[...]
What I’m saying is that the MC is a one-off and you cannot re-make all pool in its likeness. American pool fans are not wired that way. For that matter, you couldn’t even make snooker events into the MC.
The MC plays off the fan reactions of the two continents. Without that, you don’t have that.
Lou Figueroa
Let's say we agree the MC is a one-off that has a circus-like atmosphere that is fun for what it is but doesn't really add insight about the best format for engaging (viewable and otherwise conducive to following along) professional pool.
Some imagine a reasonable goal is to convert some unknown mass of people from channel-switchers who know nothing about pool and ignore it to fans who get into it. That, imo, is a fantasy. And the more time and energy and resources we spend talking about and trying to achieve it, the more ground is lost on the more reasonable goal.
What is the more reasonable goal? Well, FargoRate's goal is ;-)
Pool is basically a participation sport. Its health--call it its stock--depends on how many people participate and also how engaged they are in Pool with a capital P. That engagement includes everything that distinguishes playing pool from just another way to enjoy yourself or pass time.
Examples of engagement:
--playing in public competitions, leagues and tournaments
--buying or at least being interested in equipment
--having goals and wanting to improve
--taking steps to learn or practice or generally do things you think will lead to improvement
--knowing who are the best players in your area and how you compare to them
--watching others play
--knowing who are the best players in your province, country, world
--knowing things about those top players and what distinguishes them both at and away from the pool table.
--feeling connected to pool players like you who are outside of your playing community.
Efforts that advance ANY of these dimensions support the goal. And instead of thinking about converting some group of blank-slate people into "pool people" who rank high on these things, we should instead focus on incremental changes, LOTS of them
Imagine everybody in your community of 1000 people is on a scale from 0 to 10. Everybody who had SOME association with pool, however small, in the last month has a non-zero number. The rest are 0's.
----A "1"played a game in a bar because the dart board was busy, and he didn't notice there was no chalk. Or watched a game somewhere for a few minutes
----A "10" buys the latest stuff, watches streams every day, plays a lot, travels to get the best instruction, keeps a pool log, knows how all the pros spend their free time, and reads posts like this on AZ Billiards.
Everybody else is somewhere in between.
Our task is this:
Convert 0's to 1's
Convert 1's to 2's
Convert 2's to 3's
...
Convert 9's to 10's.
When people move up on this scale, they tend to bring others around them along for the ride.
Match formats that increase engagement just a little can do a lot toward this goal. Dramatic situations that actually pit the skill of one player against that of the other do that. When you as a spectator sense that you can almost feel the pressure the player is experiencing, that does it as well.
It will be pretty cool to be in Vegas in a couple weeks, where about half the world's top 100 players will playing in the midst of and mingling with 5 or 6 thousand amateur players. That's the second event of the new US Pro Billiard Series. Maybe I will hang out at the bar in the Rio recording conversations about the shootouts ;-)
guarantee ESPN would be playing that for days.
