It's simple if you break it down to what it's actually all about. Money.
Businessmen in the snooker realm have found there are ways to market products and make money using snooker players. So those companies in turn add money to the snooker pots (which is the only way for pro athletes to make money, gambling is a farce and results in essentially nothing in the long run).
So why are snooker players marketable and pool players are not? At some point, I'd bet anything (I really know nothing of snooker) that a person or group of people, who also wanted to make money off snooker too btw, decided to market and elevate the game and have the players become stars. They got to work and just did that.
In the USA and in pool nobody is going to do that, nobody cares enough. Somebody of consequence, at some point, cared about snooker enough to put his crosshairs on it and say "I could use my money and influence anywhere to make money, but I am going to do it with snooker because these guys deserve it".
You also have that treadeau Catastrophe, where many of the players were really acting like third graders from what I could see. That'll give you some idea of the self destruction that will come even if someone does happen to want to come along and lift pool up.
Just what I think.
Other than the first line, this is prescient and accurate; impressive for knowing little to nothing about Snooker. :thumbup:
It is about the game first, not about the money, the sponsors, or anything else but the game first. If the game is not marketable, the game will not be marketed beyond a minimal degree.
You would win your bet; his name was Joe Davis and he is Snooker's equivalent of Lord Stanley, he of the Stanley Cup fame. Joe was the founder of the original tournament and the undefeated Snooker World Champion from 1927 through 1946. He bought the Championship Trophy with a part of his original prize purse in 1927 and that same trophy remains the most sought after piece of hardware in the world of Snooker today. Joe recognized that the popular and profitable game of his time, English Billiards, was in an unrecoverable downward spiral primarily because the players had become so good that it was no longer interesting to the spectator which is the core of marketability. English Billiards in the early 1900's endured a similar problem to Straight Pool of the 50's and 60's. The Billiards players had become so good at the craft, they were not interesting to watch; they could be at the table for a break of 1000 or 1500 points (doesn't matter that you don't know what that means....suffice to say the same player would stay at the table for hours on end continuing to score while everyone else in the place would try to keep their droopy eyes propped open). Limitations were introduced on certain scoring shots to prevent this sort of thing but the players learned connecting shots to string together different scoring shots to effectively bypass the limitations. It was no longer interesting, or exciting. In my mind, it parallels Mosconi's 526....undeniably an incredible feat requiring superior talent. But who is going to actually sit there and watch it?
Prior to that, Snooker was a "warm up" game for the Billiards players. They didn't take it seriously; just a way to get their stroke flowing. Think of it like basketball players shooting free throws before the game. The English Billiards players actually thought that Snooker was "too easy" so no one would be interested to watch it and did not develop it much at all for decades. Joe Davis saw it through different eyes. He recognized the character and nuance of Snooker and began to take it seriously and challenged the other players....and he would always win because he actually developed a different approach to Snooker from English Billiards. (Again, go to the free throw example.....Joe actually developed a completely different stroke to play Snooker so think of the first guy that used the "granny shot" free throw style. I know this sounds a ridiculous comparison but it just makes the point of how differently Joe Davis saw Snooker from anyone else of the time.)
The other players could no longer say the game of Snooker was too easy to be interesting because they simply couldn't beat the guy. And spectators did find this interesting. The game moves fast, unlike Pool. When you understand Snooker, the shots may be obvious but they are never easy. Again, think of basketball...would you be interested if you have to endure watching the guy with the ball consider what he should do for a full 30 or 40 seconds (while the opposing team obligingly stands in place so he can look at the situation from all angles) before he finally decides to drive and take a shot? To me, that is what watching Pool is like.
The modern Snooker players know what needs to be done and they just do it. And the actual strokes are difficult enough that they fail regularly so that the other guy gets a turn at the table. To me, a "six pack" or any other "pack" is ridiculous and not interesting or appealing at all. Clearly, the actual shots are too easy despite the fact that the player has to take 30 seconds or a minute before each stroke to figure out exactly what he wants to do. Nobody is interested in watching someone "think" for minutes on end; may as well watch untimed chess.
While it clearly has a core following, Pool as a game is not marketable to the masses. Snooker is.
