I know lots of people want to pile on Matchroom. Its made plenty of errors while the Predator Billiard Series has greatly improved.
Yet Predator alone can't provide enough money for pool pros. Predator only has eight events all year, and not all have big payouts like the ones in Vegas and St. Louis.
If Matchroom killed the WNT and got out of the pool business, you'd figure it would sell the rights to the US Open, WPC and Mosconi. Predator would be the likely acquirer.
I don't expect that to happen, but the crux of the matter is the same. There just doesn't seem to be enough money in pool.
Pool players want better. I get it. Predator has certainly upped its game. But aside from flashy prizes for tournament winners, Predator payouts for the rest of the field are as skimpy as the WNT tournaments.
Only a few players are really making any serious money via tournaments (outside of China.) If we look at the past year, the list would include just Biado, Yapp, Gorst, Filler, SVB, FSR and Neuhausen.
Another dozen or so appear to rake in $100,000 or so before expenses if WNT and PBS events are combined.
