MatchRoom's response to the WPA player sanctions:
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I've heard that's its the main pastime there of young men until they get married. I think 4-ball carom is the main game.
In this podcast, Mike P provides the best balance viewpoint I’ve seen so far and also the clearest description of the value that the WPA (theoretically) provides.
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Doggin' It Live Show- mid day
Panozzo drops by to continue the WPA conversation with a balancing prospective . Thanks as always for stopping by.As always, thanks for tuning in and to supp...
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Thank you. The young Mike is so one sided. I look forward to listening to the older Mike's thoughts.In this podcast, Mike P provides the best balance viewpoint I’ve seen so far and also the clearest description of the value that the WPA (theoretically) provides.
Doggin' It Live Show- mid day
Panozzo drops by to continue the WPA conversation with a balancing prospective . Thanks as always for stopping by.As always, thanks for tuning in and to supp...
game is on, 30k. noone knows why that escalated lol
my thoughts exactly. poor journalism, you don't sit and sigh, roll your eyes and post a bunch of crap about your interviewee after the interview. i hope he matures and learns from this, because the podcast itself has potential
Matchroom vs. WPA? It is all about the views.
I've wanted to be a promoter for 20 yrs. so I've studied the viewership and here is my rough take on it.
Viewership is happening on YouTube.,,,,,You can go there and count the views any time 24 hrs. a day.
Whether you're needing the views to satisfy a sponsor that is paying you or you're trying to recoup money you spent on an event
the standard of viewership needed is/could be looked on in a similar light if you have something to sell to help recoup money.
If you are lucky enough to get corporate sponsorship for your channel, then starting pay with a corporate sponsor is around 0.08 cents but
"What does it take to get a corporate sponsor that will pay well above regular YouTube starting pay?"
Answer: A lot more subscribers (probably close to a million) and a lot more viewers than pool today is able to manage.
I have read somewhere that "sponsors" when you get them might pay as much as .08cents per view, so lets look at that and while also knowing that .08 cents maybe way off for what the sponsor is willing to pay for this demographic and it could be closer to 0.04 cents.
1.00 div by .08=12.5 views needed (per dollar spent)
1.00 div by .04=25 views needed " "
Now how much are we going to spend to get this baby going?
You're employing what 200 professional players?
Production on how many tables? You know that the public only cares about the top players so lets just guess on the amounts.
Venue Rent---40k
Production for several tables live streaming and into YouTube on 3 tables----if you use production companies---you can be into 200k per arena
so lets round it down because you got a deal and say you spent (this is everything including the digital arena wall)-----500k
Support Personnel --wild estimate but you need commentators, behind the scenes people, scorekeepers, referees
the list goes on and lets say its for 4 days.-----est at---- 30k
This is not the best markup but now you have 570k and you still need a prize fund so
570k plus 200 player entries at 1000= 770k plus 300k added and now you've eclipsed a million dollars. $1,070,000
You have 200 people on 500k dollars---if everyone got the same payout for participation that would be 2500 dollars and all would come close to breaking even if they ate Ramen and chased it with a Pine float. (toothpick in water). I think the most recent estimate for international travel, hotel etc. puts the expenses around 3500, but could be lower if sharing a room.---Since this isn't happening with the prize fund, how many will go home with nothing?
So now let's say we are asking ABC corporation to cover the whole gig.
1,070,000 x 12.5= 13, 375, 000 views needed at 0.08 cents per view to make the sponsor happy
1,070,000 x 25 = 26,750,000 views needed at 0.04 cents per view to make sponsor happy
It wouldn't matter to a sponsor whether or not those views were coming from YouTube or from sports platforms as long as they are verified.
Matchroom is the only promoter with access to the sports platforms and they do sell their content. So why has this not happened yet that there is more money in Pool?
My opinion is that the YouTube numbers are so low in comparison to what would be needed to actually support a single solitary source of funding who might want us as a demographic (because we buy their stuff) that no one will touch us yet.
Golf had provable numbers and those numbers came from retail sales and sponsors were interested.
I'm sure that our retail sales are being considered just as much but our viewership is speaking for itself.
Most estimates of the practioners of the sport here in the US, put the top numbers over 30 million, then the actives at 11-13 million
but when you count the numbers you can find for the pool leagues, you'll be doing good to get it over 1 million and the pool league system has
become the heart and soul of the industry because driving sales in the pool rooms need people and they are the people nowadays.
This is the Kobiashi Maru of Pool
(The no win scenario.)--for Star Trek fans and yes, I am one as a member of Starfleet Command here.
