I (a European poolplayer and previously a huge fan of watching pool, not so much lately) think pool is on the downhill slide, because:
1. Pro pool tournament payouts are ridiculously low. For instance, the Eurotour is basically a scam, where players are forced to stay in overpriced hotelrooms, and the federation pockets the large price difference between the actual cost and the cost to the player, and the added money is a joke. Everyone below 3rd is at best breaking even, more likely losing money. Participation is, in spite of this, quite good. There is reason to fear that the quality is not as good as it could have been, as participation is pretty much open to all that have cash, and many chose to stay home on account of the above facts.
2. The world Pool championship is held in an antisemitic, misogynistic shithole, where nobody cares about pool. Nobody watches or has any interest. There is zero coverage by any Western media. Read up on how they treat Israeli or female athletes...
3. Recruitment to pool is very low in most countries. Check the ratio of young, vs. old players. Some countries have better numbers than others. They are typically poor, especially in Europe.
4. The social media profiles and even general online profile of MAJOR events in pool are non existant or laughably bad, relying on word of mouth and pool room news. The Eurotour page looks like it was designed in 1998, for instance. The less said about Blackball, the better. They're even worse, if you can believe that.
5. Coverage...Yes, every tournament has a stream, usually one static camera. At best with zero commentary, but more usually with clueless idiots rambling on. Look at old Accu-stats tapes in comparison, even newer accu-stats can't hold up.
6. Yes people are buying more equipment. Lots of people have high end cues and tables these days. Usually used as a rack for laundry in the basement or simply collecting dust. Most people with high end cues use them for "league" or similar and couldn't run 3 balls to save their lives. I guess for people who are furniture assemblers or cue pushers, how the equipment is (not) used, does not matter much.
7. Pool rooms are no longer profitable and continually move around from one condemnable building to another. The ones that do hang on, do so on account of providing other services (bar/restaurant) and not for pool, which is basically a waste of space. So they convert to barbox, to get more people in and being able to expand the other part of the business. "Look, that poolroom is doing great!" No, that bar is doing great and the pool part of it is dragging the rest down. In Europe there are usually club-driven pool rooms that are more or less non-profit, and rely heavily on volunteer work. That sort of thing is heavily unstable and succeptible to go under at any time.
8 In Europe, most of the (male) population will have at one time watched snooker. Many of them can name a few snooker players a reasonable section will know who won the latest championship. Nobody knows who won the last European championship in any pool discipline. (I don't either, apart from the ones I personally know). I can't even remember who won the last WPC..I don't even care. Why should I, when nobody else does? Are people in your pool room looking forward to the WPC? Are they discussing the relative strength of the players etc weeks in advance? Not in my room. People will occationally watch it if the stream is on, but most would rather practise. Couldn't watch the last one, and even if I could the previous years it had verbal diarrhea Arab commentary. I could mute it, but I don't really feel anything watching it. No excitement of any kind. I'd rather watch the Mosconi cup, at least the production has some value and people actually care about it. It's not even a "proper event", more like a gameshow than anything else. People actually talk about it, believe it or not. I even heard about some guys who are not into pool that watched it.
And that is who spends 99% of the money in and around the pool world.
