Both trust and respect are much easier to keep than to regain.
A lot of people in Pool were prepared to give KT trust and respect at first sight unseen, including the Pros themselves, the industry and us fans. If KT had simply paid out Reno and THEN declared he was closing down or greatly scaling back the IPT he would not be having all the problems he is having now. He has broken the first and most cardinal rule of any tournament in any sport - PAY THE PRIZE MONEY. Everything else he could have floated for a while, but not that.
Sure, he would still have been disappointing a lot of people and breaking a lot of verbal promises, but frankly no-one should be really surprised, given the total and conspicuous absence of player contracts, schedules and publicly published information on the various deals he kept talking about that were to finance all these promises.
All he had to say to keep some level of trust and respect was the truth - He'd screwed up. He'd run out of his start-up money, failed to invest sufficient start-up money, failed to correctly predict the operating costs, failed to obtain decent TV contracts, failed to sign decent sponsorship deals, failed to find a buyer for the IPT at a price that could cover it's debts, failed to win backing and support from the existing major world Billiards organizations and failed to build the IPT into a profitable organization that could be floated in an IPO before the money ran out.
He could have even said he'd gotten bored with the project, that his boy Sigel wasn't winning anything and that he was sick of giving all his money to Brits, Germans and Filipinos ;-)
But to do what is very obviously a smoke and mirrors dance in public like this is unforgivable. And clearly his choice of senior staff members leaves a hell of a lot to be desired too.
