Why Snooker has a better image than Pool?....ok...where to start?
Many people think of Snooker as an "European" game, but thats not really true. Actually Pool and 3-cushion are the traditional games here. Snooker started to spread 10-15 years ago with Eurosport broadcasting it on free TV and they introduced it as a ....british game.
This is important, because people have very positive associations with "british" things...bit posh, bit accurate, bit reserved...add some suits and ties and you create the fairy world of Snooker. People always bring up Alex Higgins and Jimmy White and the early Ronnie to point out, that Snooker isn`t hat shiny at all, but as I mentioned Snooker hasn`t been in the focus of the people outside the UK for that long and when the whole Snooker hype started, it was more about the game than the history or the backstories.
I thought the same till I played a PTC in Germany a few years ago and had the chance to talk to some of the guys and even though they are all very friendly and it was great fun to hang out with them, I realised, that the shiny image doesn`t really fit to them, because they don`t fit the stereotype of the british lord, but the stereotype of the average athlete. Being good in a sport, starting at a young age, not having the best education, being away from home most of the time, surrounded by the boys, money and a lot of time to discover the bars near the venue.
Still they all are very professional when it comes to the game itself. They know they all are part of this image and they need to maintain it if they want to earn money with their sport.
Pool is a totally different story. I was playing with one of the veterans in my club just a few days ago and I discussing the same topic with him and he had some interesting opinions on this.
With 3 cushion being the traditional and pure form of Billiardsport, Pool had to sneak in through the backdoor. Not through the backdoor of the Viennese coffehouse, where the gentlemen were playing their 3cushion, but the backdoor of these bars and dirty taverns where the said gentlemen wouldn`t have even set a foot in. Coming from America didn`t really help, because compared to the good associations people have with British stuff, well... let´s say the feelings about America are mixed.
That`s what you call a bad start I guess.
Anyway, Pool had his foot in the door and a bad image is better than no image at all I guess. But there was another issue that stopped the progress of the game significantly- coin operated tables. First of all it degraded Pool tables from sports equipment to an arcade machine. With the white ball being heavier than the other balls it made the game much less controlable and raising the element of luck. Second, it added even more gambling, since everybody had their wallets out anyway.
Still some people thought about Pool as a sport and had the desire to found clubs, play tournaments, get better equipment etc.. The catch behind that story is, that these people where the best local players most of the time. And why? Because they were the people hanging around in the bars, gambling, drinking...
So eventhough they wanted to bring Pool to the next level, bringing attention to it as a sport, they took the bad image with them.
In fact the public at large starts to take Pool seriously just right now....