Do you want to hear why from the perspective of someone in the business who gets asked to sponsor players every couple days?
Well even if you don't I will tell you
Return on Investment.
When I think of sponsorship I think of a person wanting and needing MONEY. Giving someone a pool cue or a case isn't sponsorship, it's a gift with the faint hope that the use of such will lead to a few sales or a little extra recognition.
But when it comes to actually spending money on a regular basis there has to be some reasonable expectation of exposure and bump in sales to be able to afford that expense. The old saying is I know half of my advertising budget is wasted but I don't know which half.
Most billiard businesses that make products are mom and pop operations and not really turning a lot of profit. Only a handful are companies with millions of dollars in revenue. Of those most are already sponsoring players who participate in lots of tournaments and get a lot of exposure and who have a large fan base.
So that leaves the lesser known pros for the companies that aren't that big. As you can surely tell this is a vicious cycle where lower tier pros don't have the funds to go to lots of events and smaller businesses don't have the funds to send them to lots of events so no exposure means no additional revenue to cover the expense. No tournament participation means that you don't have enough exposure to get decent monetary sponsorship.
Pool is unfortunately a very poor sport. the industry is totally dependent on revenue from players to generate the money they use for advertising. Lots of people are playing but the amount of diehards who spend a lot on equipment is relatively small and the money they spend is divided amongst a lot of competitors.
Lots of people are playing in leagues and tournaments but with no outside money coming in from national brands like Coke, Dell etc... and no national exposure on television - which is still the best medium to reach the most people at one time - which is what would attract national brands - pool's profile remains subdued against the other sports, reality shows, and invented sports like American Ninja Warrior.
Which means in essence that the only way for a player to get Shane Van Boening level sponsorship is to do it the way Shane did it. On his own until such time as he had acquired enough fame to attract steady backers and a major sponsorship.
But I can tell you that Shane's deal is not usual either. Most big companies don't really pay that much because even for them the amount of exposure is greatly diminished by the fact that pool is not consistently on television and so their return on investment is not really sufficient to justify a large budget on player sponsorships. For them tournament sponsorships make more sense because they know that whatever viewership the tournament gets will see their logos and they don't need to take the risk that their sponsored player might not even make it to the streamed tables.
So in conclusion yes it's a shame that a highly skilled player doesn't have a steady endorsement deal that pays him enough to travel to a lot of events. But that's the reality of this sport.
My advice is that any player who has the skills should take their marketing into their own hands. They should first of all make sure they have a website that is polished and professional and highlights the products that they do endorse, even if they don't get paid to endorse them. For example, does he play with a cue he bought? Does he really like it? Then write up a little review of WHY he bought it and why he likes it. Same thing for the tips he likes, the case he uses and so on.....because this SHOWS those of us in the industry that this player is proactive about doing what they can to promote brands they like and use their reputation as a player to help the brands they like. It makes brands which are NOT listed think hard about trying to do what they can afford so as to be associated with such a player.
Secondly I would advise him to engage with others about how to play, tell stories about how he got into pool, how he aims (had to slip that in), what competition at his level feels like etc... in other words create content that is compelling and builds a fan base.
Build a following on FB, Instagram, google+, reddit, twitter, youtube etc.. this helps to not only attract sponsors but also to monetize that following by being able to sell products to your fan base, clothing, lessons, exhibitions....and to get invites to events.
Also make sure you always play nice with promoters and organizers and sport organizations. Volunteer time to do stuff for youth organizations for free to increase exposure and network.
Does all this sound like a lot of work over and above the main job of playing pool for money? It is.
What pro pool players fail to understand, most of them, is that THEY are the product. In order to get people to BUY that product the player has to show buyers the value they are getting for the money. And when the value is high then it becomes a situation where many brands desire to be associated with that player. Just being a good player isn't enough because there is no medium where just playing good gives enough exposure as to be the only reason to justify the expense. So players today need to be more proactive in how they engage so that they can show sponsors that they actually do have a decent amount of eyeballs on them on a consistent basis.
When I owned Instroke we started talking to Ralf Souquet about a possible sponsorship. Ralf faxed us a letter with his request and it was on a professional piece of letterhead with the companies who sponsored him neatly down one side. I took that fax off the machine and the first thing I thought was I want my logo on this letterhead. And we did end up sponsoring Ralf for a five figure amount yearly. But what I told my partners at the time is that if we did it then we would need to spend as much or more advertising the relationship, which we did. At that time we had just shy of $500,000 revenue yearly and what we were spending on Ralf and associated advertising was a healthy amount in comparison. I don't know if we got a really good return on investment even then BUT Ralf Souquet was SO PROFESSIONAL that it felt like we would be seen as a high quality serious company just by association.
And that is really the whole point. If someone makes themselves really attractive by their professional actions then it can hardly fail to pay off provided they have the skill to actually do consistently well in events. Hell I have seen really weak "pros" get sponsorships just because they were good at marketing themselves.
And there you go from one maker's perspective.
A professional billiard organization should copy this....
....great advice.