The price is driven (for the most part) by the pool room owners, and it's not like the pool room owners are getting rich. Obviously, if they were, (meaning table time was being priced higher than the market should bear) there would be more and more pool rooms opening up around the country. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Aside from general table time pricing, the rest of the industry seems to be growing more and more reasonable. The prices of cues have stayed much the same in recent years, and it's actually easier and more affordable to get a solid playing cue. Production companies have made it possible for most players to get a cue that plays well for what it takes me to fill up my truck's tank a couple of times.
A combination of Ebay and foreign knock-offs of most everything has made it easy to get tip tools and all sorts of pool accessories at huge discounts. With all the rip-off products available to consumers, it's put more pressure on the original manufacturers to compete in the pricing market against their own imitations. A similar phenomenon has occurred with cues, cases, tips, cloth, balls, and tables. The exceptions seem to be a few top brands that have been able to lean on their quality and reputation. For instance, Diamond Billiard tables, Simonis Cloth, and Kamui tips have been able to avoid (for the most part) coming out with B-level products in order to move enough inventory to satisfy themselves. For years we've seen more popular methods of business, such as Brunswick, where the company has decided to offer its products in tiers of quality. Overall, this sort of action has probably hurt their reputation with billiard connoisseurs, but the average public continues to recognize their brand.
With all of the discussion about the popularity of pool, what helps, and what hurts -- I still think the industry hasn't figured out how to properly deal with urbanization. Obviously apartment living is not conducive to pool table owning, which in turn, hurts the game at all levels of production -- tables, lights, cloth, cues, balls, chalk, etc. But it shouldn't necessarily hurt the game. In fact, it should be a catalyst for pool room growth, but people can't play pool if they don't think about playing pool. Right now, pool is not in the subconscious of the average person. Mostly because pool is not on television. As it stands now, pool is an online, pay-per-view sport. As such, it has problems. For instance, I consider myself to be in the top echelon of the pool viewership, but even I am not going to pay $15.00 a day to watch the World 14.1, and straight pool is my favorite game! So if not me, then who the hell will see this stuff? Unfortunately, PPV doesn't usually work unless it's a group-attracting event (UFC, Boxing) or porn (and even that doesn't work very well). I've always thought it would be awesome to have pool room owners buy all of the big PPV tournaments and stream them in their pool halls, but without advertising, which costs money, no one will know it's happening.
Having said all of that, I don't want to be thrown into that group of people who say things like, "what's wrong with pool is [insert un-educated comment]." In fact, I don't think there is anything 'wrong' with pool. I like all of the main games, and can even live with the current versions of their rules, plus the talent is very strong, in my opinion. The equipment is great and the product is exciting. The question for the last decade remains the same -- how can we show this to the rest of the country?