Custom cue industry, HELP OR HURT Payout

tk_it_ez

tk_it_ez

Bet against me
Silver Member
Everyone always talks about the low payouts for pro pool events and how to change this. Most would agree that in order to have higher payouts there needs to be more sponsorships and advertising sold.

My question is do you think the custom cue industry helps or hurts this?

Before everyone jumps on my case, at least hear me out.

I will use golf for my example. There are a few facts that we will have to come to terms with.
1. There are more golf fans than pool fans
2. There is more revenue generated by golf than pool
3. There are more viewers and more demand for golf on TV
4. The golf fans are a more desirable target market for advertisers than pool fans (higher average income)

Now a lot of the sponsorships and advertising are for golf related items. Do you think Calloway, Titlist, Taylor Made and Nike would keep advertising and sponsoring pros if everyone (pros and amateurs) started using custom made clubs from small shops? What if pro or amateur golfers were made fun of when they walked out on the course with a production club?

One of the problems that I see is the fact that the production cue companies are the only ones that can afford to or need to advertise. But if they do advertise and sponsor players, most of the "serious" players are the ones they are going to reach and those are the same people that turn their noses up at the production cues.

Most of the custom cue makers do not need to advertise. They make a small amount of cues and don't need to reach the masses. Many can not afford big advertising budgets. Please do not take this as me saying they do not give back to the pool industry. I know most of them love the game, the industry and the players. They do what they can, when they can to promote the game to new players.

I know everyone is going to say that many other types of businesses advertise and sponsor golf. But golf and pool is not the same thing, see the 4 points above. You will not see Mercedes sponsoring too many pool events. I can not personally blame them when the pool players do not even support the pool related companies that advertise and sponsor events.

Don't get me wrong, I can hardly wait until I get my first custom. I would already have it but a few things have come up lately that made the timing bad for now. Priorities. I will cherish my custom but I hope that I will always try to support any production companies that invest in the industry. Once I get my custom I might use a new production for my bar cue for a while or give it to a kid or someone that is just getting into the game and deserves it. I am sure a little added good will would not hurt this game.

Custom cue makers, as I said before, please do not take this as any offense to you. I do not mean it that way. I hope everyone continues to support you and I hope to be a supporter soon. But I also hope people will support the large production cue companies that have the resources to reach the masses and promote the game.

Just my 2 cents.

Nathan
 
Well let me say this.

A pool player expecially a pro, uses or chooses to use X cue, generally because of one thing. How the cue plays. I give the exception to Earl when he used Cuetec and allison, and when Fury had Kelly Fisher.

I know the masses will say hey, a pro can use any kind of cue and win. Yeap that maybe true. But if the guy is winning 5 or so tournaments per year with X cue, why would he want to change to another cue?

Now as for golf clubs, I think Golf company's are customizing clubs for guys too. You cant tell me that Nike doesnt work endlessly to make the best golf clubs for Tiger Woods, so he can go out and win 10 tournaments per year?

Does it matter if some golf pro ranked 400, wins the tournament with the Nike clubs? nope, it matters where Tiger or Phil, or John Daly finished. I know they dont use Nike either but it goes the same with what golf clubs they use.

I mean you can customize golf clubs too, with different grips, shafts, lengths. I mean the R7 from Taylor Made allows you to adjust the weight in the club head, if you have a slice or hook in your shot.

Now, alot of the sponsers in pool tournaments are billiard related. you rarely ever see anything outside of billiards sponsering a tournament. Thats the main problem.

If you look at the Pro Bowling Tour, thier big sponsers are all outside of bowling, like Denny's, and Miller Lite, and so on.

Alot of people dont look at the bigger picture, which is there needs to be ONE unified Mens Tour, not 2 or 3 of them. Once that is done, then you can combine your resources and get a bigger payout and better sponsers, which in turn makes for better payouts.

For all honesty I dont think its that tough if the 2 or 3 mens tour would combine and create one Tour. Its just nobody wants to budge cuz of Ego's.

I mean I dont think any guy who plays in the Mens tournament would complain if the first place prize fund was 100,000$ per event or more, and the last paid place was between 3-5,000$ or more.

Production Cue company's can only do so much with sponsering players and giving $$ to tournaments before they end up loosing money. Because they are a business and are out to actually make money too lol.
 
High end custom cues are a completely seperate "industry" from professional pool. Should the ACA sponsor a tournament? Absolutely, will they, probably never. Collectable cue business can and will flurish without pro pool. Tournaments are a great place to show and sell cues and they will be missed. But with half a dozen big events a year there is still some exposure. Money will always come from production companies inside the industry regardless that you won't find one Viking cue in anyones case at the Tournament of Champions.

