What if...

[piratevalkyrie]

What if we held a game at the Pontiac Silverdome. Me and a friend were just running ideas past eachother and though it would be cool if we caould get the Pontiac Public Relations office to let us hold a massive game there...I'm talking national massive, TV Crews and shit.

We could have a giant CQB Field and have it open to the public. Make the rules so that you must have an AEG to play. Strict referee'ing and make it sort of like a National Tournament. We could call up a local news station and ask if they could report on it. Get some good PR so we get a bigger crowd next time.

As for the audience, we could charge 10 per family member to watch and the usual 15 to play, get a good few months of promoting into this and we could generate quite a bit of publicity and revenue for the dying Silverdome...


Feel free to add and/or shoot holes in this idea.

[Psychosis]

um...

- airsoft doesn't need to be huge, I would avoid that kind of in-your-face publicity
- who would air an airsoft game on TV?
- tournaments are for paintball, I like my airsoft to be more mil-sim
- it'd be mad expensive to rent the facility

[Zeke]

yeah. It would be extrmely expensive to rent it unless we told Pontiac that any and all money generated would pay for rent. They wouldnt do that anyways. The only people I would see for Airsoft airing on TV would be ESPN, they had the PB tournaments on not too long ago.

[piratevalkyrie]

I think airsoft could use the PR, we need to show people that despite our militaryness we are very safe and friendly, especialling in light of the Customs thread.

[bman111]

well, that would own, but its never gonna happen

[piratevalkyrie]

You'd be suprised...

[GeneralB]

a few years ago my city football team rented out the silverdome and it took a bit of fundraising, It would be really cool to do this but realisticly I dont think it will happen, maybe if we could get someone to sponsor the event that would be nice. We would have to hire a clean up crew aswell. If we can get this to happen then it would be really cool!

[King]

Never gonna happen.

[Maddok]

Well, thats not really a whole lot of space to just use the field its self, or are you thinking the whole arena as as the battle ground? Plus the Mil Sim aspect, the most popular part of airsoft would be all but eliminated. Not only that, but we'd still have to get pontiac to agree to it, and I doubt they'd even let it hit the drawing board, no matter how desperate they are to put that facility to use.

[Psychosis]

zeke said:

The only people I would see for Airsoft airing on TV would be ESPN, they had the PB tournaments on not too long ago.

Yeah, well paintball is more well established as a sport and industry, the best we could do would probably be ESPN 8 "The Ocho."

I'm a fan of the limited exposure we have, if anything were to be publicized it would be the very large mil-sim events that would shed a positive light on our hobby.

[VMAX]

I agree with psychosis, unless we could get a really awesome cqb complex built inside the silverdome and play in that, I don't see much of a point to it. Airsoft is about milsim and tactics, and planning how to attack the enemy and accomplish an objective. This doesnt exactly make for very exciting T.V. programming like paintball, where its just an all out guns blazing slugfest like a scene from a john woo movie.

However, a little more publicity for the sport would be very good, seeing as how so many people associate airsoft with little troublemaking punks shooting springers at each other. I also just don't think that this sport can survive underground, what with the recent customs seizure epidemic, and all the bad publicity in the news, someone has got to stand up and show the country what our game is really all about.

[Zeke]

VMAX, a little more publicity is all we need, nothing more reall. I just thought of it. I know a lot of people think airsoft is worse then paintball, for the following reasons:

You are using a clone weapon of a real gun, only its used to shoot pellets. (so it looks very real)
Paintball guns look really fake, and unlikely to do any damage, thats why real looking guns are bad for publicity.
Airsoft was invented and meant for combat simulations, it is more of a sport now. But people see how it is meant for SIMULATIONS. And airsoft gets pretty realistic when it comes to simulation.
And With a lot of publicity, people get hostile about it. They think it will spark massive ammounts of crime with airsoft guns or any other reasons like that.

[VMAX]

Airsoft is really no different than military reenactments, except for the fact that we actually try to hit each other with an actual proijectile, whereas reenactors play pretty much a bang bang your dead cops and robbers game with blanks. Military reenacting is very well publicized and known as a hobby, and nobody with any sense ever accuses reenactors of trying to foment violence or crime.

The kind of publicity im talking about is the kind that will show people the real airsoft, the kind that we play, where we have well planned operations on private land that we have permission to use. If people don't see this side of the sport, then they will continue to associate airsoft with dumbass kids who play with springers in public places, shooting innocent bystanders, and drawing their replicas on people as a prank. Rest assured Zeke, if that image of our sport is allowed to stick, then americans WILL have their airsoft privilages restricted and possibly even revoked, just as it was in England, just as it was in Australia.

[piratevalkyrie]

vmax said:

Airsoft is really no different than military reenactments, except for the fact that we actually try to hit each other with an actual proijectile, whereas reenactors play pretty much a bang bang your dead cops and robbers game with blanks. Military reenacting is very well publicized and known as a hobby, and nobody with any sense ever accuses reenactors of trying to foment violence or crime.

The kind of publicity im talking about is the kind that will show people the real airsoft, the kind that we play, where we have well planned operations on private land that we have permission to use. If people don't see this side of the sport, then they will continue to associate airsoft with dumbass kids who play with springers in public places, shooting innocent bystanders, and drawing their replicas on people as a prank. Rest assured Zeke, if that image of our sport is allowed to stick, then americans WILL have their airsoft privilages restricted and possibly even revoked, just as it was in England, just as it was in Australia.

hot damn, my thoughts exactly right dwn to the word...

[D.]

I bet John Lu could spring it. Get into contact with him.