Green fee- How much would you pay?

[psirus101]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

At the end of the day Jag is right, we're the ones paying the money. No-one is saying that site owners are rolling in massive profits, I reckon most site owners are in it for the love of the game.

Anyhow, I'd happily pay up to £50 for a days gaming, it'd have to be the best M-Fing game day ever but I'd happily pay more for a top notch event. An average gameday I'd expect to pay no more than about £15-20 woodland £20-30 urban/fibua/cqc.

[MUCKYMICK]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

tiercel is the price of a game day really that critical to you that you would dismiss going to another site just becuase the charge more it's not a huge amount of money difference ,i'm all for player's staying loyal to one site and team mate's but going to other sites and trying different game arenas is some thing i enjoy doing with my team mate's,genuine question again not a dig

[Tiercel]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

tiercel is the price of a game day really that critical to you that you would dismiss going to another site just becuase the charge more it's not a huge amount of money difference ,i'm all for player's staying loyal to one site and team mate's but going to other sites and trying different game arenas is some thing i enjoy doing with my team mate's,genuine question again not a dig

Yes actually, the price of the game day is the key factor for me, being on a particularly low income I can barely afford to go airsofting once a month, or even once every two months. Especially when some sites require you to use expensive bio ammo, or even restrict it to site bought ammo only which is also usually expensive.

The only exceptions to this would be if me and some mates planned like a big team away day to a big well known site, such as The Mall or something similar, but that would be like a once a year occasion.

[MUCKYMICK]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Mick, it would seem from your posts on here (and other threads) that you somehow believe your local players owe you an obligation to attend?!

If you running a site for £15, and somebody else runs an identical one for £25. Players won't care even if the £15 site is making more profit than the £25 one. Clearly the site which offers the best value for money to the player will succeed.

Running costs are the problem of site owners, not players.

no i'm under noillusion's that local player owe me any thing i'm just disturbed by how fickle player's are on this forum when it come to the cost of a game day with no thought to the time and effort that site owner's have to put in just to offer player a chance of some were to play.As far as profit goes as long as it does not cost me money i will keep running the site i own but i know i will never become a millionaire from it .

[psirus101]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

no i'm under noillusion's that local player owe me any thing i'm just disturbed by how fickle player's are on this forum when it come to the cost of a game day with no thought to the time and effort that site owner's have to put in just to offer player a chance of some were to play.As far as profit goes as long as it does not cost me money i will keep running the site i own but i know i will never become a millionaire from it .

I don't think the guys are fickle at all, in the current financial climate airsoft is for some a luxury, a damn expensive luxury at that. Whilst I appreciate the time and effort site owners put into a site, if I think the site is too expensive for what it offers to me I'll go somewhere else. On the flip side I will keep going back to a great site even if its more expensive. Its up to the site owner to make me want to attend their site.

[edit] I'm currently paying £30 for a gameday (F&O The Embassy) because I leave there thinking it was money well spent.

[MUCKYMICK]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Yes actually, the price of the game day is the key factor for me, being on a particularly low income I can barely afford to go airsofting once a month, or even once every two months. Especially when some sites require you to use expensive bio ammo, or even restrict it to site bought ammo only which is also usually expensive.

The only exceptions to this would be if me and some mates planned like a big team away day to a big well known site, such as The Mall or something similar, but that would be like a once a year occasion.

thank you for your answer ,That is shocking that site's can insist that you only use their ammo can't say i've ever been to one but if i was told to only use that site's ammo i don't think i would be staying to play a game or ever go back.

[jagillham]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

That is the nature of "a customer" - true for any market really!

If somebody offers something better, different or cheaper - people going to move site.

There is a site near me, looks very good but £25. My normal site is £20 and I enjoy it. So until I get bored of the current one... why change?

If my current one went up to £25, I'd reconsider :D

The solution as a site owner is keep your costs down, and games decent. If overheads are high, you need to look to reduce them. Most sites I know have volunteer marshals, who get free game play in return for example. Renegotiate the insurance. Play around with the price. Maybe a £5 drop in price will get you enough extra players to make more money over all. You might find that people spend their fiver saved on lunch and pyro instead - so you claw it back anyway!

[Tiercel]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

thank you for your answer ,That is shocking that site's can insist that you only use their ammo can't say i've ever been to one but if i was told to only use that site's ammo i don't think i would be staying to play a game or ever go back.

Both my local sites are site bought ammo only, one because the woodland is owned by the national trust or the British woodland heritage or something like that, as such they've got strict soil pollution regulations and have thier own strictly monitored bio ammo. The other site had a bad problem with people bringing their own non bio ammo, so had to resort to banning people from using their own ammo. Now this isn't too bad... til you consider the ammo costs £15 for 5000 bb's, as a result Ive had to switch to midcaps and semi only guns to stop myself using too much ammo! I cant afford £20 to get in, £15 for a bag of ammo and another £10-£15 on fuel to get there! Plus any other expenses such as gas, food etc. hell I cant even remember the last time I bought a pyro!

