I first got out because I was starting university and ran out of time/money to travel for practice and events. It's a huge commitment to play with some teams for a whole season.
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Originally Posted by AngelCockerRocker
Because it's a huge money pit with little or no return. It was fun, but real life caught up with it.
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This. Especially with Xball in Canada. Paying over $120/person per match, plus season fees, plus driving hours to get to the events. On top of that, nobody "wins" until the very end of the season, without and cash incentives for most divisions. It's a huge money pit, and I've been hearing from teams going to the NAX finals that they don't want even go because it's going to cost their teams thousands of extra dollars in paint, travel and accomodations just to play an extra event they added in which has almost zero chance of giving them any monetary return. This is a big deal for players who have personally invested sometimes $5000+ each into the season just to play paintball at their level.
As people are seeing it now, if you're spending that much money to play anyway, you might as well put up the cash to play national events to get the full experience, media coverage, better competition and actual chances to win some prize money.
I've been seeing a pretty large shift with people going back to playing smaller tournament series as well. The 3-man and 5-man local series that offer cash prizes are an overall better option than playing big-name events, as they're easier to find players for individual events, cheaper to play per-person, and give a better chance for coming home with a win and a real prize.
It's all about the incentives to get the players to come out and have them keep coming back. If your league is just a money pit sucking the players dry, you're going to run out of people willing to put their own money up to play.