Feasability of European-style private billiard clubs in the U.S.?

ShortBusRuss

ShortBusRuss

Short Bus Russ - C Player
Silver Member
Here in Germany I am a member of a private billiard club where I pay something like $40-$50 a month, and for that fee, I get a key to the place and can play any time I want, day or night.

The place is set up with around 8 Gold Crowns, and has a smoking room and bar. The bar has alcohol, soda, juice, water, and snacks that help to supplement the costs of running the place. The bar operates on the honor system, with a member responsible for tallying up the incoming money, and putting any excess in an envelope and sliding it into a slot on the safe when the amount gets too large. There is a CCTV camera on the bar to promote honesty in money handling by all club members. The entire club was built out in industrial space, so the rent is very low. There is a certain amount of pressure for club members to support the club by buying their drinks there, but the drinks are fairly priced.

Here is my question... Given that pool is somewhat in the doldrums in the U.S., with pool halls closing every day.. Is this model feasible in the U.S., at least in some of the more populated areas? Here in Germany, this model works in part because of the league system here, where clubs compete directly against each other, in an effort to move up to the next level... Pool isn't any more profitable here as far as prize money is concerned, but a lot of people take the leagues very seriously here.

Now, obviously with our uber-intrusive, totalitarian government as it has existed for the past few decades, liquor might be a real issue. Maybe a private, BYOB "bottle club" concept would work, in the states where it is allowed? Where the bartender basically mixes the alcohol that you bring for a modest fee, as a way to get around not having a liquor license. Might this be feasible on private property, where maybe a pool fan is willing to allow a club to be hosted on their property for free, or a very small rent?

I think if nothing else.. A private club like this would do a lot to develop our playing population, giving serious players a place to really hone their skills economically. Does anyone think anything similar to this model could exist in America?

For the record, I think that much of Europe's domination over the U.S. in recent years is owed to this private club concept, which allows serious players the means to practice any time it is convenient to do so.

Short Bus Russ
 
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Might work in a large city. Keeping the membership list with the "right" people may be difficult.
 
I thought of a similar idea without the private room concept. When I did it I based the model on $3 a square foot for the rent per year for warehouse space and we did the math here on a thread. Sadly it didn't look like it would support itself.

It could sure come to that though. I'll have to look into that a little deeper just to make sure. 1600 square foot x 3=4800/12=400 dollars a month rent. Then you start stacking up costs of different things that we can estimate roughly at 1000 per month total. That might work. It would take ten members at 100 a month and 20 at 50 per month and if you got 40 at 50=2000 and now the club works and might even be able to pay an attendant something or pay back the people that brought in the tables.

Tables can be found pretty cheap. Could probably put in 6 GC1 or 2's for 10 grand.

The biggest question would be regulations. As long as its private and not public one might be able to get around handicap ramps and expensive bathroom facility costs,
everyone using one bathroom. I might just look around my town and see what the costs of warehouse space are and if it has heat or not. This does give me an idea if space could be found in most places then this would be a way to install a room for local kids to be members of and fits a model in which old retired guys would have a place to play. For a time the local YMCA had a table.

ShortBusRuss said:
Here in Germany I am a member of a private billiard club where I pay something like $40-$50 a month, and for that fee, I get a key to the place and can play any time I want, day or night.

The place is set up with around 8 Gold Crowns, and has a smoking room and bar. The bar has alcohol, soda, juice, water, and snacks that help to supplement the costs of running the place. The bar operates on the honor system, with a member responsible for tallying up the incoming money, and putting any excess in an envelope and sliding it into a slot on the safe when the amount gets too large. There is a CCTV camera on the bar to promote honesty in money handling by all club members. The entire club was built out in industrial space, so the rent is very low. There is a certain amount of pressure for club members to support the club by buying their drinks there, but the drinks are fairly priced.

Here is my question... Given that pool is somewhat in the doldrums in the U.S., with pool halls closing every day.. Is this model feasible in the U.S., at least in some of the more populated areas? Here in Germany, this model works in part because of the league system here, where clubs compete directly against each other, in an effort to move up to the next level... Pool isn't any more profitable here as far as prize money is concerned, but a lot of people take the leagues very seriously here.

Now, obviously with our uber-intrusive, totalitarian government as it has existed for the past few decades, liquor might be a real issue. Maybe a private, BYOB "bottle club" concept would work, in the states where it is allowed? Where the bartender basically mixes the alcohol that you bring for a modest fee, as a way to get around not having a liquor license. Might this be feasible on private property, where maybe a pool fan is willing to allow a club to be hosted on their property for free, or a very small rent?

I think if nothing else.. A private club like this would do a lot to develop our playing population, giving serious players a place to really hone their skills economically. Does anyone think anything similar to this model could exist in America?

For the record, I think that much of Europe's domination over the U.S. in recent years is owed to this private club concept, which allows serious players the means to practice any time it is convenient to do so.

Short Bus Russ
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Russ,

Believe the NEW Salt City Billiards in Syracuse, New York is going to operate along the lines you described. Ideologist on AZ is part of the management team. You might contact him for more accurate information.

