You have a good memory. I hope mine's as good, but some of it is a blur. I'll take my best shot, recognizing I may get a detail or two wrong..
Although it wasn't the only issue, the conflict with Bonus Ball was an impediment for some of the players, despite the fact that the Ultimate 10-ball dates were known months in advance. Some who had signed on to Bonus Ball, despite having no scheduling conflict, boycotted the Ultimate 10-ball merely as an act of solidarity or, possibly, due to guidelines in the Bonus Ball Player's contract. This doomed a new and enthusiastic event producer who added a huge amount of money in his event, whose name I think was Badi Nazzat, to failure and both his event and his appetite for further investment in pro pool disappeared.
Years before, some similar issues had arisen with the IPT and player contracts and conflicting events. Kevin Trudeau went to great lengths to share that he had no intention of working with the WPA. Years later, our sport has yet to outgrow some of the conflicts that arise when players operating under the WPA umbrella play in events that coincide with WPA events. What the IPT and Bonus Ball had in common was that they ran independent of the WPA process.
This issues pertaining to playing in competing events is a big one again now, as prominent players have sometimes played in Chinese 8-ball events even if those events coincide with events on the WPA calendar. What Bonus Ball, the IPT and those that run Chinese 8-ball events have in common is that they run/ran independently of the WPA process. While WPA contends that these are conflicting events, many disagree, and pool needs to figure this issue out.
In the end, the difficulty has been getting the players and the organizations to work together so that attractive new events have every chance to succeed financially. As we see in the event being discussed in this thread, there are other potential impediments that need working out. It's less about who is at fault and more about removing some of the obstacles to the growth of the sport. At a moment in our sport's history when few are investing in production of pool events, the stage needs to be set in a way that doesn't make such investment less attractive.
