Table Tennis on ESPN

BlaineBarcus

BlaineBarcus

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Silver Member
Did any one else happen to watch this yesterday. I thought it was really screwed up how they handicapped the pros so much and 2 average joes ended up in the finals of the largest pay out that sport has seen. But aside from all that what I really wanted to get at was how they got sposorship from budweiser and what I think was an hour and a half of air time on espn. If ping pong can do this why in the hell can't pool? Ya I know there's been a million discussions on this forum about why pool struggles but this is all I could think about while watching these average people (not pros because that's a little different) tap the ball back and forth to eachother. It was a complete joke.
 
BlaineBarcus said:
Did any one else happen to watch this yesterday. I thought it was really screwed up how they handicapped the pros so much and 2 average joes ended up in the finals of the largest pay out that sport has seen. But aside from all that what I really wanted to get at was how they got sposorship from budweiser and what I think was an hour and a half of air time on espn. If ping pong can do this why in the hell can't pool? Ya I know there's been a million discussions on this forum about why pool struggles but this is all I could think about while watching these average people (not pros because that's a little different) tap the ball back and forth to eachother. It was a complete joke.
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This was probably the KillerSpin tournament in Vegas right? How did they get sponsorship? The same way everyone does, by asking for it and convincing the sponsor that they are going to see some kind of return on their investment.

None of us know the particulars though. We don't know if the Budweiser sponsorship was a corporate deal or done through a local distributor. We don't know if similar to pool, the promoters had to foot the production bill for the video coverage.

ESPN is nearly a complete joke in a lot of ways because they love to pick up these made-up contests and wacky versions which defile the actual sport. Remember 7-Ball?

The sad fact is that goofy is in and serious is out for most sports. Shows like Fear Factor, American Gladiator, and the like have trained us not to expect serious effort and to laugh at failure because it's just a goofy activity anyway.

Pool has to have a lot of things come together to get big. Inventing more goofy versions of it isn't one of them.
 
ping pong is fast paced and it is extremely entertaining to watch for some people... myself included.

Some people have said that ping pong could actually become fairly popular in this country one day... i'm skeptical but i see the potential.

Ping pong is more "legit" because it is an Olympic sport.
 
It was the hardbat tournament.....and I agree dabank its interesting to watch the professionals play because its very fast paced and intense but when you have a 74 year old man (literally the guy was 74 years old) and some guy that won a bar qualifyer playing in the finals, its not fast paced and intense in any way
 
While I did enjoy watching the ping-pong tournament, the Comcast schedule did indicate that there would be two consecutive hours of WPBA programming on ESPN. Instead, we got just one hour of pool on ESPN.

This isn't the first time that ESPN has shown programming that wasn't listed on the Comcast schedule of events.
 
World Class Table Tennis (ping pong) is absolutely an amazing sport to watch. The reflexes required are unbelievable. The average Joe can't even return a serve from a Pro let alone beat one. I don't know what the handicap was or how good the "Pros" were but it doesn't seem possible the two people I saw could beat a real pro (unless the game was Pro 21 points Joe 2 points). I only saw that last minute or two of the ping pong event flipping thru channels. Hopefully I can see a re-run.
 
I saw a little of the one where the guy was 78 in some type of final. It was also for 100,000 gs. Table tennis > Pool
 
BlaineBarcus said:
It was the hardbat tournament..... ...
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This tournament was next to the BCA Trade Show this year. Literally in the room next to the BCA exhibition rooms in the Sands Convention Center. First prize was $100,000 and second was about $5,000. I wonder if they went for a saver. I watched a little of the tournament live -- free admission.
 
The pros in this event were legit although not world class. The US Hardbat champion made it to the semi-finals but lost while giving up a 17 point spot to the young guy who eventually won. Best 2 of 3 with me only having to get 4 points against 21? I like myself against just about anybody with a hardbat. Just sayin.

I thought it was pretty entertaining. My guess is it cost Bud Light almost nothing to run the tournament ($1 million is a drop in the bucket on their ad budget) and they got a lot of face time. Excellent production values and a decent game.

My sense is if you were able to do the same thing in pool you could draw a big TV audience once. Just like this. But only once. Just like this.

Brian in VA
 
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