Nobody watches pool?

For what it's worth, I enjoyed watching this last night. No announcers, plus the wasted time between the shots and the racking eliminated.

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Freddy Fuzzmore said:
I watch old videos. Players had personalities and were allowed to show them. Watching current players is like watching people work and they don't like the work .
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That, I have to agree with. Kinda like watching robots play these days. No more banter like Keith and Mike Sigel did. I miss that..The play level may be higher these days, but some of the fun for those watching has been removed.
 
Bob Jewett said:
A common refrain when discussing pool's future is "Nobody wants to watch pool -- it's totally boring."

Well, let's look at the views on YouTube for the current Premier League Pool event. There are 15 video streams on YouTube. The number of views of each one ranges between 50 and 120 thousand. Some of that count is certainly duplicates, but the total is over a million views. Someone, somewhere is watching pool, and those eyeballs are valuable to people. This does not count the 20 countries that have live broadcasts or paid streams. Those all bring in cash directly.

The Accu-Stats YT channel has multiple single videos over the 1 million views mark or close to it. Maybe not surprisingly, most of those very popular videos feature Efren Reyes, with the top Efren match having over 4 million views.

It is the viewers that will bring money into the game.
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The presentations are all alike... They are sterile & sometimes the Winner is known, before the first Rack is broken.... I'd like to see a venue where some 3-4 Speed players go first, then some 7-8 Speeds, so that everyone in the audience can understand, why every shot isn't made. Then when the Superdogs run 6 racks, the audience has an idea how this happened. Then after multiple venues, folks will begin to understand that boring is in the eyes of the beholder. If they understand the game & know who is playing, they have an interest is what happens & why they won....
 
ceebee said:
... so that everyone in the audience can understand, why every shot isn't made. ...
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Emily is doing the best she can in that regard with 4-inch pockets. Maybe 10-foot tables will be next. (Paging Greg Sullivan... ;))
 
Colonel said:
🙌🏻
This is why I can’t watch Matchroom stuff, horrifying camera work. Emily talks about “pool school” for players when she really should send the camera guys that do their stuff to Accustats for school on to how to properly film a match.
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I like the Matchroom streams. I like the format, the shoot outs, at least they are brining the spot shot back. Give them a chance they are trying to grow the game. If you don’t like them don’t watch.
 
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Badpenguin said:
The Ko brothers were the only ones I noticed, I'm sure others may have been affected also. During the semi-finals, the room became silent enough to notice it on the streams.

They were able to set up all of the required cameras, video production with international broadcasting agreements, commentators, and refs. I think they could probably get the logistics together to get a time clock system working. If accu-stats can, they can.
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Well they must have adjusted they both made the finals. Maybe it’s a language issue
 
ceebee said:
The presentations are all alike... They are sterile & sometimes the Winner is known, before the first Rack is broken.... I'd like to see a venue where some 3-4 Speed players go first, then some 7-8 Speeds, so that everyone in the audience can understand, why every shot isn't made. Then when the Superdogs run 6 racks, the audience has an idea how this happened. Then after multiple venues, folks will begin to understand that boring is in the eyes of the beholder. If they understand the game & know who is playing, they have an interest is what happens & why they won....
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I think mosconi cup-type atmosphere, weed sponsorships, and real time betting on the next shot / rack / set are the future.

Pool is an excellent betting game and has that advantage over many other niche sports.
 
kling&allen said:
I think mosconi cup-type atmosphere, weed sponsorships, and real time betting on the next shot / rack / set are the future.

Pool is an excellent betting game and has that advantage over many other niche sports.
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Then it will take Congress no time to investigate and that’s not ever good.
 
WardS said:
I like the Matchroom streams. I like the format, the shoot outs, at least they are brining the spot shot back. Give them a chance they are trying to grow the game. If you don’t like them don’t watch.
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i don’t think matchroom is doing the
spot shot shootouts
 
WardS said:
Then it will take Congress no time to investigate and that’s not ever good.
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No such thing as bad publicity? No different than MLB or NFL from the gambling standpoint but you are right there are probably sponsorship limitations on alcohol, weed, and tobacco companies.
 
WardS said:
I like the Matchroom streams. I like the format, the shoot outs, at least they are brining the spot shot back. Give them a chance they are trying to grow the game. If you don’t like them don’t watch.
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That's not matchroom, it is predator that does the shootouts.
 
kling&allen said:
I think mosconi cup-type atmosphere, weed sponsorships, and real time betting on the next shot / rack / set are the future.

