Snooker has a number of advantages over pool when it comes to value as a spectator sport.
5. In snooker, luck plays a relatively small role. It is a sporting competition in which the better player is expected to win by better play. In pool, 9-ball in particular, the break plays such an outsized role in some matches that the game sometimes seems more like coin-flipping than a sporting event.
6. In snooker, the long matches are punctuated by frequent player turns and the seated player is generally very much engaged and ready for his return to the table. In pool, there are frequent stretches where one player is seated for what seems an eternity.
8. Gambling.
9. Snooker remains a significant part of it's primary market's culture. Pool, not so much.
10. High production values.
Agree with pretty much everything. I'll comment on the points I've quoted though....
5 and 8 are interesting - the luck element of pool lends itself to gambling because any decent player CAN beat a top class player, and any banger CAN beat a decent player in a short race. Only an idiot would play a much better player for money in a single frame of snooker. The gambling refers to the betting ON the sport as the bookies in the UK are part of an insanely developed industry (that might actually fare better than banking post-Brexit). That's not to say that players (who actually have some chance of beating each other) don't gamble between themselves, they do - it's just not as mythical as the "pool hustlers" in the USA (the land of the "road" players in billiards, cards and shootouts at high noon). The sponsorship from the betting industry certainly helps.
6 - pool has to be alternate break for televised tournaments and those watched live by a significant number of spectators - that you can lose, in theory and possibly in practice, without taking a shot has no place in a fair competition. Sure there are pros as well as cons of winner breaks but the pros are irrelevant if you want the casual channel hopper to take an initial interest and have that interest captured. This isn't winner stays on a bar box, it's the pinnacle of the game.
9. This is why the sport needs to disassociate itself with the road. The USA is a modern, developed country - not some new frontier.
10. High production values cost a fraction of what they did even one year ago (you can produce a good movie or 3 minute song on your PC) - there is a still a chance that it could happen in pool.
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