Fatboy said:
real players drive Vantage's
Just kidding my friend has a DB 9 I have driven it alot, great cat for 180ish, the Vantage looks better but is older technology ad sucks to drive and costs 100K more, I owned one once for a day and flipped it made 17 dimes on it, never saw it, just did the paperwork, i'll spare everyone the story.
the guy i lived with in england for a while got on the list for the bentley continental gt via a friend who plays soccer for england, sold it a week before pickup for a 20,000 pound profit. funny thing was he always got lucky like that.
I don?t think internet gambling sponsorships has saved snooker maybe given a little cash injection and saved face for the organisation as they did run some tournaments without sponsors after tobacco stopped. I know they have gotten some sponsors but I don?t think it would be big money I was told 888.com sponsored the English style world 8 ball for only 40,000 pounds a few years back. I would guess they are sponsoring the world snooker championships for around half a million pounds and the total prize money for the event would be over 1 mil pounds still, I noticed my last 2 years they dropped prize money by 50% in other tournaments but kept the world title money similar to before. It used to be 1.4 million when I played. Gambling companies don?t need to sponsor an event to offer odds for it, so all they are receiving is advertising for there money and maybe reinvesting in the market they earn part of there profits from.
What is holding up the snooker tour is the money from the bbc tv rights which has always been where most of the money came from, my memory is bad but a few years back I believe bbc paid between 5-8 million pounds a year for the rights to televise 4 bbc tournaments. Bbc/government whoever charges every house hold in England I think 99 pounds a year for a tv license so I guess that?s why they can afford it.
If there was a law that banned internet gambling companies sponsoring snooker the tour would still go on but they would cut back the tournaments and cut the prize money again, everyone knew what was coming in regards to the tobacco laws world snooker sat on their hands and did nothing they run great tournaments and are fair good people but useless at running a huge business that is snooker. The only sensible thing years ago was to cut the tour to 64 or 48 maybe even 32 full time players (like you said in your post) and let 16 qualifiers come thru each tournament protect the top ones they are who the public wants to watch and then pay the cream players what they deserve. the damage has already been done alot of bad publicity in england about the state of the game and how it is vulnerable etc, but before snooker was held on a pedestal in england. they needed to trim the fat for the good of the game try to get the prizemoney back up with new sponsors cut staff referees etc then make the tour larger if possible. There is not enough money to support 100 players or whatever they have now they should have told they players years ago that in 2 years time only the top 32 or 48 will stay on the tour the rest will have to qualify for each tournament.
i dont think there is any future for snooker because of bbc money the game will survive monkeys could run the game at the moment with the same results as world snooker gets. if that money gets cut down which i think it will or goes completely the game will be history might as well play curling for a living.
There is only one tournament that is in good shape the world title good attendance good atmosphere good tv figures all the other tournaments have the opposite feel, it was embarrassing bringing friends to watch me the atmosphere in the players lounge and in the spectators gallery is depressing and all my friends that came commented on this, i hated playing snooker the ipt was a dream atmosphere compared to snooker
World snooker had a good product 10 years ago when changes needed to be made they had plenty of income guaranteed for the short term future but they just sat back and run the game into the ground.
as for someone big/whale investing in snooker what for its a small game played in uk and a bit in china that is dead boring to watch.
on a separate note i liked a lot of kt's idea's 8 ball has way more potential than snooker, it might not ever reach it but so many people play it why couldnt it become bigger than snooker?
someone with money balls and connections like you kt or some of your friends should start kicking around some proposals for an 8 ball tour. if you think the game can grow put a stop loss in place so it does not get out of control and give it a shot no players expected ipt type payouts like kt offered. i know pool is not ufc or poker but out of all the sports left that are in the doldrums pool would have to have the best shot at suceeding right?