The WPA is in the same game as Matchroom when it comes to appealing to sponsors for money for the players--if they were to choose to do it-- and the problem is how do you make someone want us, with subpar sales of equipment compared to golf, (guessing here) I don't know the exact numbers, or any demonstration of brand loyalty---as we all know that Pool Player spend so much money in the rooms.
Fixing a great deal of what I just mentioned will come naturally in time with more people involved, but that may take a while for any
effort to reverse pro popularity trends with amateur players, when league players rarely know who the pros are.
If there were such an effort to get them watching pool, then we might eventually get a percentage of that 1 million estimated league players watching pro pool on YouTube.
Roughly Estimated League Player (Amateur Player) numbers
250k or so APA, 60k or so BCA associate's and wild estimate of the other non-google searchable leagues---500k and plus a best guess on the non-league players at 250k in the US= 810 + 250= 1,060,000 estimated players in my opinion in the United States---(might be generous)
So how many of those can be turned into weekly viewers of 1 match per week?
Let's be generous and say 250k
250k x 1 view to view a match all at one time = 250k views per week x 52 weeks=13,000,000 views which is enough to get one event to make its viewership for a sponsor, but it would take us a year to get the viewership and only if we went after the current player market to get those views.
In view of all this Matchroom is the only body of people that are set up to even give it a go. The WPA has no chance of bringing on any corporate interest because they have absolutely no power to make Matchroom or any other promoter to allow them to siphon views from their privately paid for productions for the purposes of gaining sponsors.
There is a way to make the numbers work, but these are the situations and numbers that I see for current events, and they aren't encouraging.
Viewership is what you have to improve. Viewership will pay the bills. There isn't a lot of room for improvement without a platform to gain viewership and Matchroom is the only one with the platform to gain the viewership from the sports platforms and pool is being sold as diverse content for sports platforms. It's not because it's so popular that the world is demanding it. Pool needs a salesman and Matchroom is it. One deal at a time crafted to work for each corporate sponsor, they will be able to make it happen and in time viewership will increase.
I haven't been here for a few months now, so I'm not sure how long I will be this time. I'm playing more and today is Friday! Yay!
I've wanted to be a promoter for 20 yrs. so I've studied the viewership and here is my rough take on it.
Viewership is happening on YouTube.,,,,,You can go there and count the views any time 24 hrs. a day.
Whether you're needing the views to satisfy a sponsor that is paying you or you're trying to recoup money you spent on an event
the standard of viewership needed is/could be looked on in a similar light if you have something to sell to help recoup money.
If you are lucky enough to get corporate sponsorship for your channel, then starting pay with a corporate sponsor is around 0.08 cents but
"What does it take to get a corporate sponsor that will pay well above regular YouTube starting pay?"
Answer: A lot more subscribers (probably close to a million) and a lot more viewers than pool today is able to manage.
I have read somewhere that "sponsors" when you get them might pay as much as .08cents per view, so lets look at that and while also knowing that .08 cents maybe way off for what the sponsor is willing to pay for this demographic and it could be closer to 0.04 cents.
1.00 div by .08=12.5 views needed (per dollar spent)
1.00 div by .04=25 views needed " "
Now how much are we going to spend to get this baby going?
You're employing what 200 professional players?
Production on how many tables? You know that the public only cares about the top players so lets just guess on the amounts.
Venue Rent---40k
Production for several tables live streaming and into YouTube on 3 tables----if you use production companies---you can be into 200k per arena
so lets round it down because you got a deal and say you spent (this is everything including the digital arena wall)-----500k
Support Personnel --wild estimate but you need commentators, behind the scenes people, scorekeepers, referees
the list goes on and lets say its for 4 days.-----est at---- 30k
This is not the best markup but now you have 570k and you still need a prize fund so
570k plus 200 player entries at 1000= 770k plus 300k added and now you've eclipsed a million dollars. $1,070,000
You have 200 people on 500k dollars---if everyone got the same payout for participation that would be 2500 dollars and all would come close to breaking even if they ate Ramen and chased it with a Pine float. (toothpick in water). I think the most recent estimate for international travel, hotel etc. puts the expenses around 3500, but could be lower if sharing a room.---Since this isn't happening with the prize fund, how many will go home with nothing?
So now let's say we are asking ABC corporation to cover the whole gig.
