What is silly is if you actually think there are 100,000 people out there that would even think of "buying" a PPV of pool of ANY length of race between ANY two players.
There are probably 100,000 fans, all of whom are potential customers. Obviously you aren't going to get most of them to buy anything. But right now you are only getting 200 of them, and that is on a good day. How much worse could you do?
Of the people who "actually may" purchase a PPV, and who have "proven" that fact by buying PPV's of this sport in the past, the majority of "those" people want a longer race.
Yep, some of the 200 want long races. We don't even know how many, because some of those 200 probably don't care and would buy the matches regardless of the race length, and some probably actually prefer shorter races. So some number less than 200 paying customers feel strongly about having long races. Now how many of the rest of the 100,000 people would pay for shorter races, or a best of several shorter races match? Neither of us know, but good chance it would be at least as much if not more than the "some number less than 200" that only want long races.
New Coke did not lose the Coca Cola company a bunch of customers who already drank Pepsi, they lost their customers who drank Coke Classic and who had proven they liked the original coke for decades prior to the change that blew up in the Coca Cola companies face.
Dumbest comparison ever. Coke had billions of customers, with a b. That were massively profitable, making billions of dollars per year, again, billions with a b. It probably isn't smart to deviate from your winning formula when you have billions of customers and make billions of dollars. Pool streaming has a losing formula. Long races are getting 200 customers, on a good day, and breaking even. When all you can get is 200 customers and break even you don't think it is time to try something new?
CSI is not going to get a bunch of customers who do not enjoy watching pool to suddenly "pay" to watch a short set.
Of course people that don't want to watch pool at all aren't going to pay. But maybe many of the ones that don't buy long races because it costs too much in their opinion or for their budget (shorter races will presumably be cheaper), or because they don't want to pay for something they would only watch part of, or pay for something that will likely have a lopsided score and be a snooze fest after about 2 hours into the match, may buy shorter races. Or maybe they won't. Neither of us will know until they try it.
They "may" lose many customers who "do" enjoy watching pool matches and have already in the past proven that by purchasing PPV's in the past.
You mean the all 200 of you (at most)? Boy, that is a gamble they shouldn't take. Too much at risk there.
You do not progress a sport and gain more viewers by alienating the fans and customer base you already have. That should be self evident but so many people in the pool industry seem to be oblivious to that fact.
They only have 200 paying fans to alienate. But they have much to gain as there is potential upside by making changes, and frankly it would be near impossible to do worse than the 200 they can currently get on a bad day, don't you agree?