What you need to do to become a professional Paintball player!
Most of us play paintball for the fun of the game. Not only is paintball a great pastime, but it also serves as a wonderful hobby that you can enjoy. However, professional paintball players take it to the next level. These players compete to be the best. Unfortunately, not everyone can make it to play professional paintball.
To be a professional paintball player, you must have some experience at the highest levels of the game. Casually playing with your friends won’t get the job done, you will need to compete in tournaments. To qualify for tournaments, you will need to have a team and should be able to win competitions.
While this is what it takes to play professional paintball, you can break this down even deeper and look at some of the different games. Once you understand paintball better, you can choose whether it is the sport for you or if you want to stick to casual play. This article aims to explore some of the ins and outs of professional paintball.
How Does Professional Paintball Work?
The first thing you need to understand about professional paintball is the game. Speedball is the most common game used for professional paintball and features a fast-paced game, which rapidly changes to keep things interesting.
One of the first problems you might encounter is that you have been playing the wrong game. Most games you play at your local paintball park are considered “woodsball”. This can be defined as a game where players would play in the woods or a similar environment, which replicates a war between two teams.
Speedball is a much faster game in a smaller enclosure, which only allows players to move in this small environment. You often have inflated obstacles and the goal of the game is to constantly move around and eliminate your opponents. You will need to change your game to be better suited for a game like speedball if you want to be professional.
How To Become A Professional Paintballer?
Pro paintball is tough and if you want to become a professional paintball player, there are a couple of things that you should understand. Here are a few important steps that you can take if you do decide that you want to play paintball professionally:
1. Get Used To Speedball
The first step would be to make sure you are comfortable with speedball and that you understand some of the basics of the game. You can join an amateur speedball team and work your way up to the competitive levels at your local paintball arena. Alternatively, you might want to gather all your friends and create your very own speedball team.
2. Starting Your Team
Unfortunately, it is not that easy to be accepted into a new team, especially when you don’t know anyone and have no experience with speedball. The great thing is that you can start your own team with your friends. Yes, this could be expensive, but you can set up the team as you desire and enter a paintball tournament that will allow you to compete.
3. Making A Name For Yourself as a Professional Paintball Player
Once you have access to the top paintball leagues and stages, you will be under the eyes of other professionals. This will give you and your team the ability to show that you are good enough. If you make it, you may start to get invited to international competitions, where you can win some serious money if you beat others.
Additionally, you might also find that you outshine the rest of your team. With so many scouts checking these games, you might even be lucky enough to get sponsorships and join a professional team. However, it can take years of playing to reach a competitive paintball level.
4. Playing in the Top Leagues
After a couple of years at the bottom, you should eventually get the opportunity to play in the bigger leagues and against some of the top players. This can still be a daunting prospect, but you will need to constantly improve and evolve your game and invest in the best paintball guns to make sure that you stay there. Just like you could take someone else’s position in a team if they are not performing at their best, the same can happen to you, so you need to keep performing well to stay there.
How Much Can You Earn As A Professional Paintball Player?
If you have ambitions of becoming one of the best paintball players, earning a living from the game is probably something that you want to achieve. It is not that easy to earn a living from playing paintball and even the most professional and elite players don’t earn that much. A paintball player’s salary would consist of the following:
- Salary: Offered and paid for by the professional team they are playing for.
- Sponsorships: These are team and personal sponsorships which help the player pay for expenses and paintball gear.
- Prize Money: The final method of earning money would be through prize money, which is evenly split between team members. However, there are a few opportunities to win individual awards.
While pro paintball players won’t earn a killing they could often be drafted to different teams. Once the contract of a good player ends, teams could bid to buy the player for the next season. However, the prices are nowhere near what you would see being paid by professional football teams.
How To Get A Paintball Sponsorship?
Paintball gear can be expensive, but it is not the most important thing you should worry about. Attending events and tournaments could involve plenty of travel costs, which could run your budget dry.
Getting a paintball sponsorship is not that easy when you don’t have anything to offer them. However, you can start by buying from the same company and working out if you can get bulk deals. These deals might include the occasional freebie, but you will still need to pay for the gear and equipment.
Once you start making a name for yourself, you have built up some leverage. This leverage can be in the form of publicity. You can use the publicity and popularity to strike deals with sponsorships, which allow them to sponsor you in return for the publicity that you provide them. People always look at the gear of the winning teams.
Be careful of other brands if you have a sponsorship. The quickest way to lose your sponsorship is to wear clothing of the wrong brand. You should consider wearing the right gear and clothing and strengthen your sponsorship ties as much as possible.
Wrap-Up
Playing professional paintball is not for everyone and it might take you some time to build up the skills and the sponsorships to make it to the professional level. However, those with aspirations of making it big would certainly find that professional paintball is the way to go if you want to be the best. If you are a professional paintball player, we would love to hear some of your comments and what advice you can offer those just starting out.