Andy
 
storm you raise some good points about a unified tour but now the average pro can't afford the travel cost associated with a nation wide tour hence all the regional tours.we have had a few players here asking for sponsorship to just make it to one tourney,john schmidt for one,until a system is in place to gaurantee expenses for the player it would be hard to establish a unified tour.
 
I think you are confusing association with causation here. I don't think they're hurting at all. If the small guys are promoting pool, it must mean one thing, lack of big sponsors.

And that is actually a big difference you see here in Korea vs. the US. When they have pool on TV they don't advertise _any_ billiards related items, aside from whatever product placements you find. All you see are the typical ads you see with every other program. The viewership is (apparently) high enough that they don't need any industry sponsors.

However, another difference is the variety of programming you see. Many many types of sports, every day. And all of them have sponsors like Pocari Sweat (a popular Asian soft drink, I don't know why but that is a different topic...).
 
classic,

I am a firm believer that you need Regional Tour's for the men, because! It allows the guys who cant afford to travel around the USA to compete with top level guys. Plus, your still getting a decent payday with half the travel costs.

Which is what really hurts pool players the most is the cost of traveling.

I've mention'd this before when people talk about the payouts for pool tournaments. One of the WPBA ladies I usta talk to often, told me she spent about 1,000$ a week, when she went to Tour stop. And that was living cheap.

And for the year she basically made just enough or so to cover her expenses for the year.
 
I don't think the custom industry hurts. In fact, I would bet that about all your top players would be playing with the commercial brands if the money was there. The problem that I see is the money will never be there. Right now, most of your players will buy a cue, case and a few accessories. Once they have these things, there are pretty much done. Other than table time, they spend very little money.

Now, if you can figure out a way to convince players that they need a new $700 cue every year or two, your gonna create the competition needed between the cue companies and the quality of their products is gonna go up. When that quality goes up, the more serious players are gonna start using their products instead of the customs.

I would bet that for $250,000 Viking or any other cue company could sign 10 of the best players in the world to play with their cues. The problem is, that sposership will do very little to increase their sales. The money problem in pool is a deep hole.
 
StormHotRod300 said:
classic,

I am a firm believer that you need Regional Tour's for the men, because! It allows the guys who cant afford to travel around the USA to compete with top level guys. Plus, your still getting a decent payday with half the travel costs.
Click to expand...
Regional tours aren't what's at issue here...it's the big tournaments that could pay $20.000 for first or more...if there existed a tour of this level tournament then things could be more feasible as far as travel costs...I think there's room for alot more sponsorship of tournaments on a smaller level...something that an up and coming custom cuemaker would use to get their name out there...
 
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I personally think Custom Cuemakers effect pro pool very little positively or negatively. You have a Pechauer Tour. A Viking Tour. A Joss Tour and so on. You once had a Fury Tour. So instead of sponsoring players the big guys have chosen to sponsor pro am tours. This is great for mid level players and bad for the pros. I would like to see more of the player sponsorships from Viking, Schon, Meucci, Joss, Pechauer and other larger cue manufacturers. These cues by large play better than imports and Pros would not be at a disadvantage playing with them. The smaller guys can't afford to sponsor a player, so it will be up to the above guys to do it if it gets done.
Chris
www.cuesmith.com
www.internationalcuemakers.com
 
Actually I think people are starting to go with more custom made options in golf. I think you will see it for a few reasons. Golf club fitting is ahead of pool cue fitting and golfers are starting to wake up to it. Additionally, technology has, and will continue, to improve fitting because the technology is getting cheaper and more widespread. You also will get better measurements of certain things. For instance, I just read an article that mentioned Tom Wishon who has written books on club fitting is opening his own company and will do really extensive fitting. With the advent of better technology and machining, you will get smaller club makers. My putter is a custom from a guy with his own shop who has a day job. I heard of a small company making only wedges. These kinds of shops will increase and will make for more competition with the big companies. However, big golf companies have done some things to bring custom fitting down to more buyers.

The big golf companies have always done a good job bringing in talented club makers. These guys could do things by hand and would do custom grinds and whatnot for the pros. One example pool players are familiar with is Helmstetter starting at Calloway when it was small. They were trying to do retro clubs with wood shafts or metal shafts encased in wood or something. They needed somebody who understood engineering wood, which he obviously did. Companies now have to bring more customizing to the players and they are doing that. However, there is room for the smaller guys and they will get more business.

I do think this will cut into the market for high end mass production golf clubs and eventually have some impact on the market for new clubs and advertising for golf companies. I think the overall effect will be small, because I think there are other factors that will hurt club sales more. Like the fact golf loses a player for every player who takes up the game and the increasing expense of it.
 
From my experience

Pool is nothing like Golf, although several Pool players like to play Golf, and vica versa sometimes.

Pool would identify better with Archery, and being a little more popular. Archers have a clanish nomadic type nature about them, and lots of Pool players do too.
 
