guy – just seems like a good reference point). Unfortunately we (Paintball) don’t have millions of eyes watching, so someone like TIDE would get 1000’s eyes looking at their logo. That would be worth significantly less then than what the NASCAR guy gets.

I imagine that the industry guys (Spark plugs, car manufactures, etc..) sponsor multiple cars but they still only have so much budget and it gets spread around a bit thinner. And for that they get less AD space – or less visible area to display (not the hood of the car).

What does a billboard get you? Millions of eyeballs – what does a TV ad get you – Millions of eyeballs. What does a logo on a paintball jersey get you – 100’s or maybe 1000’s of eyeballs.
.

Dave,

NASCAR is a good example. However, there are countless studies that prove that NASCAR has the most brand loyal fans in all of sports. Literally, if Ricky Bobby switches from Tide to Clorox his fans switch and there are mountains of analysis to prove it.

I think any paintball team would have a tough time claiming the same amount of product loyalty with their fan group. I've always thought of well-known teams and players as influencers/ambassadors. They influences people's buying decisions and act as ambassadors (or extensions) of their sponsors. Unfortunately their amount of influence and/or their effect as ambassadors is very difficult to quantify (dollar value) for sponsors.

My two cents based on a sports management degree where we talked about things like sponsorships and their values constantly.

Jesse

[bmoney003]

My reason for thought on this was not really getting somthing from a major sponsor, but the companies possible creating a paintball division.

kind of how DYE now has a snowboard/ski division, and how NIKE also just recently started a snowboard div.

the idea came from seeing LIFT have a NIKE pb logo opn their jersey (although completly had nothing to do with NIKE, they created it on their own)

but why not? why wouldnt NIKE create a PB sector

[4x4 rider]

Good point, there is plenty of money to be had if they did.