One pocket doesn't belong on TV or any production aimed at a mainstream audience. Making casual viewers watch a 4 hour wedge game is just insane. Not to mention that the duration of the games is completely unpredictable. Its a TV production nightmare.
Matchroom has invested a lot of time and effort to standardizing the game in our sport, recognizing that for most TV viewers, pool and nine ball mean the exact same thing. Nine ball has a fairly brisk pace, is easy to follow and match lengths are fairly predictable. Despite some outliers, I'd guess that 90% of nine ball races to eleven at top pro level take 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours. Yes, I've seen present for many of the outliers, but a) fast matches are not a big problem, as in-match commercial breaks, interviews and other features can be managed to reduce the variability of the length of a streamed/televised match, and b) the danger of long matches is greatly reduced through use of the thirty second shot clock. In the 2019 World 9-ball Championship, which was not a Matchroom production, they played without a shot clock, and matches between very elite players took over four hours on several occasions. Matchroom just renamed the World 9-ball Championship, and it is now called the World Pool Championship, a move that clearly fits their vision for selling pro pool.
Attracting some crossover fans from snooker is surely part of Matchrooms plan, and worldwide, pool fans enjoy nine ball for some of the same reasons they enjoy snooker: a) a reasonable mix between offense and defense, b) a variety of difficult and easy ball pocketing, c) defense and offense often played simultaneously and more important than any of these, d) no calling of shots, so that every possible multi-purpose shot is fair game and so that fans don't have to be advised of a player's intent on every shot --- one of the things that made 14.1 a poor game for TV, and arguably even worse for event attendees. Yes, in both snooker and pool, not using call shot can introduce a little more luck, but that's the way most fans like it. Of course, the equipment gaffe at the World Pool Championship this past week, in which comically easy playing conditions were offered, would have surely turned off more than a few potential snooker crossover fans, who would have wondered why supposedly elite cueists would need super-easy equipment, but I feel sure Matchroom will fix this.
Neither one pocket, an admittedly beautiful game, nor any game of such variable length will ever work for mainstream TV. It's not only that matches can go on and on and on, it's that some matches are over in a wink. At the Derby in about 2015, the late Tom Spencer (or was he called Tom Simpson?) and Darren Appleton spent nearly six hours on a race to three, and it was not because of slow play, but there were just so many innings in the match, and there were far too many stretches in which twenty consecutive defensive shots were played Contrastingly, if you blinked, you missed Dennis Orcullo vs Justin Bergman at the 2020 Derby City Classic, in which Dennis won in twenty minutes. How many of you recall that in the WPC final, Alex Lely mentioned one pocket. Karl Boyes' added, in rough terms "for those of you who don't know what that means, one pocket is another game played on a pool table." One pocket isn't even close to being on Matchroom's radar, and it's hard to imagine this changing. Finally, one Pocket is an American niche game --- I would guess that about 98% of the world's one pocket players are American. Matchroom's fan base is chiefly European and Asian, and the American pool fan has often lagged behind in Matchroom event viewership, so that's yet another reason you'll probably never see Matchroom do a one pocket event.
I agree with the original poster that, more than any other game, eight ball could possibly work, but only as long as there is a shot clock and no call shot. Best would be if they used a rack of un-numbered balls in which seven balls were one color, seven were another color, and the eight is black. Perhaps if Matchroom succeeds in growing pool over the next few years, they might, as an experiment, try eight ball, but I think it unlikely anytime soon.
I'm with Bob Jewett here. It's hard to imagine Matchroom doing anything but nine ball in the imaginable future.