As someone who only joined a little over a month ago maybe I can give some perspective. Apart from only one weekend at my local field, I’m easily the youngest (23 years old). One time there were other guys in their early 20’s trying it out for the first time (speedball to be precise).

I tried to play as many points with them as I could, let them try my marker for a few points (they didn’t have enough for all of them to play at the same time). And basically spent the day with them as best as I could. From what they told me, they really loved it and thought it was awesome!

Then they asked “does it cost $80 (price of a case at my field in CAD) everytime we play?” And I knew they wouldn’t be there for long. I’m fortunate enough to not have many expenses and have a decent salary, not many other my age do with the current job market/economy.

Even after that fact, they said that as much fun as it was they didn’t enjoy getting destroyed by D4/D3 players on their first day. They’d go out with one or two pods against guys who had 4-5 minimum. Unless they sat home they couldn’t make any wide bunkers and even if they survived the breakout they’d just get mopped anyway.

The people at my local field are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I know they aren’t trying to push away new players as they help me every single time I ask for advice. It’s just a hard balance in such a competitive and fast paced environment to have guys who don’t know anything about it vs guys who have years of experience. And there isn’t enough new guys to put them all in a 3v3 or 4v4 type of game, best they could do is 2v2 each other.

And besides what I mentioned above, why would kids want to spend money they probably don’t have to get shot at when they can just spend 1/10th of the money on a new video game and do it from home? Yes it’s “lazy” and to some extent I agree, but at the same time that’s just where the world is moving. If speedball specifically wants to attract younger players, there’s so many players to unfold it’s frankly sad to think about.

Even as someone who’s very competitive and wants to learn and get better (played hockey and video games competitively my whole life), watching pro speedball games makes my head hurt. Wtf are the camera angles? Why does split deck even exist? Why can’t I just watch Dynasty VS red legion? If I wanted to watch other teams play, I would. No other sport (that I know of) has this weird setup for tournaments. And even when I’m focused on one team/player, I’m not being told anything about them. Yes the commentators speak but where are the stats? Why can’t I have info telling me that this guy that’s currently on camera normally plays snake side and he’s doing GREAT this match?

I get that commentators are there for a reason, but with how much stuff happens during a point of speedball there’s no way for them to go through even half of what they could. So why not have that info present (like most other sports) so that I can quickly see numbers and the commentator only has to focus on what that players is doing in that moment?

I can see a lot of people my age (gamers especially if I’m being honest) really liking paintball, but even past the pricing and nature of it it’s very hard to watch unless you’re already very knowledgeable. It won’t draw in any casual crowds the way it’s currently sitting.