Paintball Magazine Paintball Media Magazine July 2019 | Page 111

Today, that power of people liking
something has also been throttled. The
major social media companies don’t like
paintball as they think it is a dangerous
product or service. So they throttle the
reach of the companies and even the reach
of paintball ambassadors like me. If I make
a post on my Trails of Doom Facebook
page, which has around 1,000 followers,
you would think my followers would see
that post… Nope! It goes out to a few
of my followers who are most active on
my page. The rest I can PAY Facebook to
allow them to see my content, but even if
I buy “promotion” of my post, it won’t go
out to new people because it is paintball
related, and social media has followed
Google and determined that paintball
is bad and they are cracking down to
the point where it isn’t worth paying as
you don’t get new customers from your
advertising dollars.
or service” and will not allow advertising for
paintball, or airsoft, or even bb guns.
Many fields have gone to Groupon to try and
get the word out to new players, and that was
effective for many years, but now Groupon is
playing a game where they take the perceived
“value” of the package you buy/sell and send
the paintball field tax forms saying that the
high non discounted play rate is advertising,
meaning the fields have to pay that amount in
taxes against their profit… I talked to a field
that on average over the past few years sold
10,000 Groupons a year to their field, and
they were selling the Groupon at cost, and
then getting the inflated tax form showing
the difference between the sell for price and
the “value” of the Groupon resulted in a tax
amount of over $400,000… in advertising. This
is devastating to fields trying to make it in a
market where they can’t promote themselves
with social media due to the “soft” ban or
“Shadow ban” on paintball. (A “soft” ban or
“shadow” ban is a ban where you can’t use
This war on paintball affects you in many advertising because the company decides
ways. Paintball companies can’t advertise your business is bad, but doesn’t do it out in
traditionally as their ads aren’t taken by the the open where everyone can see. You can
large ad companies because of politics. And buy advertising, but it is handled differently
fields can’t advertise like they would have than other buyers of advertising because they
because it doesn’t go out to NEW people, don’t like your product and don’t want you to
only people who already like their field… succeed for political reasons).
Google calls paintball a “dangerous product
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