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WNT, WPA and 2026

J
Bob Jewett said:
Wikipedia has a pretty good history of the World Championship. It seems that Matchroom's first event in Cardiff in 1999 (Reyes) was retroactively given world championship status.
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Wiki is good for some things, but not for others.

Since there is so little money in pool, the sport does not have the same record keeping as other major pro sports. Darn shame, but understandable.
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WNT, WPA and 2026

J
jbart65 said:
Don't agree. Eight-ball is fun to play, especially for intermediate players like me. But it is boring to watch the pros play. A World 8-ball Tour would not succeed any better, and might do worse, than a 9 ball tour. You might gain more casual fans and lose more hardcore ones.

Pro pool will probably always be a niche sport regardless. How big a niche is what MR is trying to determine.

As for heyball, is there really a lot of money in the game outside of mainland China? I don't see any evidence of that.

Keep in mind: Well before the creation of the WNT or the Predator Pro Billiard series, 9 ball was the primary choice of promotors running big tournaments. This is not a new development.
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I think you are underestimating the importance of familiarity. Baseball is also boring to watch, as is golf. But it's a game many of us play or played and it makes sense when we watch it. This draws masses of casual fans and that brings outside sponsor money.
Also, when the push for 9-ball was made, it was only available on ESPN. And while many may have had cable TV in the 80's and 90's, most did not. Now with the ability to stream, I think you'd reach a lot more of the people who are casual and would take an interest.

sjm said:
This is a subject we tend to get around to from time to time on the forum. Let's not pretend that nobody has ever tried to make 8ball the standard game in pro pool.

In 2006, Kevin Trudeau's IPT 8ball tour offered more prize money than any pool tour in history but his business model fell apart. About 10 years later, Darren Appleton created an impressive new tour called the "World Pool Series" which played 8ball. In the end, however, he could not make financial ends meet and the project lasted just a couple of years. No, we have the Ultimate Pool events trying to bring 8ball back to prominence. Nobody has made a really big splash with an 8ball tour yet, but the day may be coming.

A major reason that straight pool was replaced by 9ball (approximately 1983) was that it was too slow to make for good viewing. The worst thing about straight pool was the calling of shots. The player would call the shot, wait for the referee to repeat the call (which only a few of the attending fans could hear) and then shoot. Fans grew weary of call shot, and it was obvious that televised pool would do better without it.

Snooker, which was starting to gain some momentum at that point, had it right. You never had to say which red you were trying to pocket or which pocket. If you made a legal hit on any red, then any red that dropped counted. 9ball was the same, for on any legal hit, anything that dropped counted. TV viewing always worked best without call shot.

When TV coverage became accessible to pro pool, they knew they had to play a game that would move along at a much faster clip than straight pool. As so many of the best pro players were already playing 9ball exclusively (examples include Earl Strickland, Jose Parica, and Buddy Hall), the choice, right or wrong, was easy.

Hence, the undeniably intuitive argument for 8ball being the pro game has not held up very well in practice. That's because recreational players, on average, so rarely watch the pros. Most of those who follow the pros are more serious players, and most of them would rather watch 9ball.
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The lack of interest in 8-ball did not kill the IPT. In fact, the only time I can recall hearing the local league players talk about watching pool on TV was when the IPT was happening, because the pro's were in fact playing the same game they do. Not that "paint by numbers, slop counts" game that many either don't understand, don't recognize, or simply don't like.



Heyball (basically 8-ball) will become bigger than 9-ball in 10 years. They are the only game making an effort to meet the Olympic requirements and if Curling can become popular and generate interest, Olympic Heyball will certainly get people to start using the 8ft Olhausen/Brunswick in their basement for something other than folding laundry.
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WNT, WPA and 2026

J
... Predator started its own tour of sorts for the same reason Matchroom did. It was trying to grow a stagnant sport and protect its existing interests (sales of cues, racks, balls, cloth, eventually tables). Predator leaders are also passionate about the game, just like Barry Hearn.

The first big step by Predator was resurrecting the moribund World 10-Ball Championship in 2019. The event had only been held twice between 2010 to 2018 (it was also skipped in the 2020 Covid year).

Predator followed up two years later by creating its Pro Billiard Series (PBS) in 2021, almost two years before the official launch of the WNT.

The Pro Billiard Series was not big to start. Just five announced events initially, including the World 10-Ball championship, and not a ton of prize money.

The World 10-ball tournament in 2021 had a total $100,000 prize fund, with $35,000 for the winner (Eklent Kaci).

The following year, in 2022, Predator brought back to life the World 8-Ball Championship. The last time the event was held was a decade earlier in 2012.

Interestingly, Predator's website now touts its Billiard Series as the "No. 1 Pro Billiards Tour in the World."

This year, the PBS has 15 or so events overall, being held in eight locations (Las Vegas, St. Louis, Austria, Rome, Ho Chi Minh City, Bali, San Antonio and Jacksonville, Fla.)

TBC
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WNT, WPA and 2026

Bob Jewett
jbart65 said:
You are correct. MR ran it from 2000 to 2007. The event wasn’t held in 2008-2009.

When I did my research earlier in the year, it was hard to find lots of good information on the history of pool tournaments....
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Wikipedia has a pretty good history of the World Championship. It seems that Matchroom's first event in Cardiff in 1999 (Reyes) was retroactively given world championship status.
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WNT, WPA and 2026

S
Jerry R said:
I agree and have said before choosing 9 ball was a huge mistake. The recent rise of Heyball (more so globally than in USA) and the money behind it will likely make it more dominate. The times I've travelled to Europe seems like most were playing English eight ball or blackball. When/if pool gets into Olympics, we will certainly be watching Heyball.
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sure, but the reason heyball looks like it does (i.e. boring, for the most part) is because regular 8-ball is too easy for the pros. watching 650-700 level players is more fun to me than watching the top players just run out.

if there were no money to speak of in heyball, interest would be even lower.
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WNT, WPA and 2026

sjm
jbart65 said:
I do wonder if Hearn was already thinking a global tour when MR got involved in the early 2000s with WPC. We had two recessions, in 2001 and 2008-2009, and they were probably a big setback.
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We may never know, but it seems quite possible.

It's the Matchroom way. Purchase and production of the US Open 9ball in 2018 was surely a Matchroom experiment to see whether Matchroom could make the big field event business model work. The 2019 US Open 9ball was a huge success that I presume whetted Matchroom's appetite for greater entry into the world of big field tournament pool. As we know, 2020 was lost to COVID, but by 2021, Matchroom was already devising plans for producing new events, and these plans, over time, gave rise to the WNT.
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