1,070,000 x 12.5= 13, 375, 000 views needed at 0.08 cents per view to make the sponsor happy
1,070,000 x 25 = 26,750,000 views needed at 0.04 cents per view to make sponsor happy
It wouldn't matter to a sponsor whether or not those views were coming from YouTube or from sports platforms as long as they are verified.
Matchroom is the only promoter with access to the sports platforms and they do sell their content. So why has this not happened yet that there is more money in Pool?
My opinion is that the YouTube numbers are so low in comparison to what would be needed to actually support a single solitary source of funding who might want us as a demographic (because we buy their stuff) that no one will touch us yet.
Golf had provable numbers and those numbers came from retail sales and sponsors were interested.
I'm sure that our retail sales are being considered just as much but our viewership is speaking for itself.
Most estimates of the practioners of the sport here in the US, put the top numbers over 30 million, then the actives at 11-13 million
but when you count the numbers you can find for the pool leagues, you'll be doing good to get it over 1 million and the pool league system has
become the heart and soul of the industry because driving sales in the pool rooms need people and they are the people nowadays.
This is the Kobiashi Maru of Pool
(The no win scenario.)--for Star Trek fans and yes, I am one as a member of Starfleet Command here.
The WPA is in the same game as Matchroom when it comes to appealing to sponsors for money for the players--if they were to choose to do it-- and the problem is how do you make someone want us, with subpar sales of equipment compared to golf, (guessing here) I don't know the exact numbers, or any demonstration of brand loyalty---as we all know that Pool Player spend so much money in the rooms.
Fixing a great deal of what I just mentioned will come naturally in time with more people involved, but that may take a while for any
effort to reverse pro popularity trends with amateur players, when league players rarely know who the pros are.
If there were such an effort to get them watching pool, then we might eventually get a percentage of that 1 million estimated league players watching pro pool on YouTube.
Roughly Estimated League Player (Amateur Player) numbers
250k or so APA, 60k or so BCA associate's and wild estimate of the other non-google searchable leagues---500k and plus a best guess on the non-league players at 250k in the US= 810 + 250= 1,060,000 estimated players in my opinion in the United States---(might be generous)
So how many of those can be turned into weekly viewers of 1 match per week?
Let's be generous and say 250k
250k x 1 view to view a match all at one time = 250k views per week x 52 weeks=13,000,000 views which is enough to get one event to make its viewership for a sponsor, but it would take us a year to get the viewership and only if we went after the current player market to get those views.
In view of all this Matchroom is the only body of people that are set up to even give it a go. The WPA has no chance of bringing on any corporate interest because they have absolutely no power to make Matchroom or any other promoter to allow them to siphon views from their privately paid for productions for the purposes of gaining sponsors.
There is a way to make the numbers work, but these are the situations and numbers that I see for current events, and they aren't encouraging.
Viewership is what you have to improve. Viewership will pay the bills. There isn't a lot of room for improvement without a platform to gain viewership and Matchroom is the only one with the platform to gain the viewership from the sports platforms and pool is being sold as diverse content for sports platforms. It's not because it's so popular that the world is demanding it. Pool needs a salesman and Matchroom is it. One deal at a time crafted to work for each corporate sponsor, they will be able to make it happen and in time viewership will increase.
I haven't been here for a few months now, so I'm not sure how long I will be this time. I'm playing more and today is Friday! Yay!
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Not much new here. Nobody who's up to speed doubts the value of having a world governing body of pool or any other sport. Unfortunately, as Mike P points out, it is not the role of such a body to focus on event production and dictating rules that limit participation. A governing body must market the game worldwide and WPA seems badly sidetracked from this duty. When Mike P noted that the WPA appears to be strong-arming pro pool in a way that doesn't serve the best interests of either the game or those who play it for a living, he said the same things found in this thread, although with greater clarity.
Credit to Mike P for putting up with the countless times Molina Mike interrupted him in the middle of a sentence. I don't think many could have handled it. That said, Molina Mike is very credible to me as somebody passionate about the game who is committed to staying on top of the issues that surround the game. He has a solid podcast but his skills as an interviewer need much more development. If he tidies it all up, this can become the best podcast in our sport. Wishing him luck.
I'm pretty sure you have slipped a couple of decimals in your calculation. YouTube revenues are calculated in dollars per thousand views.
The low end for videos that get a lot of brief views seems to be about $1 per thousand views. That means with a million views you will get $1000.
The high end is about $8 per thousand views. A million views will get you $8000. That's for longer videos that will keep the viewers watching ads.
In terms of subscribers, the number I saw was a dollar per subscriber per year for an active channel. That usually includes some kind of merchandise. If you have a million subscribers and you work at extracting money, you can have a gross income of a million a year.
