MatchRoom's response to the WPA player sanctions:

stewie said:
You are reading this wrong. The more events, the better. But whoever runs an event should be protected from copycats. Mike Zuglan would not be happy with somebody else coming up with a second Turning Stone either. Many different events is what everyone wants and should support.
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I understand that much, I believe. But what about me doing a tournament in the Fairfield Inn across the road, a week later? Would the guys who were in the Turning Stone be prohibited from playing at the Fairfield? Where's the line?
 
as long as you are not calling it Turning Stone or very similar, running it with the intention to benefit off of an established tournament by somebody else, you should be good. Same days might be an issue - for you and others. But if it's the Fairfield Inn Open across the road on the days/weekend before or after, that should be okay. Bring it on!

I get what you mean. Nobody wants to loose players to somebody else. Putting things close to each other (location and timing) should benefit everybody. That's what's happening right now in September in the Northeast: Turning Stone, Raxx MVP Open,Connecticut Open, US Open. That's what you want, everybody benefiting from each other. There is even a (slightly) "smaller" 10-Ball Open at Raxx, which sneaked in and is benefitting as well, without colliding. Not sure how this came along in detail, but those guys are talking and coordinating, I guess.
 
klikr said:
I understand that much, I believe. But what about me doing a tournament in the Fairfield Inn across the road, a week later? Would the guys who were in the Turning Stone be prohibited from playing at the Fairfield? Where's the line?
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The line is largely surrounding copyrights, branding and trademarks. Your Fairfield tournament would be fine because it doesn’t infringe on anything. It’s just a 9 ball tournament across the street. But holding another tournament at the casino and calling it the Turning Stone Championship might because you are effectively piggy backing on Zuglans brand and generating confusion.

I expect titles are the pure area of focus for matchroom right now. They would likely enact that clause if the WPA (or anyone) tried to hold a separate US Open 9 Ball Championships because the WNT holds the rights to that name.

There may be a future where the WNT has stricter rules about where players can compete, but that is common for tours like the PGA and ATP. I think in snooker the WST may have similar rules as well.

But matchroom is smart enough to know that although they are the biggest game in town, their prize money doesn’t sufficiently dwarf the collective competition that they can be strict. Perhaps in a future where players are making snooker levels of cash (Luca Brecel pulled in $1m over 2 years) they could take a hard line simply because there is no reason for players to skip WNT tournaments.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Maybe I missed something.

Matchroom was going along with WPA sanctioning and everything seemed fine. Then Matchroom said, "Only our ranking system is acceptable," and the WPA declined to use that system which was based only on Matchroom open events. At that point, Matchroom announced the breakup and said that only the World Championship (9-ball) would be sanctioned.

Do you remember a different sequence of events?
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I'd be lying if I said the sequence of events didn't fall in line with what you're saying. However I also don't remember reading or hearing that sentence in quotes either. Do you have a citation...?

...again, it seems as though some want to paint the only group active in growing the pro game as an evil do'er.
 
klikr said:
I understand that much, I believe. But what about me doing a tournament in the Fairfield Inn across the road, a week later? Would the guys who were in the Turning Stone be prohibited from playing at the Fairfield? Where's the line?
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the WNT system is already ongoing and it doesn't work like that. it's more that if you set your tournament to be included in the WNT rankings (minimum 10k added i think) you will attract more top players because they will for sure want the ranking points. so for both the tournament promoters and the players it's a carrot, not a stick
 
Bob Jewett said:
Maybe I missed something.

Matchroom was going along with WPA sanctioning and everything seemed fine. Then Matchroom said, "Only our ranking system is acceptable," and the WPA declined to use that system which was based only on Matchroom open events. At that point, Matchroom announced the breakup and said that only the World Championship (9-ball) would be sanctioned.

Do you remember a different sequence of events?
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My understanding was that the WPA could maintain their combined ranking or something like that but matchroom wanted them to recognize and legitimize the WNT ranking for 9 ball.

It’s not a huge ask. I did some quick searches of other orgs and either there is a singular and consistent world ranking (Golf or Snooker) or the governing body ranks an entirely different level of competition (Tennis). An issue in pool has always been that there are many different rankings and each of them are largely meaningless.

Legitimizing the WNT ranking would be a big step to creating consistency and clarity. Of course that would create concerns about what to do with sanctioned 9 ball events that are not part of the WNT, but I expect that matchroom would have hoped the WPA could assist in folding events like the China Open into the WNT.

klikr said:
@Cameron Smith @stewie
you realize you're now arguing about tournaments and copyrights, not player restrictions...(which is what all of this was about, originally)
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They are related. If someone creates a Turning Stone Championship, one of the actions the WNT could take to protect the brand is to restrict player participation.
 
Cameron Smith said:
They are related. If someone creates a Turning Stone Championship, one of the actions the WNT could take to protect the brand is to restrict player participation.
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I think the point is that trademark and unfair competition law provide plenty of brand protection for Matchroom without Matchroom have to impose onerous restrictions on players.

