One of the most often asked questions about airsoft  is, is it a sport or it is a hobby? We are guilty here at Popular Airsoft as we haven't even agreed on what airsoft really is and we interchange "sport" and "hobby" in our posts. We are back to this question again with Dave Baks of Airsoft Obsessed giving his answer to this question, defining airsoft as a hobby from his perspective and experience as a sports coach:

Interesting points he raised. However, his reasoning can still define airsoft as a sport since airsoft practical shooting (called as "Action Air" by the IPSC) has clear and standardized rules and equipment with strong followings in Europe and Asia. Airsoft 3-gun can also be defined as a sport since it's based on the actual 3-Gun sport.

Perhaps, he is defining airsoft mainly in terms of force-on-force which really, no airsoft force-on-force sport format has been widely accepted amongst airsoft organisers around the world. In Southeast Asia, especially in the Philippines, the airsoft force-on-force they have is the "Speedball" which is similar to the Paintball format but it is a most tedious format, with lots of cheating accusations and marshaling can be almost a 1:1 thing (1 marshal to 1 player) plus the risk of marshals being caught in the crossfire most of the time.

Dave is right that there are many ways to enjoy airsoft, but we tend to qualify this enjoyment as a hobby and as a sport, depending on what type of airsoft game you are playing. It is only the more well-known segment of airsoft, which are the skirmishes (and milsim events) that happen at any indoor or outdoor airsoft facility anywhere in the world, that there are different rules to which game site owners and organisers adopt. The only one set of rules that are abided to by all types of airsoft game formats are the gun safety rules, and there is no debate about that.

I do digress about the third part about standardized field or play area as an important criteria to define an activity as a sport. Shooting sports, especially real steel and airsoft, do not have clearly standardised field sizes as game organisers setup different types of courses for shooters to go through. Many racing sports do not have standardised fields, they have different types of routes, race tracks, distances, terrain, and time trials. Still, these are widely accepted to be sports activities.

Thus, it is hard to generalise airsoft to be a hobby or call it a sport and the debate may continue on such a question. But for us, we are very much open minded to how airsofters would try different ways to enjoy airsoft. After all, airsoft actually started as something to have fun with guns minus the dangers and there was no discussion of it being a sport after all. But then, bows and arrows were designed mainly as weapons of war before they also evolved into the sport of archery.

So what do you think? Is airsoft a hobby or a sport?