PAINTBALL STATISTICS


By Durty Dan -- Writer for Action Pursuit Games, Paintball Sports International, Paintball News, and Paintball Magazine.

Yearly Injuries Per 1,000 Sport Participants
NOTE: These stats were collected in the late eighties, but my sources in the insurance industry assure me that they are still applicable today. These injury statistics were collected thru a collaboration of insurance companies and national medical associations. The injury was only tabulated if it required medical attention or caused the person inured to lose at least one day of work.

Archery 0.66 PAINTBALL GAMES 0.31 Baseball 27.67
Basketball 22.04 Bicycle Riding 11.30 Boating 0.92
Basketball 22.04 Bicycle Riding 11.30 Lacross 224.5
Bowling 0.50 Boxing 11.34 Fishing 1.37
Football 27.50 Golf 1.13 Gymnastics 7.13
Hockey 12.46 Ice Skating 2.79 Lacrosse 223.79
Rugby 23.14 Soccer 10.54 Snow Skiing 3.44
Snowmobiling 2.86 Swimming 1.30 Tennis 1.09
Volleyball 4.43 Water Skiing 1.90 Wrestling 27.37

As you can see, your chances of getting injured, playing other sports, is surprisingly high. THe only sports that scored below 1 per 1000 injured were bowling and boating and paintball is still more safe that both!

Someone e-mailed me and informed me that lately (early 2000) there have been sporadic media reports that eye injuries in paintball have increased.

This increase is not indicative of paintball becoming more dangerous -- as alarmists would have you believe. The PERCENTAGE of injuries has not changed, but if more people play the NUMBER of injuries would logically increase. Your odds of getting an eye injury in paintball are still as low as it has been since 1988.

In 1998, fourty-thousand people lost their lives in automobile accidents (and that's been about the average for the past five years. To date not one person has been killed as a direct result of being hit with a paintball. You name any sport and I'm sure it won't be hard to find a fatality.

Number of Countries Where Played: (1998) 200

Growth Rate of Industry: 15-20% per year

Paintballs Produced Worldwide per year: 1,500,000,000

Estimated number of Players (estimated numbers are considered to be low -- due to the fact that there is no single body in paintball to report these numbers to):
USA (1999) 8,000,000
Canada 650,000
UK 500,000
Europe 1,000,000
Australia 300,000

Estimated No. of Sites (commercial and private)
USA: 2500
Canada: 300
UK: 400
Europe: 450
Australia 60

Player Statistics
Number of Individual Participants/Year: 1,500,000 (USA)
Number of Days Played/Year, Occasional Recreational Players 10-12
Estimated Percentage Female Players: 3 to 15% (USA)
Players Income: 29% over $50,000/year
Average Age of Players: 18-21 years (It is interesting to note that up until 1995 paintball was dominated by 30-45 year olds.)

This article was printed from the "virtual book" Durty Dan's Paintball Information Services are free to use for webpages, school projects, reference and to promote paintball to players and the non-playing public. Credit for the source of the information should be included in the bibliography or references page.
© Durty Dan Enterprises 2000. All rights reserved. All works contained herein are under copyright of the author Durty Dan. While the Terms of Use are broad they do not include the right to republish this work in any publication (hardcopy or electronic) for the purposes of personal financial gain.