Branding Paintball (PG-13)

This post has offensive language. Deal.

I've said it before, but beginning this piece by saying it again will definitely set the stage here. Paintball, as a "sport", is a joke. With that as the working premise, we continue. So why is paintball a joke? Well, this week we'll talk about the clothing issues.

Tournament players are long known for their cheating ways. It used to be they at least had the common courtesy to try to hide the fact that they cheated like bastards to win tournaments or just flat our denied that they did so. Hell, $10,000 to buy a tournament wasn't unheard of, just unspoken. Don't cringe, the team that did it used that victory to sell upwards of $500,000 in barrels and accessories. Now, it's part of the glory of tournament players. Didn't the X-Box paintball game have a "cheat bar" on it, so you could cheat in the video game? It's part of the mystique of the game. It's part of paintball's image.

Right there, you should be able to tell where I'm going with this. Tournament paintball as a sport is a joke. However, as a business it's a pretty good marketing scheme. Let's play a little game called "Follow the Money". And, for the fact that they want to be the best known, let's talk PSP and X-ball, shall we? Good.

X-Ball / PSP are basically an extension of NPS. Take a look at the X-Ball photos. You see a LOT of branding opportunities for the paint, guns, safety gear air tanks and clothing they sell. Just out of curiosity, when was the last time any pro X-ball team wore JT goggles? I don't think I can find ANY. Why? JT is owned by Brass Eagle, and BE is competing directly with NPS for market share. So what better way to advertise your product than exclude other companies from being in your show?

So when you look at X-Ball, you see a lot of branding for "Empire" clothing. They've even made poster children out of their so-called superstars like Lasoya. Wonderful ad campaign, get some of the best known cheaters and confirmed sadists to wear your clothing, take pictures of the guys throwing gang signs and plaster it on every other page of a magazine. Oh, that's right; nobody wants to talk about the kid Lasoya lit up when his custom-tuned electronic paintgun "ran away" from him. If my memory is correct he said he wasn't sure how many times the gun discharged into the kid's body at point blank range. Nice role model. And by the way I call "bullshit".

Then comes the slick part. X-Ball is covered in Paintball 2Xtremes Magazine, Paintball Sports, and a few other rags on the market. PB2X was bought out by Gino Posterivo, or someone attached to Gino financially, from Mike and John Henry. The Henrys were basically bought out to shut them up, as they were doing more harm than good for the sport. Good purchase. Now NPS, which is owned by Gino, has a media arm. Should I also mention that Jerry Braun, chief editor at Paintball Sports, is ALSO the "assistant coach" of "New York Xtreme"? NYX is a franchise of the NXL.

"Mr. Kane? Line 1. It's the election staff."

This isn't to mention ads taken out in all the magazines, which also covers X-Ball. So you get the "GI-Joe Effect". You have coverage of an event along side ads for products being sold by those who run the event. Or, basically, you spend money to buy an infomercial magazine. No different than the old 30 minute infomercials for "He-Man" and "GI-Joe" where they'd have commercials for the action figures for the show you were watching. Except in this case, it's legal because nobody has called them on it.

How's that for slick?

And the whole time you see these guys doing their thing, and thinking "Wow! I gotta buy me a pair of those $125 Empire pants!" Congrats, you've been "branded". "Branding" is a term for associating a name or symbol in people's minds with more than just a product. If I say "I want a Coke" to almost anyone in the civilized world, they know exactly what I want and why. I may not get a "Coca-Cola" product, but odds are I'll get a cola of some kind. I can also say I drive a "Ferrari" too, and in your mind you know what that is. Same goes for McDonalds, Starbucks and Hello Kitty. I say the name, you know what it is. And odds are you have an emotion tied to the product as well. That's the core of "branding". Getting you to feel good about a product, so when you ask for a Coke, you feel good about what you're about to get.

So what we've got is a marketing ploy. In this case, the "branding" of paintball is meant to make the end buyer (you) feel more like an "extreme athlete" or a "winning paintball athlete". They run a tournament, they showcase the products there, and in the magazines, and the winning team is guaranteed to be wearing / shooting / using their product. Their product is now associated with winning, because no other brand name is even being USED by any of the teams. It's hard to not win without using their product, as it's the only one available. So when the kids want the products the pros use, they go with what they see the winning teams use. And, as a side effect, the name of that product is associated with winning paintball games. Funny how that works, isn't it?

