The Beginning and Expansion of Paintball
How paintball started and how it spread.
By: The Kejman
The idea of the Paintball Game was first dreamed up by three guys; Bob Gurnsey, Hayes Noel, and Charles Gaines. They wanted to figure out who are more cunning, city people, or the country men. The first ever paintball game that was known was played in the woods of New Hampshire in 1981, with twelve people playing capture the flag, using wood shop goggles and CO2 powered pistols. They used Nelson brand oil-based permanent paintballs, which were supposed to be used for marking cattle and trees. The point of the match was to capture all twelve participants’ flags without being shot. On this hot and muggy June afternoon, the eventual winner, country-boy Ritchie White, captured all twelve flags without firing a single shot!
Paintball pioneer Bob Gurnsey saw what went on that day in the woods of New Hampshire and thought it had potential to become huge, so he went on to secure direct sources of the necessary products from the companies that supplied paintballs and markers to forestry and agricultural markets. He then advertised the first paintball field franchises under the banner of the “National Survival Game”. In 1983, the first official N.S.G. Paintball tournament was held, and thus sprung the great sport of paintball.
Since 1981, paintball has expanded into a gigantic multi million-dollar industry, with dozens of manufacturers supplying products to thousands of entrepreneurs, who have opened commercial paintball sites and retail stores to the public, including both indoor and outdoor locations.
Commercial Sites generally accommodate individual walk-on players and group bookings alike. Group bookings may consist of; Bachelor parties, birthday parties, corporate outings, bar mitzvahs, retirement parties, graduation parties, you name it.
Some site operators offer corporate team building, leadership, and communication skills seminars as part of a paintball-centered professional “curriculum”. For the past ten years, the largest source of group bookings has been… Church Youth Groups!
Paintball site calendars can include occasional special events like thousand-player “Big Games” and “Scenario Events”, which can re-enact historic events or play out imaginary episodes of science fiction, with hundreds of “role-players” participating in games as long as twenty-four straight hours. There are tons of amateur Tournament Leagues promoting competitions across the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and more. In the US and Europe, there are four Professional Tournament leagues, each actively vying for corporate sponsorship dollars, and all making great headway towards frequent network television coverage. At large tournament events, cash purses and prize packages can become over hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Crosman Corporation, Daisy Air Rifle Company (manufacturers of BB/Pellet guns), Leader Industries (manufacturer of Sports and Industrial optical safety equipment) and JT USA (manufacturer of motocross safety equipment) and pharmaceutical conglomerate Cardinal Health’s R.P. Scherer (encapsulator of softgel pharmaceuticals) are just a few of the mainstream corporations that have expanded into the Paintball world in light of its huge expansion.
In the mid 90s, Daisy launched a new paintball company called Brass Eagle, which successfully penetrated the Mass Merchant market, including WalMart and Kmart, nationwide. Even though most experienced players know that Brass Eagle is like the fake gold watches of paintball, suddenly, there it was; paintball equipment was available on Main Street U.S.A.!
This widespread retail availability was a primary spark for paintball’s achievement of “household word” status, followed by phenomenal growth through late 90’s, 2000, and beyond. Today, it is very hard to find people who have never heard of paintball, and major tournaments are being sponsored by large corporations like Budweiser, Pepsi-Cola, and Fuji Film.
In the last several years, ESPN, Fox Sports, MTV, VH1, and dozens of regional television networks across the land have aired special television coverage of paintball tournaments and special events. The past year has brought literally dozens of meetings and follow-up negotiations between Pro tournament promoters and top ranking MAJOR NETWORK executives, who are eager to make their plans possible to quickly capitalize on paintball’s skyrocketing popularity in the important “extreme sports” category.
Movie production companies and television networks are also entering the Industry as Sponsors and Partners. For example, blockbuster film giant, Viacom Entertainment, is a major promotion partner with “Hollywood Sports Park” a large Paintball-centered Extreme Sports Park in the heart of Los Angeles County, offering four Movie-themed Paintball scenario fields that are constructed from actual movie-sets supplied by film partner Viacom. Following a growing trend of cross-promoting Paintball to other “Extreme Sports” participants, Hollywood Sports Park also includes a large BMX track, complete skate park, giant realistic climbing walls including areas for beginners, intermediate, and an advanced section partly affected by a waterfall, beach volleyball, go-cart track, two restaurants, arcade, cyber café, and half-court basketball, co-promoted with the L.A. Lakers. Family fun centers around the world are adding paintball regularly, and in 2001, the “International Association of Leisure and Entertainment Industry” (IALEI) added paintball as an official category for their professional trade association of over 6000 business members, which includes operators of public Golf Courses, Movie Theatres, Water Parks, Arcades, Go Cart tracks, Extreme Sports parks, Ski Resorts, and more.
Big stars like Arnold Schwartzenegger and Tom Cruise frequently make appearances to promote special paintball events and charity fundraisers at Hollywood Sports Park. Many personalities are being drawn to the sport, including the late BeeGee, Maurice Gibb, whose Team, The Royal Rat Rangers, has played on several continents. Rock and Roll dinosaur Ozzy Osbourne and his son, both avid Paintballers, appeared together in a “Diablo Paintball” ad, wearing full Diablo Paintball regalia. Star Trek’s William Shatner has become a mainstay personality in the popular S.P.P.L.A.T. special “Scenario” and “Big Games” in the recreational side of the Industry.
As you can see, paintball has come from its humble beginnings and has expanded into a gigantic industry. Pretty soon, paintball will be totally main stream along with other extreme sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding, and motocross. Who knows? Someday it may even become like football, basketball, or baseball. Its too early to be thinking about that kind of stuff though……Or is it?
Works Cited
I kind of got all of this from reading a bunch of different paintball sites over the years, but here is a list of the websites that I used to help refresh my memory.
- http://www.paintball-guns.com/paintball_history.html
- http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpaintball.htm
- http://paintball.about.com/od/gametypes/a/gamehistory.htm
- http://www.pcri.net/history.htm