Ever see a golf course inside a bar? Where do you go if you want to play golf?
Ever see a bowling alley inside a bar? Where do you go if you want to bowl?
Ever see a tennis court inside a bar? Where do you go if you want to play tennis?
Golf courses have bars. Tennis clubs have bars. Bowling alleys have bars. But no bars have golf courses / tennis cts / bowlingalleys.
Therefore.....you have businesses whose main product is their sport. Yes, they sell alcohol to their customers also but it is secondary....even if it adds up to large number. The customer spends money ON THE SPORT.....THE SPORT....is the attraction. The sport itself generates revenue.....which can be used to promote the sport further....to develop the talent....which leads to pro tours being worthy endeavors.
A pool table is found in almost every bar in the country. All it takes is a space of 250sq ft or so. It is used to sell alcohol. Many times it is given away free.....to sell alcohol. Few bar owners have any interest in the sport. They use the sport to sell alcohol.
Therefore.....every bar in the country takes business from the pool room owner.....most of whom are into the sport....(or they wouldn't own one)....most of whom invest in the sport, buy their own equipment, run tournaments, develop talent.....promote the sport. Yes, many sell alcohol also. But their product is....their interest is.....the sport.
You have bars with pool tables.....and you have pool rooms with bars. Bars with pool tables attract a power drinker.....someone who goes there to drink and might play pool. And some of them get organized into league teams.....which....the sport would benefit if these teams were in a pool room where the real rules were known, etiquette learned, and the game taken care of. Pool rooms attract people who go there to play pool and might have a drink. The pool room owner is interested in the sport but his revenue stream is limited by the bar owner.....therefore little money can be invested back into the sport.....it's tough enough to just meet his nut.
That's the financial end.
What bars with pool tables do to the game in terms of image, drunks fighting, ridiculous league rules, etc....is another story.
Not until there is a National Billiard Room Only association with a Billiard Room Only league....will the sport grow into what it is capable of.
Overall, I agree with nearly all your points made about the differences in the situation between the pool room, and the bar. In all my years of playing, I would have to say that nearly all the weekly tournaments I have played in have been in a bar setting, rather than a pool room setting. Just for the fact that in my area there has only been 1 real pool room consistently available to play in. And the rest of the pool action has taken place in multiple bars in my area.
For a few years my area had a second pool room opened and operated by the owners of the pro shop I worked for. When the owner looked at opening the pool room they initially wanted to open it for families, but in Oregon the liquor laws prevented it. Because under Oregon law, if you open a restaurant that serves alcohol you can allow children to come into the facility. But the moment that restaurant installs a single pool table into their facility they can no longer allow children. Its an adults only situation at that point. All because of the pool table. Like somehow the presence of the pool table is a danger to the children and the families that come into to enjoy some fine food and drink. Now that makes no sense to me, but its the way it is in Oregon until someone would choose to fight the regulation and get it changed.
A quality pool room will by its nature be invariably larger than any common bar. The pool room owner has in their situation the ability to deliver a higher quality level of playing competition for the competitive pool player. Due to the quality of the offered equipment, quality of maintenance, quality of customer care. But historically the pool room owner expects to just develop a major customer base with minimal advertising & marketing of their room with only minimal amount of events taking place. Expecting that the average pool player will just somehow find their way into the pool room and stay there.
It seems to me that with all the other entertainment options existing in the modern world, the pool room owner needs to expand their ideas of how to go about growing their business and customer base way beyond what they have done before.
Awhile back I was reading an article about a snooker club in ireland that had closed down a few years ago, and a new owner was getting ready to reopen the club. And this was a members based club. And when the club was originally in business they had 6000 monthly paying members. The new owner said he hoped to get to 4000 monthly paying members in the first year. Can you imagine having 4000 or more montly paying members to a pool room. If you were a pool room owner and you had 4000 monthly members paying you say $40 a month to come in and enjoy your playing facility for multiple free hours of pool time every day would you consider that a successful operation?. It seems to me having 160K a month in membership income ought to be enough to pay the lights, basic expenses and few employee wages. Add food income, and lottery income, and equipment income, and any other income streams and you should do ok.
Membership based pool rooms seems to be the norm in europe. So why cant the american pool room owner take a page from the european pool room owner playbook and apply here it in the good ol USA. Americans already pay a monthy membership to have access to the gyms that they go to.
If a pool room owner hired a membership manager, and offered monthly recurring memberships for individuals and families, and organized nightly leagues centered around industries common to their area, and promoted to those businesses then it seems to me that you could build your customer base pretty good.