Lyn
 
cardiac kid said:
Russ,

Believe the NEW Salt City Billiards in Syracuse, New York is going to operate along the lines you described. Ideologist on AZ is part of the management team. You might contact him for more accurate information.

Lyn
Click to expand...

The private club in Syracuse is unnecessary. However, a group is working on one in Rochester NY, and I have personally been to one in a small town in 30,000 people that was AMAZING and quite successful.
 
ideologist said:
The private club in Syracuse is unnecessary. However, a group is working on one in Rochester NY, and I have personally been to one in a small town in 30,000 people that was AMAZING and quite successful.
Click to expand...

Poolhall60561 said:
Illinois Billiard Club has been around for at least 40 years.
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Awesome! This may be coming to our area if the local room that was just bought out doesn't make it. Things are going ok now but its part nightclub and who knows how long that will last. I'd sure be interested in finding out how they run their clubs.
 
Poolhall60561 said:
Illinois Billiard Club has been around for at least 40 years.
Click to expand...

We’ve also got a private snooker club here in Crystal Lake called Aces. We booked at Bonnie’s last year for a work outing which included an amazing dinner along with private access to the billiard room. It was truly a great experience! Plus one of the few times I got to be the “best” in the room, Lol.

https://www.illinoisbilliardclub.com
 
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ideologist said:
The private club in Syracuse is unnecessary. However, a group is working on one in Rochester NY, and I have personally been to one in a small town in 30,000 people that was AMAZING and quite successful.
Click to expand...

Did SCB change their business plan?

Lyn
 
https://www.facebook.com/anytimebilliards/

Anytime is a new Diamond dealer in Des Moines. To do that, they had to have a showroom that cost a lot of money to rent, so they came up with a player membership idea.

Only a limited number of players can join for, I think, $75 a month with senior discounts. They have 4 or 5 new tables to play on. They just want to meet their rental nut, not profit from players, so much.

You get an id and can access the front door via your phone 24/7. They had a local food store donate a big ass cooler where you can bring your own beer, pop, food to keep there with your name on it. There are cameras inside to be catch whoever might take others' stuff or vandalize, etc.

I asked one of the owners what Diamond thought about that and he said they thought is was the nuts. That kinda surprised me.

I told another bar owner who used to own a pool hall about that and she was pissed that they don't have to pay DRAMshop insurance and all that, either.

If I was a young upstart who lived pool, I'd join for sure.


Jeff Livingston
 
There is a 4 table club about an hour and ½ up in the hill country from me that uses the
key and honor set-up, it has been there for quite a while, no booze though, dry county.

Thanks for the Illinois Billiard Club link, their model to hold the past to present fits the
comfort attraction. The irony of Illinois being the home of “you didn’t build it”
ideology found myself chuckling a little bit.

Their review in history is good also, worthy of a copy and paste…

For generations, America’s interest in the game of billiards (all cue sports) has clearly been a dichotomy. Aside from limited trends and surges of popularity brought about by others outside of the billiard industry (primarily motion picture studios) the public side of the game has never been able to fully recover from its national collapse after its near fatal heart attack that occurred in the 1950s. Of the long list of various reasons leading to the perpetuating failure to produce and maintain an upscale public side of the game itself, nothing has been more damaging to billiards growth and integrity than the very nature of its own business operational design. Specifically, billiards fails to encourage and develop new and younger recruits due primarily to lack of adequate upscale public facilities and dedicated interest on behalf of what appears to be industry concern and or ability (which I will explain later).

Billiards success, longevity and its more stylish existence have most always been the result of its private sector and not public facilities. Public facilities are best identified as servicing billiards quantities not its qualities. In contrast to society’s misconception, the game of billiards itself originally emerged from various forms of table games introduced and enjoyed by an upper class division of society. In foreign cultures this fact is best displayed in French artist, Louis-Leopold Boilly’s 1807 painting, “The Billiard Party.”; A detailed painting of an elegant 18th century family billiard party hosted in the grandeur of the artist's country estate (a reproduction on display in Bonnie’s dining room).

In American culture, examples of this fact can also be traced back to the 1800s and seen within the homes and stylish billiard room decors of thousands of the wealthiest families in the land. As our nation grew, so did the demand for billiards in the homes of millions of middle-class Americans whose financial status was becoming as diverse as their reasons for bringing billiard tables into their homes. Today, its the upscale private side of billiards, as even reflected in the current annual sales of billiard tables themselves, that continues to display man's timeless attraction to the games never diminishing challenges.

Historically, the game first began loosing its appeal as an upscale social activity when on the streets of Paris in 1760 it first became licensed for "public use" by the provost of guilds. Along with reading rooms, cafes and taverns, billiards became gendered and considered social entertainment for men as opposed to both genders.

In America and by the 20th century, not long after Charles Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight in 1927, the professional male side of pocket billiards began a revolt against the 19th century's mother of American billiards, the National Billiard Association of America (NBAA). Today, in retrospect, even after humankind's extraterrestrial flights to the heavens and visits to the moon, the professional male pool players of America have yet agreed on how to successfully launch even their first balloon.

