Getting Them To Watch Pool is tough

Johnnyt

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
Christmas day the wife and I stopped at a friend’s house on the way home from one of our daughters. They were having a Christmas party. The house must have been worth a good million. Her friends house not my friends. Wife and I come from different sides of the tracks. It had a billiard room with a 9’ GC, bar, and home theater. The husband of the couple that owned the house hit about a dozen balls to show me how well he played…he thought. The table must have had 5” pockets…or so it seemed. When he got through I rack 9-ball and was lucky to run the rack. You would have thought I had broke Mosconi’s record the way this guy carried on. When I looked up there were 4 more guys watching. I put the cue back in the rack. I had met 3 of the guys before. Two were doctors, one owned some kind of financial company, and the other my wife told me later owned 3 Burger Kings.

We got to talking in the billiard room and one of them started talking about the COM. I told a few of my hustling days stories and they all seemed to enjoy them. They asked some questions about was it dangerous, could you really make a living, and so no. None of these guys played or watched pool they said. My point is mainstream people seem to enjoy pool stories and pool movies, but won’t watch it on TV or in person. Johnnyt
 
Johnnyt said:
Christmas day the wife and I stopped at a friend’s house on the way home from one of our daughters. They were having a Christmas party. The house must have been worth a good million. Her friends house not my friends. Wife and I come from different sides of the tracks. It had a billiard room with a 9’ GC, bar, and home theater. The husband of the couple that owned the house hit about a dozen balls to show me how well he played…he thought. The table must have had 5” pockets…or so it seemed. When he got through I rack 9-ball and was lucky to run the rack. You would have thought I had broke Mosconi’s record the way this guy carried on. When I looked up there were 4 more guys watching. I put the cue back in the rack. I had met 3 of the guys before. Two were doctors, one owned some kind of financial company, and the other my wife told me later owned 3 Burger Kings.

We got to talking in the billiard room and one of them started talking about the COM. I told a few of my hustling days stories and they all seemed to enjoy them. They asked some questions about was it dangerous, could you really make a living, and so no. None of these guys played or watched pool they said. My point is mainstream people seem to enjoy pool stories and pool movies, but won’t watch it on TV or in person. Johnnyt
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EXACTLY - I have been hammering this point for years. What I consider
to be even one step more, even hard core pool players don't attend tournaments,
tho they will sometimes watch on TV, IF IT IS FREE.

The only media pool related events that get any intrest are storys about
Hustlers, etc...

Dale(who has been to more tournaments than...)
 
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Johnny, are you not feeling well lately. The old Johnny would have pulled a hustle and you would have at least walked out of there owning a burger joint.

Must be the Christmas Spirit. As soon as you started telling the story, I instantly thought of Pool Hall Junkies when Mars ended up at his girlfriends, friends party with all the snooty lawyers.
 
Blue Hog ridr said:
Johnny, are you not feeling well lately. The old Johnny would have pulled a hustle and you would have at least walked out of there owning a burger joint.

Must be the Christmas Spirit. As soon as you started telling the story, I instantly thought of Pool Hall Junkies when Mars ended up at his girlfriends, friends party with all the snooty lawyers.
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As we were pulling up to the house my wife sais, "They have a pool table in here...DON'T EVEN TRY IT!!! LMAO. She knows me like a book. Johnnyt
 
I've been thinking about this recently actually. I'm glad you brought it up Johnny t. I think the reason why people watch sporting events is because of the camaraderie involved. Let's take the ufc for example. Usually viewers watch in groups.... this is key imo. People need to have something invested in the game (this also includes players personalities - F1 is also a great example of this). The mosconi cup it's so popular because teams represent their countries. National pride is at stake. Just my thoughts

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk
 
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Don't make the same mistake I made: a few pool buddies were at my house for a Kosher deli pig-out (fantastic!). They all play pool a couple times a week but have never seen a pro match. I figured it would be a good time to call up a youtube video of a pro match. I knew it had to be HD-quality so I chose something recent.

SVB vs. Orcullo. We turned it off after about five minutes because the commentators were rattling on about everything except the match. LIVE! My guests were scratching their heads...WTF is going on? It made the match unwatchable. I tried muting the sound so we could just watch the match, but by that time they'd lost interest.

I think we pool-addicts forget how short an attention span the general public has in entertainment. I would have responded the same way if it were a hockey or soccer match (two sports I don't play). If the commentary is distracting, there's no way I'm going to be able to understand (much less enjoy) what's happening on the screen.
 
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If the guy plays on it, cool beans, but the majority of pool table owners couldn't make a ball in a 10" pocket.
 
