I hear people refer to the game of 9Ball as a "failure"....this entices me to stand up for the Game and present some facts, from working directly with ESPN and Prime/Fox Sports as Director of Operations of the Professional Cue Sports Association)...9 Ball was a TV Success and only in the last 13 years became a so called "failure" (more from someone not marketing televised events...it doesn't happen on it's own)....in the 90's the average viewing audience for 9Ball was a 1 POINT RATING (one million house holds)....I played a match in front of over 3.8 Million Viewers on ESPN ....and the total hours ESPN gave us in 3 years was thousands of hours (my matches were over 600 International Hours)....I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be classified a "failure" in the history of Television ...the challenge became "how to take that success to the next level"...however, there were some missing factors....and the pool game itself was not one of those factors. It takes people to get anything on TV, it's not ESPN, it's promoters that drive events on TV, you just don't see it now in major sports because it's already in place, however, in pool, it's not in place, as a matter of fact no one is even trying that's the fact of the matter.