Moving on to service a seemingly more appreciative, cooperative and promising interests to benefit society's billiard hobbyists, in the last quarter of the 20th century, the 1948 Billiard Congress of America (BCA) began successfully promoting amateur competition. As a trade-off for the professional side of billiards for a more relaxed form of social competition, by servicing amateur team activities and reducing table sizes some 40 percent the BCA has developed perhaps the largest and most enduring amateur billiard activities in the recorded history of American billiards.

After lacking their much-needed professional support for more than two-centuries, in 1976 the women of the world came together to form an organization known as the Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA). The women of the WPBA, equipped only with billiard cues and driven by their virtues of pride and dedication gave birth to a new and stylish side of billiards. For the past 25 years, like mothers nurturing their children, they've crusaded across the land promoting a more prominent form of professional American billiards.

Aside from the efforts of America’s WPBA, USBA and the stylish longevity of Europe’s BWA/UMB carom billiards organizations, with only a handful of others, the public side of billiards has done little to promote a distinguished professional side of the game itself. The games principle roll to the public side of society is that of a marketing ploy or prop, used to encourage sales of unrelated by-products outside of the industry itself, primarily the sales of alcohol and tobacco. All of which for generations has been to a large extent the reason for billiards unstable and struggling existence in the first place. Today’s public side of billiards is typically supported by a tavern clientele and more stylish varieties of sports bars, while the traditional pool hall, that did little to boost the qualities of the game itself, are fast becoming a vestige of Americana. By the very nature of its business design and sale of alcohol and its related products, this current trend, while promoting a healthy form of social activity, offers little or nothing to recruit new and younger players, as did yesterdays pool halls for similar counterproductive reasons.

There is one word that can honestly be spoken (and supported by results) for billiards upscale public presentation and preservation, or more precisely, the lack of it ... its “consistency.”; Of every other table game offering such positive diversity, in the infinite recorded history of humankind, there has never been one with a history as long and enduring that has “consistently,”; eked out such an existence of national mediocrity. And provided so little for the children of the world, as the public side of billiards.

Tracing the evolution of other games and their various forms of profoundly wholesome competition, history continually proves that champions in most all-major sports begin training their hopefuls as children. Thus, by their late teens are ready to emerge into their final grooming and preparation for professional competition. In complete contrast, the public side of American billiards provides children little or nothing of educational value and further complicates any hope for a child to even begin learning the game when without a legal guardian shutting them out of public facilities. A legal action imposed primarily due to repeatedly proven counterproductive practices of these very facilities and all too often, by the actions of those professing purity as concerned promoters of the game itself. To boost their own self-serving image and popularity, a variety of both past and present organizations and assorted public facilities boasting claims of responsibility to billiards future, have unsuccessfully proclaimed acts of betterment in this direction for more than the passed 50 years.

If the public side of billiards is ever going to establish itself as little more than a tavern or pool hall gaming pastime, the leaders of this billiard industry have to begin doing something unlike they’ve ever successfully done in the past. Think and act with determination beyond the limits of yesterdays ideas and failed concepts and, step into an arena of genuine professionalism when through the eyes of society, moving on to produce an industry of character ... not characters.
 
There is a private snooker club in San Jose. It got enough members that it is going to move to a nicer space. 3 or 4 tables.
 
cardiac kid said:
Russ,

Believe the NEW Salt City Billiards in Syracuse, New York is going to operate along the lines you described. Ideologist on AZ is part of the management team. You might contact him for more accurate information.

Lyn
Click to expand...
Back when we were all recovering from losing the last pool hall in Syracuse to fire, we all considered a club. Problem with a club is you still have somebody taking out a lease on a property and in charge of insurance and all the regulations.

There just aren't enough hard core players to support a club, even in a city like Syracuse. We considered a key fab entry for members and being 24 hours....just too many risks. Besides if the place were private it excludes thousands of casual players and in the end shrinks the game.

We have been fully open now 3 months and business is good. With the change of season the weekend recreational crowd has found us. There is a large core of lifelong players who are the heart of Salt City Billiards.

The new room was built by a handful of us who took on the mission out of a labor of love. We just could not imagine life without pool. For anybody considering entering the pool hall business you have to have realistic goals. Our overhead is low. You can't overspend because there just isn't that much money in pool. In time we hope to grow the game, it's an uphill battle.
 
cardiac kid said:
Did SCB change their business plan?

Lyn
Click to expand...

We considered a club if we could have worked a partnership with an individual who owned an old VFW with a dormant banquet hall. That person was deterred from working with us by others with their own agendas...to his loss.

We went at it 110% for several months and have built a room for us all to be proud of. It is already a success because it's never going to be about getting rich for me. I never needed pool to eat....it just makes life a lot more fun.

January 3rd we look to host a bunch of top amateurs and pros the Wednesday before the Turning Stone Classic and put it out for all to enjoy.
 

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336Robin said:
I thought of a similar idea without the private room concept. When I did it I based the model on $3 a square foot for the rent per year for warehouse space and we did the math here on a thread. Sadly it didn't look like it would support itself.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link to the thread?
 
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