DAVE_M said:
If the guy plays on it, cool beans, but the majority of pool table owners couldn't make a ball in a 10" pocket.
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I don't know how long this guy was playing but he was firing them into the rails pretty good. I could see when he got down on the shot that he wasn't lined up and was going to miss most over 2' shots. He didn't ask for help so he got none. I just wanted to get out of there as there was no money to be made and they really weren't my type of people to hang with.
Johnnyt​
 
I think a person can write a book and get no where on the subject of why main stream people don't watch pool. Here's an example, who is boxing's heavy weight champion of the world ??, or who are the top five contenders ??. I don't even know if there is a federation or what's it called. WBF or WBC, something like that. The biggest chance pool has is if a international game on a tablet was made so kids could play a tournament sitting on their duff. Really, the sport needs a superstar backer. In Minnesota here, Kirby Pucket used to have a annual pool tournament and I saw him at a tournament checking things out. That was so huge when the media picked up on his benefit tournament. To bad we lost the man. In another 10 years from now, our area teams ( about 135 of them ) will easily lose 70 to 80 teams x 5 about 400 players due to age with no young up comers. I remember as a kid watching roller derby with my grandma and I would practice roller skating in my parents house for hours. Media.... need the exposure from the media. Players can do only so much.
 
This puts a big hole in the stories saying...........

Johnnyt said:
. My point is mainstream people seem to enjoy pool stories and pool movies, but won’t watch it on TV or in person. Johnnyt
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Here's a post I wrote last year about this subject:

Gambling....Good or Bad for Pool's Reputation and Future? - 08-20-2012, 09:29 AM

I've heard a lot of very valid points about why pool's not as popular now as it was in the 90's..after doing quite a bit of research I have formed some solid opinions about this matter and would like to hear what you think....in a recent online "think tank poll" 1000 random people were polled and only 2% said they would watch pool UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES...it didn't matter how much money was involved or even what type of pool game it was....on the other hand when ask if they would be interested in watching pool if they KNEW THE PLAYER and had heard them tell interesting stories about "gambling at pool and life on the road", it jumped up to over 70%..

This puts a big hole in the stories saying "pool's not successful because of the image of gambling and hustling"....it's quite the contrary my pool friends...the fact is POOL CAN NOT BE SUCCESSFUL WITHOUT THE IMAGE OF HUSTLING AND GAMBLING....this is the "powder" in the magic bullet and the key that unlocks the door to understanding the real reason pool has declined in the past 15 years.....after all the waves were all made by 'THE HUSTLER' and 'THE COLOR OF MONEY'

I road the last wave and pool was very popular on ESPN until about 14 years after the release of the Color of Money (in 86 starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise)....and it's been declining in ratings ever since and rarely is even seen on ESPN anymore.....and it seems to have been replaced with an even bigger gambling/action game....Poker....maybe we have something to learn from the world wide popularity of cards on TV.....maybe gambling isn't pools image problem, maybe, just maybe it's the solution!
 
You can't even get pool players to watch. How are you going to get the general public to watch?
 
Bob Dixon said:
Yeah. Where does the money come from for tournament purses in chess?
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That's what I've been wondering for months since I read that. I don't know of anywhere that has extensive tournament coverage on television.

There are spectators for matches, but I don't know where sponsors see the return on their investment
 
Bob Dixon said:
I found this:

"In 2007, the organizers of the Canadian Open and Canadian Youth Chess Championships in Ottawa raised more than $90,000 in cash and many invaluable in-kind donations from sponsors and donors to stage the two events.

We had no other choice — we lacked the government support that some of our predecessors in other cities enjoyed.(MALAYSIA pun kurang support dari kerajae). Fortunately, we secured support from telecommunications giant TELUS (far and away our biggest sponsor), Magmic Games (an Ottawa company that makes gaming software — including chess — for mobile devices including RIM's Blackberry), Hill & Knowlton Canada, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Marriott, ATFCAN (which had a special interest in sponsoring Indian GMs at the Open), OZ Optics (which felt the same way about Turkish players), Bell Canada and several embassies. Major Canadian banks and law firms also made tax-deductible donations. (We have Maxis, Celcom, Digi???)

“How did you do it?” you ask. Q + A-style, here is a summary of our sponsorship drive:

WHAT ARE THE BASICS OF ANY SPONSORSHIP DRIVE?

The organizers must convince the sponsors (and donors — more about them later) that their money supports a worthy, accountable, and even prestigious cause that ideally attracts much attention from chess and even mainstream audiences. Regarding sponsors in particular, organizers must show that the sponsorships will be duly recognized and publicized, through event promotions, advertising and media outreach."

More at: http://naserobbc.blogspot.com/2010/08/securing-sponsors-for-chess-tournaments.html
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Wow well done. I think this deserves it's own thread. Some good information for sure.
 
I wanna see a show where gunslingers matchup for their own cash, or a grizzled looking stakehorses cash.
Post it on the light, after spreading it on the table.
Give us some hard luck stories, and let them match up , show the woofing.
You'd probably have to bring in like 8 or 10 guys to get a couple good match ups.

This is probably reality TV territory, it seems to work in every other format tho.
 
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