I was first introduced to the sport of paintball when I was 12 years old. I went paint balling at North Shore Paintball in the summer with my brother. North Shore has a great promotional event every year in March called the North Shore Paintball Easter Event. The event incorporates the traditional Easter Egg Hunt aspect of Easter through the distribution of “eggs” throughout the paintball field. The eggs are filled with paintballs, discounts, vouchers, and coupons. Many players attend the event in hopes of winning a paintball marker by tagging the “bunny”. Entry tickets for the event are also put into a draw to win paintball “swag” such as paint grenades, hoppers, barrels, gloves and markers. This is an effective marketing strategy because they can charge premiums on entrance fees and gun rentals, and increase their contribution margin through larger quantities sold. Many paintball fields like NSP offer deals on social commerce/ e-commerce websites such as Groupon and TastyGo.

There are multiple game types in Paintball. Woodsball is described as any type of game conducted in an open area outside such as a forest or the woods (thus the name “Woodsball”). Usually, scenario games are played in the outdoors where players have limited paintballs, limited air in their HPA tanks (High Pressure Air). Woodsball is often played with natural obstacles (e.g. trees, hills, streams) as well as artificial obstacles (e.g. tires, cars, treehouses)

Speedball is a much faster paced game type often played with artificial bunkers and obstacles to hide behind. It is often played on an artificial turf or arena specially built for the sport.

A typical Speedball game:

Paintball is definitely a niche market with the better half of the consumers/participants consisting of males. This may be due to the fact that paintballs can cause welts and bruises if fired from a close distance from the target.