That said, their differing viewpoints and perspectives provide much depth to the issues discussed. I'm happy to hear them respectfully disagree or question each other. It also works in their more heated interviews, eg. good cop / bad cop.
Twitch is probably a better vehicle for pool players than YouTube. Many twitch streamers (video game players) make good money from subscriptions. Twitch takes half the subscription fee.
Matchroom of course can just use Matchroom Live one the DAZN deal expires. But for individual players I think Twitch is a better deal than posting video on YouTube as you don’t need millions of views to earn revenue.
Atorontopoolplayer
Active member
Seems I might be alone in this here but I enjoyed Molina on those pods, he wouldn't let them duck questions and give non answers. It might not exactly help them get future guests but sometimes if the interviewee is avoiding/ dodging or generally feeding you a line it's nice to see them be pushed back on.
His passion is appreciated and I like him. But the two main things that I would take issue with is interrupting the interviewee and just the look of exasperation during the interview.
When he is interrupting, it’s clear he isn’t really listening. He’s hearing but he’s more focused on what he wants to say. As a result I thought he was pushing a question that Ishaun had already answered instead of getting more nuance on the answer. I think it was related to the appropriateness of a tour banning players vs. a governing body.
I agree that he does a good job of making sure people don’t duck questions, but he has to make sure he doesn’t alienate his guests because we want to see the WPA continue coming on and speaking directly to the public.
I wasn't describing YouTube Pay at all.
You accurately described regular YouTube Pay.
What I was describing is the scenario where a sponsor was interested in Pool enough to sponsor events and YouTube would be used as the platform, in addition to Facebook possibly, but video capture on YouTube and from that of course--YouTube pay, but for sponsorship a company that would like to advertise to the pool market would be solicited to sponsor the event or string of events.
The event productions would be streamed in YouTube, Facebook etc. to get the views needed to satisfy the sponsorship requirements just like any advertising campaign is judged on its total cost and total views mostly in the timeframe between events but there are ongoing views.
What I was illustrating is the rough total cost of producing a 200 man event and how many views would be needed to satisfy the
the sponsorship expectations.
YouTube Pay, is what you described, but it's in no way enough money to sponsor series of events of the normal field sizes that Matchroom or Predator are producing.
I haven't viewed a match recently, but I remember Predator using a 2 to 3 minute break interval in their matches in which they would have
12 to more sponsors logo run with some background music---very smart move-----because it falls within the guidelines of YouTube, because it's considered a break, not a commercial.
I'm sure those companies paid something to be featured and even though there were a lot of them, did they contribute enough to cover the expenses of the event?
13 sponsors on at million dollars an event would mean those sponsors are in for $76,923.07 a piece were it an event like I described in my first post.
76,923.07 x 12.5 views needed per dollar to make it work at .08 cents per view is 961,538.45 views which is considerably less than having one sponsor in for 1 million dollars but that is still a lot of money if there is no provable return and especially if there will be another tournament posted in a month shutting down the viewership of the first event. If the sponsor didn't look on the pool crowd so favorably for return sales, they might want to pay 0.04 cents per view or less and demand a lot more views.
It's not impossible but everything has to line up to make it work long term. An advertising campaign can be created to produce verified sales to the pool demographic that are levied against the total cost.
Back to YouTube
The first YouTube channel to gain a million subscribers, is that the one that ends up with the sponsorship offers? or could someone be interested in Pool now?? Could someone design a program attractive for a sponsor that would meet the advertising and sponsorship requirements? Yes, I believe so and I believe there are corporations outside of Pool that would be happy to sign on. So, who can do that? I can't and anyone that hasn't been in the production of pool events can't. Only an experienced promoter who has run events before could be counted on by a sponsor to have a hitch free production.
It all depends on expenses, size of fields, presentations made with production facets designed to make people want to watch that can be employed. More importantly it depends on whether the viewer likes what he is seeing and will come back and watch multiple times.
I have not looked in awhile, but, I don't remember many Predator events posted to YouTube that got over 1 million views.
Matchrooms maybe be more recently. I have not looked recently. If I were Matchroom or Predator, I'd know exactly what I'd do to try and open this market in a way to give it more popularity with amateurs. People have tried before, but no one has gone after the amateur viewers unless of course you count a social media campaign an attempt. They way people disregard media information, I don't call that a good attempt but I believe it can be done.
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On the contrary, you are correct in your assessment.
