A few thoughts about this.
1 i think it's important to have a good organizational structure with rankings and all so there can be a credible "number 1" player. In the beginning, the money's probably not going to be huge, so to attract an larger audience it will need to be based on prestige, so there needs to be a sense that players are competing for the title of being the best. And really, in other sports, what makes say the masters in golf or the super bowl a special event isn't the amount of money but the prestige of being the best.
2 there need to be a lot of tourneys, because just having 5 or even 10 tourneys doesn't really add up to to a "tour." Even if a lot of them are small to begin with. Different would be good, but just 9-ball in the beginning would be ok too.
3 there's got to be money to burn at the beginning, actual money, not KT money. There needs to be investment and it's going to be in the red for a while.
4 make entertaining TV productions. I can barely watch the ESPN coverage it's so bad, and while I love accu-stats, it's not going to go over well with non pool junkies. Personally, I liked Gabe Owen and Aaron Czetli (sp?) doing IPT coverage, it was knowledgable but also funny and they had personality, kind of like the guys that do sportscenter/best damn sports show etc. There's no hope with Mitch Laurance, it's got to be a slick and modern production.
5 try and get live audiences. Not sure how hard this is, I've never promoted a tourney or anything. But I would think this is possible because IMO, most people basically like the game of pool, even people that don't play much, they really enjoy it. And there are tons of bars where there's always a line of coins two feet long where bangers challenge each other for preeminence. I think a lot of these people would check out a local pro pool tourney if they knew about it. And this would build up grassroots support.
Finally, I'd change the tourney format from double elim to something else. One problem with 9-ball especially is that anyone can win a short race. But rather than change the rules, which I think are fine, I would change the format so the best rise to the top. I don't like round robin because there's too much relying on other players to win. Something like golf might work: for say a 5-day tourney, every day you play say 5 or 6 short matches (e.g. race to 5 or 7) against random opponents. Then at the end of each day, the players with the worst records get cut. At the end, the top 4 or 8 or 16 players get seeded by record, and there's a single elimination with longer races to determine the winner.
A totally separate thought is that the one-on-one long race matchups seem to be exciting like the Yang-Orcullo thing. Maybe it would be possible to have a pool organization kind of like boxing where instead of tourneys there are big one-on-one events like this. Of course, there are a lot of problems with doing this at a large scale, for example there would not be much opportunity for players who are not very near the top, since a "battle royal" between the number 27 and 33 ranked players would not attract much attention. Still, a lot of the pool "folkore," both historically and today, is based on stories of two guys matching up and playing all night until one guy gets busted. And there's this idea, which is largely correct, that the real best player is the guy who can win the long big-money wars rather than the race-to-9 double elim tourneys. So maybe emphasizing this part of the game could work.
1 i think it's important to have a good organizational structure with rankings and all so there can be a credible "number 1" player. In the beginning, the money's probably not going to be huge, so to attract an larger audience it will need to be based on prestige, so there needs to be a sense that players are competing for the title of being the best. And really, in other sports, what makes say the masters in golf or the super bowl a special event isn't the amount of money but the prestige of being the best.
2 there need to be a lot of tourneys, because just having 5 or even 10 tourneys doesn't really add up to to a "tour." Even if a lot of them are small to begin with. Different would be good, but just 9-ball in the beginning would be ok too.
3 there's got to be money to burn at the beginning, actual money, not KT money. There needs to be investment and it's going to be in the red for a while.
4 make entertaining TV productions. I can barely watch the ESPN coverage it's so bad, and while I love accu-stats, it's not going to go over well with non pool junkies. Personally, I liked Gabe Owen and Aaron Czetli (sp?) doing IPT coverage, it was knowledgable but also funny and they had personality, kind of like the guys that do sportscenter/best damn sports show etc. There's no hope with Mitch Laurance, it's got to be a slick and modern production.
5 try and get live audiences. Not sure how hard this is, I've never promoted a tourney or anything. But I would think this is possible because IMO, most people basically like the game of pool, even people that don't play much, they really enjoy it. And there are tons of bars where there's always a line of coins two feet long where bangers challenge each other for preeminence. I think a lot of these people would check out a local pro pool tourney if they knew about it. And this would build up grassroots support.
Finally, I'd change the tourney format from double elim to something else. One problem with 9-ball especially is that anyone can win a short race. But rather than change the rules, which I think are fine, I would change the format so the best rise to the top. I don't like round robin because there's too much relying on other players to win. Something like golf might work: for say a 5-day tourney, every day you play say 5 or 6 short matches (e.g. race to 5 or 7) against random opponents. Then at the end of each day, the players with the worst records get cut. At the end, the top 4 or 8 or 16 players get seeded by record, and there's a single elimination with longer races to determine the winner.
A totally separate thought is that the one-on-one long race matchups seem to be exciting like the Yang-Orcullo thing. Maybe it would be possible to have a pool organization kind of like boxing where instead of tourneys there are big one-on-one events like this. Of course, there are a lot of problems with doing this at a large scale, for example there would not be much opportunity for players who are not very near the top, since a "battle royal" between the number 27 and 33 ranked players would not attract much attention. Still, a lot of the pool "folkore," both historically and today, is based on stories of two guys matching up and playing all night until one guy gets busted. And there's this idea, which is largely correct, that the real best player is the guy who can win the long big-money wars rather than the race-to-9 double elim tourneys. So maybe emphasizing this part of the game could work.