Pool is an excellent betting game and has that advantage over many other niche sports.
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i was thinking this some week ago: they have a chat on youtube, ppl make predictions and bounce opinions - but they can't back it up. if the platform allowed microtransactions, small bets, it would be much more engaging.

this past event is literally modelled after the premier league darts and championship league snooker, which are events that mostly exists for the bookies/betting fans. instead of DAZN, or viasat in my case, they should have their own platform that allowed small transactions. that's much more interactive than going to a third party online bookie and bet against the house, alone.
 
If the secret is to attract new viewers, it'll be a challenge because I don't think non-player viewers have any conception of how good pros are. They don't understand that it's a combo of shot-making AND cue ball control. I think they think it's just shot-making. Heck, safeties look like terrible shots if you don't comprehend what a safety is. Several in a row and it looks like the pros are hacks. One simple thing is to identify the NEXT object ball; this only works in rotation games and 8-ball is the common game. In the USA anyway. I think they need to put a circle around the object ball and have it quickly fade out and then do the same for the next object ball after that. Non-standard pool ball colors is a problem.

As much as some commentators get on my nerves, I think complete silence is more boring. As for the commenting, one thing that strikes me (for attracting non-player viewers) is that what they are yakking about for every shot, it's not easy for the average viewer to follow all that. Pool is def a challenge to make it appealing to non-players.

Another problem is that there is more than one way a player can shoot a shot and that is a problem for the commentators. Especially with shot clocks, they don't have much time to explain. That's a challenge.

Online gambling might help, yes.

FWIW, I played pool for many years before I truly understood how much a good player can control the cue ball. As I grew up, safeties didn't exist. It was all about shot-making and somehow hope for 'shapes.' This was barroom and pool hall pool. But hardly any real good players. Just recreational pool.
 
rharm said:
I assumed they had shot clocks, just not visible on the cameras. It looked like the players kept looking back at the camera, my guess where the shot clock was.
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You are correct. There were two refs per table. A match ref and a shot clock ref. From what I observed, when a player knew he was getting close to his 10 second warning (say about 13 seconds remaining on the clock), they would wait for the warning and shoot after it. I did not hear or see anyone get a 5 second warning.
 
I think I mostly tune in for the players. If my favorite(s) play I can watch a full match without skipping.

Usually I turn it on 30 mins late and then watch the stream from the start so I can skip breaks and easy run outs. Granted, I missed some misses because if that, but it saved me lots of time.
 
Is Matchroom attracting new viewers to the game or are they just doing a better job converting people who are already fans/aware of the game into becoming viewers of professional pool? That’s a tough question to answer from the outside but my guess is that the buzz around their events within the pool community has prompted pool players/fans to pay more attention to their events/professional pool.

Ultimately, outside of posting a stream table on YouTube, what advertising is Matchroom doing to promote the game/their events? There might be some local advertising in the city where these events are occurring but the only marketing I’ve seen has been limited to posts on Facebook, instagram, etc. And all of those posts are being made on accounts already associated with pool so if you don’t follow those accounts, how are you to know that these events are even happening?

Hoping people stumble across a free stream on YouTube and are enamored enough to become a fan of the game/purchase a DAZN subscription doesn’t seem like a strategy that will bear much fruit. Especially when the free stream is two players playing in a sterile environment with no commentary or explanation of what is happening.
 
Name recognition had a lot to do with pool on TV back in the 70's when Charlie Ursetti had those shootouts with Mosconi and Fats. Who in the USA didn't know about those two? Fats made the show happen. His showmanship was amazing. He was Gorgeous George on steriods. In fact wrestling and pool back in Fats day had a lot in common.
 
AtLarge said:
During the Premier League event yesterday, the commentators said that Emily Frazer has announced that first place at the World Pool Championship this year will be $250,000.
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That is the kind of thing that will ultimately grow pool on TV! Plain and simple, people like to watch anything where there is big money on the line, the bigger the better. Big money pool tournaments will also attract more young athletic kids into the game. Pool is fun and if you can make money doing it, it's even more fun! HELLO

Big money pool tournaments will be a bonanza for the pool manufacturers. They all need to get onboard. They will sell more pool tables, more cloth, more chalk, more cues, more everything!
 
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