Seriously? LOL you've posted disparaging comments about me before but this one is so ridiculous, it's funny.
No. It's actually pretty accurate. You just think like a pool player. Not a business owner.
You say you negotiated a deal with ESPN for the WPBA. And that your associate had contracts with several players. And that he had secured monies for the television rights to the broadcast of those games. I can only assume, given your description of the events, and the fact that he didn't "allow" his players to play in Ritchie's event, that he was trying to influence who was and wasn't viewed on television. He also tried to block players from playing in a different televised event, by the use of "contracts".
That does NOTHING for the state of pool, and everything for the promoter, and the stable of players in his "agency". He was, in effect, acting as an agent for his contracted players to secure them money from ESPN.
So, I guess this means that only certain events were able to be shown on TV...and certain players would see any form of compensation.
Do I really need to go any further to show you how you tried to actually "corner the market" on televised pool?
The NBA doesn't have contracts with players. They just provide the league for the players to play in. The owners of the franchises pay the league for their franchise. The owners then pay their employees. They get their revenues from TV licensing, gate sales, and anything they sell for their franchise brand. This is a standard model of a professional sport. You have a regulating body - the "league". The league negotiates TV rights. They take their share, and pass some of the proceeds to the teams involved. The teams then use that money for operations. The players and their agents negotiate with the owners and management. They don't negotiate with the NBA. The team owns the rights to the player as long as they have a contract with them.
In your example, you have a gentleman that contracted several players, and got them some TV time on ESPN. I'm assuming the money from ESPN went into his pocket, and he then passed on prize money and contract monies onto his players. In this example, you have an agent dictating which players will and will not receive any money from professional pool. In effect, you created an invitational tour. No aspiring pro could get into this tour, unless they signed a contract. And if they signed that contract, they wouldn't be allowed to play in any other events.
If you can't see how this prevented ALL players from making a living from "professional pool", and created a segmented "pro tour", you need new glasses.
If he had have negotiated a deal for televising the events, without having contracts with the players whose services he was selling to the network, then it would be above board. But the fact that he had the stable of the pros that would be televised, and that he alone had the legal means to control who could and couldn't attend which events is as crooked as the cue in the W.C. Fields picture.
