Haven't we been down this road? I thought it was agreed that the amount the players have put into the IPT is very small compared to what the IPT has paid out and what it has spent on staging and promotion.
It would not be difficult at all to discuss the good the IPT has done. Just as it is not difficult to discuss the obvious flaws the IPT has besides the non-payment issue.
The non-payment, the lies, and the disrespect shown to the players and fans is reprehensible. It does not outweigh the fact though that the IPT has shaken the professional pool world up and given hope to most of the pros out there where there was little to none before. If the IPT were to declare bankruptcy tommorrow then it would be regarded as the biggest failure in pool coupled with the largest payouts in pool. No one to date has dared to be as big as the IPT.
Barry Hearn is a multi-millionaire with loads of media connections. He hasn't attempted to do what the IPT has so far. Matt Braun and Allen Hopkins like to stage special events which only benefit very few players and have funky rules that make a circus spectacle of the game.
It cannot be known if "hundreds" of players will be left in "debt" if the IPT fails. I very much doubt that there are players who have put otherwise secure lives at risk for the IPT. Most of the players on the IPT roster are full-time pool players from what I can see. My experience is that most of them will play heads-up sets for more money than a full week of IPT expenses.
There is no doubt that Trudeau has run the IPT in a very heavyhanded manner regarding the players. There is no doubt that he spent very little effort to create a grassroots marketing campaign and that he gave the players little to go on for them to promote the IPT. That said, there is also no doubt that he has spent a lot of money to create a sellable product. He put IPT programming on during infomercial time at his expense. He got the IPT broadcast live on ESPN Europe. It is on an up and coming sports channel in the U.S.
In the end though, the players have contributed very little financially and have been rewarded handsomely when seen in purely financial terms. It appears as though this may continue. If it does not then at least there was a man who put up a lot of money, much more than he took in from the players, to try and make it work. That much at least should not be in dispute. Of course taken individually, some players of course put in far more than they have received in return at this point. It's not hundreds though and it's probably not life altering debts that have been incurred.