I note the clause in the Matchroom agreement is not enforceable in most states. Courts have turned against such blanket restrictions in recent years. But Matchroom wouldn’t have to actually enforce its silly agreement in court, it just wouldn’t let a player compete in future Matchroom events.
 
Cameron Smith said:
The line is largely surrounding copyrights, branding and trademarks. Your Fairfield tournament would be fine because it doesn’t infringe on anything. It’s just a 9 ball tournament across the street. But holding another tournament at the casino and calling it the Turning Stone Championship might because you are effectively piggy backing on Zuglans brand and generating confusion.

I expect titles are the pure area of focus for matchroom right now. They would likely enact that clause if the WPA (or anyone) tried to hold a separate US Open 9 Ball Championships because the WNT holds the rights to that name.

There may be a future where the WNT has stricter rules about where players can compete, but that is common for tours like the PGA and ATP. I think in snooker the WST may have similar rules as well.

But matchroom is smart enough to know that although they are the biggest game in town, their prize money doesn’t sufficiently dwarf the collective competition that they can be strict. Perhaps in a future where players are making snooker levels of cash (Luca Brecel pulled in $1m over 2 years) they could take a hard line simply because there is no reason for players to skip WNT tournaments.
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It's not just prize money that MR offers. It's eyeballs. Another important revenue stream for the players is just their names which they can leverage for endorsements, lessons, autographed stuff, appearance fees, etc.
 
kling&allen said:
I think the point is that trademark and unfair competition law provide plenty of brand protection for Matchroom without Matchroom have to impose onerous restrictions on players.

I note the clause in the Matchroom agreement is not enforceable in most states. Courts have turned against such blanket restrictions in recent years. But Matchroom wouldn’t have to actually enforce its silly agreement in court, it just wouldn’t let a player compete in future Matchroom events.
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But would that extend to someone promoting a “US Open 9 Ball Tournament” sort of in the manner that Charlie Williams managed to get around calling his event the World 14.1 Championships? I feel like that sort of wording would be something the WNT would take action on.

I agree that blanket wordings are not great and generally not enforceable. I suspect it’s similar to the non-compete clauses in company contracts. An company can’t stop me from getting another job in my field. But you are right, the repercussions would be a ban from future WNT events.
 
A similiar issue is ongoing in the world of Billiards. The South Koreans are running their own version of World Championships and their money added is way above the other established sanctioning body. Fredrick Caudron exclusively plays the Korean version and I believe he's up in winnings to around 500K annually. The Vietnamese are also venturing out with their own league a well. The prize monies there are quite substantial as well.
 
The_JV said:
... Do you have a citation...?
...
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That was a paraphrase.

I think there were several obvious compromises for the ranking list issue. In the end it would have made little difference since the majority of WPA-sanctioned events would have been Matchroom events and the two lists would have converged within a year or so.
 
Baby Huey said:
A similar issue is ongoing in the world of Billiards. The South Koreans are running their own version of World Championships and their money added is way above the other established sanctioning body. Fredrick Caudron exclusively plays the Korean version and I believe he's up in winnings to around 500K annually. The Vietnamese are also venturing out with their own league a well. The prize monies there are quite substantial as well.
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Caudron has left Korea. There has been no explanation. Several other Europeans (Sanchez and Sayginer and ???) have gone to Korea at roughly the same time that Caudron left. There is a very large market in Korea for 3-cushion.

I have heard that playing 3-cushion has become the new thing for teenage Korean girls. In Seoul there are several billiard rooms per block downtown.

I hadn't heard about Vietnam.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Caudron has left Korea. There has been no explanation. Several other Europeans (Sanchez and Sayginer and ???) have gone to Korea at roughly the same time that Caudron left. There is a very large market in Korea for 3-cushion.

I have heard that playing 3-cushion has become the new thing for teenage Korean girls. In Seoul there are several billiard rooms per block downtown.

I hadn't heard about Vietnam.
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There is a rumour of 2 different reasons, one being not getting some of his prize money from PBA and the other one being quite sensitive, you can read a bit about it here and its quite telling that the end of the vid from PBA finals is cut before 1st place (won by Caudron) is announced (you can watch it here). Its safe to say that Caudron wont be playing in any competition in Korea anytime soon..
 
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ed liddawi makes some good points here. i don't agree with all of them, but they're well-reasoned and worth listening to. he takes a principled stand and i respect that.

i don't really understand the argument against protecting a tournament brand that you own. it's pretty standard business practice, and it would be odd if MR and other promoters didn't do it.

also the rankings discussion is a bit odd. MR used the WPA ranking for years as a basis for mosconi cup. but why shouldn't they use a 9-ball ranking when they now can? ed makes it sound like there are top players not reaching these events, but usually the MR opens have high participation of top fargo players.
 
Has the curtain been pulled back, or is the best yet to come?

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