The following information is from a good friend of mine who works in the bowling industry. I've brought it up before that I think bowling and pool have a lot of parallels. AND, bowling has a sustainable men's pro tour with regional feeders, in addition to a huge league presence.

While far from perfect, they seem to have a reasonably profitable and working regional/pro tour model that could be tweaked for pool.


"Scott,
This is a fascinating topic. There are many parallels between bowling
and billiards.

Here is my first cut at some answers. More to follow.

Active league bowlers = we don't know. We have 2.5 million that
participate in USBC certified leagues. My educated guess is that we
have at least that many who participate in leagues not certified by our
organization.

Between 68-70 million people bowl at least once per year.

About 45 million people bowl two or more times per year.

You must be a member of the PBA to participate in their regional and
national events. Their membership is between 3,500 and 4,000. There
are many many regional tournaments.

My organization does not own the PBA tour. The televised tour has an
exempt list of 64 players (similar to the PGA tour). They're trying to
create recognizable heros. Non-exempt players qualify early in the week
(again similar to the PGA tour).

The pro tour is mostly men, but one women qualified last year.

Opinion = They've let ESPN push them around. ESPN actually owns part of
the PBA tour, yet the only TV slot they'll give them is noon on Sunday
during football season. The worst possible time slot ever ever ever
ever.

The ratings are range between .5 and .7 during football season and go up
slightly to around .8 to .9 after football. Better than hockey, but so
is "I Married a Jeep".

To convert to households multiply by .9 then multiply by 100,000.

The PBA tour runs from late October until mid-March.

There is currently not a women's tour. It went defunct about 3 years
ago. My organization actually owns all rights to the women's tour. We
may start something soon...or maybe not. PBA may start a competitive
tour..which could get interesting.

Bowling is not fun to watch. It's fun to do, but not fun to watch. We
need to figure out how to make it entertaining, compelling,
inspirational, and aspirational."
 
Pool Cue Sponsors for Harvard's 8 Ball Championship

Hi,
I am a Senior at Harvard College in Cambridge, MA (yes, that Harvard).
I am organizing an 8-Ball pool tournament for all undergrads, and in so doing, also called and secured a number of sponsors for the event. They are product sponsors, so in exchange for advertising on campus as Official Sponsors of the event, to the players on campus, and to the wider Boston community at large, a number of smaller cue companies have helped by donating a few of their products.

The event: The 1st Annual Spring 2007 Harvard 8 Ball Championship is sponsored by: OB Cues, Schuler Cues, Nick Varner Cues, Slipstic, Chalk Off!, "Little Joe" Villalpando's Pool IQ, Stroke It Wear, RST2 International (The Chameleon Rack) and Hustlin' USA.

Indeed, none of these cue companies are very small custom cue makers, with the exception of OB Cues, and Schuler Cues... but they are still relatively small, but still very successful and with good reputations in the industry. These companies already advertise other events, and/or are more active in promoting their companies and the game.

The few smaller cue makers I approached mainly did not have interest in advertising, or did, but had such limited supply of cues, or too much demand anyway for a one-man shop, that it did not make much sense to advertise, or else they may seriously be in over their heads with orders.

I've done my best to get these product companies out to the players in the community, and to get the exposure to promote the game on campus. I believe I have helped enliven the experience for others.

Thanks to all the sponsors, and I hope that this sport grows so that the market for cue equipment (large companies and small) reaches every household and every college room.

-Eric Chen '07
 
Custom cue makers make up a limited number of the overall percentage of cues sold worldwide.....probably 5% or less of the cues...there are some excellent production cues made at good prices for all the public to enjoy....

All pro golfers have custom clubs, to an extent....they rarely use a factory shaft, the loft is adjusted, the lie is adjusted, some play with the weight of the club, the grips are specific with additional wrap....a million different things they do.....and when it's all said and done, it ain't anywhere near what you buy at the store, and it costs more than the standard $800 for an expensive set of irons....

Same in pool.....they can get sponsored by a production maker, but have a special shaft, or do some alterations, or whatever....but the sponsor is still proud to slap on their name and get the attention...

Golfers are marketable....look at Tiger, Phil, Ernie, Adam, Sergio....look at the tennis boom in the days of Andre Aggassi and Gabriela Sabatini....ladies golf is starting to boom with the insurgence of hotties and new young players...

Pool needs the guy next door....the good looking kid, smart, aggressive...that can play a little D, but has the balls and the talent to run out and make spectacular shots.....like Tiger hitting the green from 300 yards with a 3 wood.....28 practice strokes, boring defensive games, and several other issues mentioned in numerous posts are the problem.....slow play is a big issue in pool....

I personally don't think custom cuemakers even make a dent....actually, if nothing else, they add a mystique (sp?) and draw a few extra collector types....
 
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