I think we're together here. He's offering nice, thorough, content, and asks the tough questions. He can become even better as he grows in his interviewing skills, which are not yet polished.
I watched the MM and (more balanced) MP podast from yesterday. I would consider myself a super fan. I know of almost all the players worldwide, buy the streams, buy tons of pool products, live and breath pool myself, visit pro events, etc. All that said, I did not really understand many of the functions of the WPA and its federations until the past two weeks. We need to hear the achievements made by the WPA and federation organizations, rather than only the banning of the players. That would go a long way towards fans (and pro players) appreciating them. That's one thing I thought MM did a good job in pointing out.
MP made a good point that the federations in Europe "develop" the players into the pro players of today. In contrast to the amateur leagues in the USA that are more for socializing, and do not produce pro players. That entails paying entry and travel fees to Eurotour events, paying for coaches, paying for pool training seminars multiple times per year, etc. All the money to do this comes from govt (taxpayer) money allotted to the federations "because" of the association of the WPA to the IOC (Olympics). In the USA there is none of this, and that is because our taxes do not go towards athletics in any way. So from a USA only standpoint, the WPA does not do much. But from a worldwide pool standpoint, the organization provided by the WPA and member federations, provides a cohesive "body" that the IOC recognizes, and then money funnels down from the IOC/taxpayer.
I personally now think after listening to this for a couple weeks, that the WPA and its member federations could still have all their exact same functions, IOC ties, IOC/taxpayer funding for training, etc., and simply not ban any players. (And MR not pay sanction fees). If that were to happen, then the pros would play in the MR events and/or the WPA events as they see fit on an individual person and individual event basis without any restrictions from any entity. When they attend WPA events, they should continue to get financial support for "those" events. When they attend MR events, no support. I really don't see how that would hurt WPA, MR, Predator, Other promoters, or individual player. It would be business as usual for the federations, and simply more opportunities for the players.
IMO
MP made a good point that the federations in Europe "develop" the players into the pro players of today. In contrast to the amateur leagues in the USA that are more for socializing, and do not produce pro players. That entails paying entry and travel fees to Eurotour events, paying for coaches, paying for pool training seminars multiple times per year, etc. All the money to do this comes from govt (taxpayer) money allotted to the federations "because" of the association of the WPA to the IOC (Olympics). In the USA there is none of this, and that is because our taxes do not go towards athletics in any way. So from a USA only standpoint, the WPA does not do much. But from a worldwide pool standpoint, the organization provided by the WPA and member federations, provides a cohesive "body" that the IOC recognizes, and then money funnels down from the IOC/taxpayer.
I personally now think after listening to this for a couple weeks, that the WPA and its member federations could still have all their exact same functions, IOC ties, IOC/taxpayer funding for training, etc., and simply not ban any players. (And MR not pay sanction fees). If that were to happen, then the pros would play in the MR events and/or the WPA events as they see fit on an individual person and individual event basis without any restrictions from any entity. When they attend WPA events, they should continue to get financial support for "those" events. When they attend MR events, no support. I really don't see how that would hurt WPA, MR, Predator, Other promoters, or individual player. It would be business as usual for the federations, and simply more opportunities for the players.
IMO
Good summary. He was also putting words in the interviewees mouths. Ishaun made it clear that they were meeting in Oct and one of the topics would be what to do with players attending non-sanctioned events. He said (paraphrasing): he thinks most members are leaning towards enforcing bans, but nobody knows how people will actually vote until the moment of the vote.
MM on his next podcast with Ryan said (paraphrasing again): it's a done deal, Ishaun said they are all definitely voting to ban. Then MM said the same thing to MP on this last podcast. Both Ryan and MP were trying to correct MM, and he would not hear any of it.
I have not read any of the FB comments (by fans). I imagine they are very one sided against the WPA and short bursts of emotion.
I do like MM's interviews. He's a pool player, and likes to talk about the current events, and bring them to us in a fun format. Its usually a good idea to put ourselves in another's shoes to try to see things from multiple sides.
How much are players paying to be members of the WPA?
How much are promoters paying?
If it what I saw on the wpa website, a player relicensing agreement was just $20 from until 1/1/24.
I thought they paid a lot more than that.
I do know that promoters are paying a lot more and its per event. Up to 14% of the player pot, if I understand correctly.
How much are promoters paying?
If it what I saw on the wpa website, a player relicensing agreement was just $20 from until 1/1/24.
I thought they paid a lot more than that.
I do know that promoters are paying a lot more and its per event. Up to 14% of the player pot, if I understand correctly.