I don't mean to belittle anyone here, but equating tournament prize money + sponsorship "money" for SVB and speculating on him being anywhere remotely close to a millionaire indicates a huge misunderstanding of the world our current professional pool players live in. Sponsor money is typically very little; the sponsors aren't large corporations with big budgets that throw money at pool players like Nike does at other pro athletes. I don't know what Shane's deal is with Cuetec, but you can bet various important parts of your anatomy that it's not making him wealthy. Traveling expenses are very high, and you have to place high in most tournaments simply to recover those costs (which SVB typically does). On top of that, we all have taxes, particularly on tournament winnings that are well-publicized. Now we have all those payments that most of us have: cell phone, mortgage or rent, utilities, internet service, cable or satellite, etc. So, let's be optimistic and say all of SVB's expenses and regular payments account for 25% of earnings (a very low number; 40-50% is usually more realistic), plus another 20% for income taxes (another conservative estimate). Now let's be even more optimistic and say SVB earns $300k in prize and challenge match money in a year. Deduct 45% total expense ($135k), and SVB clears $165k in a REALLY good year. Now we have to make the extraordinary assumption that Shane continues to dominate in this manner year after year, while assuming no inflation incurs in his travel expenses, he never depletes his cash for an unexpected expense (tonsilitis or appendectomy with a hospital stay will wipe a large portion of that out, particularly since it's likely that Shane and other pro pool players have minimal or no health care insurance), never buys a new car, gets married and pays for a ring and honeymoon, or has a child to care for. Even assuming he has the best fortune of any person ever, it takes him 6 to 7 years to clear $1 million. A few bad rolls a year probably cuts that 30 to 50%. Now we're up to 10-15 years to accumulate $1 million. Even if he invests wisely, financial markets are volatile. He may earn a nice return of 8-10%, or if he's forced to liquidate assets in a down market he might lose 20%. In other words, no guaranty he'll come out ahead even with the best of financial planning. All said and done, even being arguably the best pool player on the planet is among the worst paths a person could possibly take if your goal is to amass a net worth of $1 million or more.
All that said, if a pro pool player can accomplish this extraordinary feat, Shane's at the head of the pack. But the simple fact of the matter is that many of the best professional pool players out there find it very difficult to make even a decent living at it, much less achieve any lasting financial success from it. I sincerely hope this changes in the foreseeable future and that tournament prize money achieves a significant boost from new sponsorship, but those of us who have followed the sport for 30+ years aren't holding our breath, since professional pool has been on a significant, steady decline for quite some time. Perhaps pool's growing popularity in other global markets (particularly Asia and Qatar) will provide some much-needed capital into the sport. It's a wholly inadequate situation for some of the most skilled athletes that walk the earth.
