I don't think pro pool will ever reach large scale prominence and popularity. It will fade in and out and will always be around as a "niche" hobby, like RC model airplanes, ham radio or chess.
Real market power is found in consumers with money, not Joe Blow who changes tires down at the truck stop, and these are exactly the people who aren't going to frequent pool rooms. Thank about it: Bill is a CPA with a master's degree, living in a 4-bedroom brick in the suburbs. He comes home from work, picks the kids up from soccer practice and ballet class, and eats supper. Is Bill going to get up, walk out to the garage, get in the car and drive back into the city to Slick Willie's and "shoot pool" with Joe Blow and Urban Cowboy wannabes, or practice his double bank shots? You get the picture. It's just not going to happen.
The whole ambiance of a pool room just isn't something that appeals to many people. The last mass-media image most people have of pool is Tonya Harding leaning across a table with a cigarette drooping from her mouth.
To really become popular, something needs to be a spectator sport. That is, it needs to have some strong visual aspect that makes people want to WATCH it on their 52" HD TVs. That's why people love to watch ball sports, NASCAR crashes, Walking Dead and MMA matches. For the average person out there, watching pool is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Somebody pokes a ball with a wooden stick. The ball rolls into a hole. Wheeeeeeeee! Wow. I'd better sit down; I don't know if I can handle the excitement.
Now, we know there are subtle details at work behind that ball-poke: using English, a balanced stroke, aiming, etc. But these are invisible to the TV viewer. All HE sees is somebody poking a ball with a stick. Summarily, pool doesn't have the stuff to be, or become, a popular spectator sport (except for other pool players, of course). This is another major weakness, if I can call it that, of pool where popularity is concerned: the major components of playing the game are invisible; there's nothing to see or watch, at least until they figure out how to install video cameras inside the shooter's eyeball.
As others have pointed out, people now have an infinite number of other activities to distract them. Back in the old days when pool was more popular, this wasn't the case. We didn't have video games or video arcades. A pool room MIGHT have a couple of pinball machines. Later, maybe a Pong or Pacman box. Heck, we didn't have MALLS back then! I remember piling into a car with my buddies and driving across town to listen to somebody's new 45RPM record. Now kids have iPods with 5,000 songs on them, and they whine because that's not enough. Ask those kids which they'd rather do: poke a ball with a stick, or play Black Ops on the big TV. Anybody want to make bets on their answer?
'The Game is the Inner Teacher'
