What is the reason 3-cushion has not suceeded as a sport in the U.S,A. ? Or has it ? Are top players getting weathly as in other sports ?
What the US carom players win in tournaments is available publicly. It's not much. I think the only way to live off carom in the US is to run a room.
Carom in the US transitioned in about the 1950s from a mixture of the "small" games and 3-cushion to almost exclusively 3-cushion. That's much too hard to start with, so the only cross-overs were pretty good pool players who happened to be in a place where carom tables were available. When I learned to play (1960s), the game played almost exclusively on the two carom tables was 3-cushion. Of maybe 30 regulars, I think there was only one guy who played straight rail often. The rest of us were pool players who were curious about the pocketless table and 3-C was what we tried to play.
In the 1960s and 70s, a large part of carom in my area was in Elks Clubs. I played a few times on an Elks team. They were/are mostly old men's clubs. Many of them did nothing to encourage new members. I felt there was a "get off my table!" attitude at times. Also, I think American habits/culture turned away from that kind of club/organization, which meant there were fewer people interested in joining the clubs for any reason.
These days, the places to play 3-C seem to be nearly all owned by relatively recent immigrants. Many of those rooms are not connected to the wider 3-C community. The larger pool rooms that used to have some 3-C tables and tournaments have either disappeared or changed to a mixture of 9-foot pool tables and 7-foot bar tables.
One result of that decline in players and tables is that there is almost no audience for the game in the US. Without an audience, there are no real sponsors and consequently very little available for prizes.
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