The one example of this that I clearly remember is from when I used to play paintball. There's a field in PA called Skirmish USA; their fields (~40 of them!) are very nice. However I will probably never play there again because they gouge you with the cost of paint and force you to use theirs. At the time that I played there they would charge $100 per case (2000rnds) of paint, which is absurd even by paintball standards. The only reason I went there in the first place is because they had a half off paint "sale", which brought the price down to around what one would expect to pay for a case of paint.
Wow, only $30 for the whole day! What a deal!
Fuuuuuck...
With the money I spent on paint in one day, I could've bought a brand new airsoft gun!
With the money I spent on paint in one day, I could've bought a brand new airsoft gun!
What they should've done is priced their paint at market value (with a small markup), and set their admission price to accurately reflect the true cost of running the field. If you have an excellent service and a well designed field(s) (which ABC Paintball had both), people would be willing to pay the higher admission cost.
The great thing about airsoft is that the BBs are very inexpensive compared to paintballs. Fields can easily charge over market value for each bag of BBs without scaring away players.
No matter where an airsofter plays they require three things: other players, power, and BBs. Since airsoft fields are somewhat rare, the fields can draw in players over a wide area. The only things a field needs to be able to provide are the consumables used to power their guns (electricity/batteries, CO2, green gas) and BBs. While players are able to get these consumables online, it's likely to be more expensive to do this when taking shipping into account. Take for example the cost of BBs at my closest field:
5000rnd 0.2g BBs
Local field: $10
Evike: $9.99 + $16.62 shipping = $26.61
Airsoft Megastore: $11.95 + $9.99 shipping = $21.94
The local field can charge so little and still pull a profit because they know players need BBs so they buy in bulk, reducing the shipping cost. In order for a player to save money by buying online, they would need to buy several bags of BBs to offset the cost of shipping. By explaining this difference in cost, fields should be able to convince players to buy their BBs without refusing players that don't buy from the field.
Another point to consider: If the field refuses to admit a player because they refuse to buy the field's BBs, they lose the sale of BBs and the admission! Ideally there should never be a reason to refuse an admission, especially over something as frivolous as this.
The only exception I could make to this rule is requiring bio-degradable BBs for outdoor fields, however it would still be better to allow players to buy bio-degradable BBs elsewhere