And for a moment, let's talk about that gear. Still picking on the NXL and PSP, who sponsors those series? Draxxus, Dye and Smart Parts according to the web page. But it's pretty clear National Paintball Supply has a money interest in X-Ball. Under those four companies, you have the brand names of DYE, Renegade, Draxxus, Empire, Proto and a few others. I'm sticking to clothing here, so bear with me.

Let's talk about rules. The NXL rulebook does NOT say "Players may not wear padded clothing". It says they may not wear OVERSIZED clothing, but nothing about padding. Rule 5.2.4 DOES say that players may wear padding, as long as it is not "modified from the manufacturer's original form." It also says they may not wear rubberized layers, but nothing about padding. And, who do you suppose wrote these rules? Well damned if I know because there's no paper trail for a rules committee or in fact any corporate structure for X-Ball. I can find the executives for Major League Baseball in TWO CLICKS of a mouse from their main page. Paintball, however, cloaks itself so you can't follow the trail easily.

But I think I have it down. See, the people who write the rules have always been the players. In paintball, the players themselves have always written the rules, modified the rules, enforced the rules, and otherwise made the sport work. In the beginning, the players were also the promoters too. Guess what. Paintball hasn't evolved far past that now. The "Professional Referees" we've been promised for 15+ years? WHERE ARE THEY?!?!?!? I don't see any unaffiliated group of referees anywhere. Ok, "Lords of Discipline", but that's the only one I can think of. And even then, do they ref X-Ball?

So back to the point. The players originally made the rules. Now those players run parts of the industry, and some of them still play in the league they help promote and run. Players who want every advantage they can get. And for what it's worth, the people in the manufacturing industry want to see gear move off the shelves, so if they have a say in the rules committee they will not hesitate in tweaking rules to fit what they manufacture. So seeing as the rules do not prohibit things like excessive padding, you get padding out the wazoo; and a little bit in the wazoo too.

I mean have you SEEN the Empire '06 jersey? Padding on the stomach, the chest, all along the arms and wrist and shoulders. And the pants? They pad every part of the body as well. Then pile on that their baseball hats with the padding, the 3-4 layers of head wraps and bandanas they wear OVER that... What's the point of playing anymore? When you shoot someone point blank, and the balls simply fall off them, why am I wasting my time and money? If it was only in the X-Ball world, fine. But you know what? I know right after Christmas all the "Credit Card Kiddies" will have these jerseys, pants and head wraps because "ITS THE AGG SHIZNET!!!!"

And it's all 100% legal too! Why? Well who writes the rules? Who runs the league? Who allows this to happen? Here's a big hint. Follow the money. Who stands to gain the most selling the jerseys, pants, paintballs and paintguns that the pros use?

I think you can figure that out.

So to bring it back to the beginning, paintball as a sport is a joke. The tournament scene exists for one sole purpose, to sell product. Not for competition, not for athleticism, but for monetary gain of those who run the events. When you stand back and look at it, paintball is a very large marketing ploy. Companies put out the concepts that their gear is used by the best of the best, and you can be part of the "xtreme sport" if you wear their products. Players are buying the "branding" that they are athletes in an extreme sport of paintball, and that hype is being used to sell more products. And they're not selling the actual product as much as they're selling the concept that paintball is a sport, and true paintball athletes ONLY wear their gear.

The joke is that it's all marketing. I really don't believe they give a rat's ass about the players other than how full their wallets are. The fact that a team had to assault the referees to get noticed at World Cup is the proof of that. And here's the ultimate joke, paintball players bought the "branding" hype.

As a community, we bought into the idea that we can't be a hardcore player without the colorful padded jerseys and pants, or the 15 BPS guns, or the 3-4 headbands and "emo" sweat bands on our wrists. We bought into the ideas that good players always shoot 300-800 balls a game, and that it's "xtreme" to randomly throw paint downrange and play twitchball for an entire game. The final indignity? As long as a team or a player wants to climb to the top of a hollow mountain, we will continue to buy into the hype.

Sad, isn't it?