Corporate Sponsorships For Geocachers

[+tands]

I recently met a geocacher who had over 3000 finds. He is one of the top 30 in the U.S.

 

Despite myself, I was very interested in the brand and model of the GPS units he and his partner used.

 

If the GPS manufacturers were smart, they would be falling over themselves to give this geocacher their GPSRs.

 

It would be one of the least expensive ways for them to demonstrate the quality and accuracy of their units.

 

Any opinions?

 

- T of TandS

[+Isonzo Karst]

I've been to two events where Garmin did supply goodies to the event hosts - not a GPSr unit, but other items. They're certainly aware of geocachers as a target market.

[+GeoMike11]

I am sure this will evolve into that eventually. But sponsorship would have to be based off of results at monitored Geocaching events and not the finds posted at Geocaching.com.

[+Moose Mob]

Corporate involvement? Next thing you know, Jeep will be providing Travel Bugs!

[+BigHank]

When I read this, my first thought was: NO! We don't need to have two "classes" of 'cachers, Amateur and Professional, and that is what I think it would lead to. I also think it would detract from the fun of the hobby a lot. I think about when I was a kid and a bunch of us would get together to play baseball. We had an emptly lot nearby, someone had a bat, someone had a ball. Most of us had baseball gloves, and there were enough to go around for all the fielders if we shared. We all knew the basic rules of baseball, and if we needed to modify them to cover something, we did.....like if we didn't have enough people to field full teams, we would just designate hits to right field as singles or something along those lines. Sometimes we wouldn't agree on an interpretation of the rules, and we would have a big argument....sometimes that ended the game for the day, but the next day we were all out there again. The important thing is, we kept it simple, and we had fun. Nowadays, kids have Little League....with corporate sponsorships, umpires, tryouts, and lots and lots of rules that are quite nitpicky.... and from watching my grandson play for two years and from talking to him, they weren't having a lot of fun (he in fact decided not to play this year because of that).

 

I kinda see 'caching in the same light as I see baseball when I was a kid. A bunch of people doing something for fun, with minimum rules (yeah, I know, we have the "guidelines" which are getting more and more complex, but that's a different topic) that you really only have to follow voluntarily, you can still play by your own rules if you want. We may have our arguments, but the "next day" we are out there playing together again.

 

I see corporate sponsorships of 'cachers as step, a big step, on the way to really ruining the hobby for the majority of players, so on second thought, my response is not only NO, but HELL NO!

 

Hank

[ju66l3r]

First, corporate sponsorship of cachers or events wouldn't lead to Caching Leagues or ruining of a game. It would lead to people running into you on purpose while finding a popular cache with business cards and GPSr demos for you to see. I already thought that McDonalds was the official Cache item sponsor anyways...

 

Second, corporate sponsorship hasn't removed the ability for 4-18 people to find a field, buy a bat, some baseballs, a few gloves for the defense and turn any pizza box into second base. Zealots, not corporate sponsorships, ruin youth sports.

[+mtn-man]

Corporate involvement? Next thing you know, Jeep will be providing Travel Bugs!

[+JohnnyVegas]

I am sure this will evolve into that eventually. But sponsorship would have to be based off of results at monitored Geocaching events and not the finds posted at Geocaching.com.

Just makes you wonder how many cachers would have 4,000 - 5,000 - even 10,000 finds claimed within the first 30 days of a manufacture offering sponser ship if they could get free gear form Magellan of Garmin for having big numbers posted on geocachng.com

 

I saw this happen in paintball years ago when equipmant manufactures started offering sponsership to high ranked players and teams.

[magellan315]

Got agree with Johnny Vegas,once paintball companies started sponsoring players and teams it took a lot of the fun out of it for the amateur, walk on players. Nothing worse than going to play on and having to find out a local team or a couple of players were going to "practice" with us.

 

I"d rather see the various manaufactuers of GPSes and other related stuff, liking hiking gear support Geocaching events. Like oragnized CITO's, Geowoodstock, or regional versions of Geowoodstock.

 

I just have this image of "sponsored" Geocahers looking like NASCAR drivers.

[+Robespierre]

I don't see how any of it keeps me from finding caches.