How It All Began

It started back in 1981 in the small town of Henniker, New Hampshire, when three men—Bob Gurnsey, a sporting goods retailer; Hays Noel, a stockbroker; and Charles Gaines, a writer—began speculating about ways to test people’s survival skills. Outfitted with industrial goggles, paints used to mark cattle and paint guns originally used by foresters to mark trees, a dozen friends tested their own skills against one another in the first game of “capture the flag.” In 1983, the first organized “paintball” tournament—called the “National Survival Game”—was held, and a new sport was off and running.

Today, professional paintball teams compete in major tournaments, often in fan-filled stadiums. Each year manufacturers spend millions on research and development to advance the state of the art and offer improved equipment to thousands of paintball players in what has become a global sport.