[MUCKYMICK]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

It was not so much my site that i was on about as the running cost are not bad at all ,my marshall are volunteer's and the player's are great just not a huge number of player's for the area i run my site so turn over is not great but enough to keep thing's going.
It is larger site's and mostly urban and building complexes that i was talking about as the cost of running those sort of site's go through the roof ,I have no real experiance in running that sort of site but i am trying to open a site based in an old nhs hospital but between the land owner's the local council and surrounding resident's the running cost certantly are mounting up to the point that it is looking very unlikly to be viable.This is likly to be the same for all similiar site's and from discussion with owner of such sites it does seem the norm.
As a general question which do player's think makes for a better site ,good player's or good site facility's?
At my site i charge
members £10
non members £20
hire gun £15
membership cost is £40 per year with the day you buy membership game day is free.

[jagillham]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

In general, a site is made by the players. Which isn't something you have too much control over ultimately.

However, clearly the worse a site is run, the more inclined players are to get angry, cheat etc.

If it's bottle necks everywhere, ages to wait for regen and frustrating - players going to not be at their best!

[Tiercel]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Difficult choice...

it needs to be a balance of both. You can have the best site in the world, but if the players are crap, its going to put people off. Conversely you can have some fantastic players, but if all theyve got is a field with a shed in it, thats not going to attract people either.

[psirus101]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Defend the shed!

[Shinotama]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Honestly it would depend on quite a few things for me:

# The playing environment conditions - I will not pay to play much if your site looks like it was thrown together by a 5 year old, yes, ok you cannot always control a playing environment but please don't go to B&Q with £50 and think you can make a castle, more realistic real world elements work best, go find some corrugated sheet metal, wooden pallets, oil barrels and grab a spade to make some trenches.

# The effects that are used on the site - Pyrotechnics / smoke, a site I went to one time charged us for the green fee's and THEN for the pyro's.. No thanks, not again..

# Missions - Spend more than three seconds planning, giving mission names, place names and for new people, a map won't go a miss.

# Props - It takes no more than £30 to make a decent set of flags for capture the flag or mission objectives, some sites have done this extremely well, some have not, e.g. the gas bottle with a HDD duck tapped to it which was apparently a "Bomb"...

# Marshalling / Safety - If you've spent alot on kit, or even not, I doubt you would cheat on purpose but sometimes you just never know if you are hit, honesty is the name of the game, I've asked other players and Marshall's if I have been hit so they are good, but depending on the environment for me would mean if one should be in the game, CQB sites if theres a way to be on a catwalk etc, they should be up and out of the way, nothings worse than running into a room targeting a Marshall and getting lit up by 'jimmy' on the other side.

As for safety, if your running a tight ship, working hard to keep up safety and enforce rules I am happy to pay towards that, yes every site has insurance but just like airbags, I'd rather stop it before it happens than fix it after.

[Abbadon101]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

Depends what is on offer.

This.

I would happily pay £50 if I knew it would be an amazing day. But then If I payed £20 and the marshals were crap, the players cheated and the site was a mess then I would feel royally ripped off.

[Tom Andrews]

Re: Green fee- How much would you pay?

I'm with Muckymick on this, I run Elite Action Games at Epsom, Worthing and Dorking, we charge different walkon fees at each site because we have different landlords who charge what they think the market can stand.

At each site we have to sign a lease to pay the landowner a certain sum each year, thats whether we make a profit or not. If the game is rained or snowed off we still have to pay.

At Worthing the local landowner is very reasonable (the local parish council and vandals is another matter ....) and we can charge £15 and supply a very reasonable burger and quality soft drink (I did try skimping on the drink with Tesco cola, but I foolishly drank some myself - enough said!)
At the Dorking site we have to pay what the paintball leaseholders demand, which is why its £25, but we have free rein with building, its a private estate with so far no vandlism and they have proper toilets and showers. Our only regret is the paintballers insist they supply the lunch. Compared to what the paintballers charge their customers for playing, we get it cheap.
At Epsom the landlord is pretty fair considering its urban, but we do him a favour because we keep the premises secure, so we can again charge £25. However maximum numbers is a comfortable 30, if we only get say 10 (fortunately fairly unusual) we break even at best.

We have looked at other urban sites, hospitals etc but the councils and trusts want what is a cheap amount for a commercial property, buts its not viable for a sport than only runs one or twice a month. And bonus corporate games can be hit and miss each month.

John 'Ace of Spades' Clancy runs EAG games at Longmoor, Copehill Down and Bramley through out the year, but the cost is pretty prohibitive and its easy to make a loss if players who promise to turn up fail to arrive. A deposit is seldom enough to cover the shortfall.

I'm sure most site owners run sites because they enjoy the game, profit is secondary, but we have to make a profit to cover wages, taxes, fuel etc. Just because we may have a run of good days we have to save something for those days when its blowing a gale, rain is coming in horizontally (admittedly we are soft southern nancies) and only a handful turn up.

Personally I see a lot of customers turning up in far nicer cars than I own which makes me wonder if I'm charging enough!