TAR and its future...(dosent look good IMO)
- Thread starter Fatboy
- Start date
You may already be doing this, but I think you should really be trying to sell your product to poolrooms at some subscription rate( per month/year). If a lot of poolrooms started showing your product, not only would that be a source of revenue, but also a good way to advertise your products to pool players who may start watching at home.
JCIIN said:
Looking forward to your success, JCIN and BN. You guys are the best at this and this is what will mark you in the history books. Pool's roots are in action and action is high interest to pool players, new and vets. To me, TAR has taken Pat Fleming's work to the ppv masses focusing on one of the most interesting/attractive aspects of the game. Keep up the good work!
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rayjay said:Looking forward to your success, JCIN and BN. You guys are the best at this and this is what will mark you in the history books. Keep up the good work!
I agree 100%. Along with Pat Fleming of Accu-Stats, you guys have made it possible for guys who can't tarvel (like me) to watch these great match ups. Enough thanks can't properly be expressed.
And I've never had any problems with any purchase from T.A.R.
Pioneers in a much needed but very under valued field.
JCIN has spoken, and thats that!! TAR will do what they do best, and I will support them 100%, I know for a fact the TAR boys have the heart to keep it going, they are just ahead of the curve, meaning that streaming is new and when more people get the hang of it their audiences will grow, when pool gets a push like poker did, TAR will blow up bacause they are there first and best!!!
A started this thread out of frustraition, it was my opinionatthe time a knee jerk reaction, I was just disaappointed with the numbers, I thought the WPBA would bring some numbers, hind sight being 20/20 I'm more concerned about the WPBA!!! They sanction Jasmin, cant get 30 people to watch and have 7 or 8 events a year??? that isnt a orginazition its a "club", shame too they were so strong for so long. I hope they work it out.
As for TAR they have to try new things, some work some dont. I'm going to make a offer to them for a different venue soon, for action. I hope it works, JCIN knows about it. We will make a announcment when the time is right and the plan is worked out. What it biols down to is me doing my part for my friends at TAR, friends that I wont turn my back on.
A started this thread out of frustraition, it was my opinionatthe time a knee jerk reaction, I was just disaappointed with the numbers, I thought the WPBA would bring some numbers, hind sight being 20/20 I'm more concerned about the WPBA!!! They sanction Jasmin, cant get 30 people to watch and have 7 or 8 events a year??? that isnt a orginazition its a "club", shame too they were so strong for so long. I hope they work it out.
As for TAR they have to try new things, some work some dont. I'm going to make a offer to them for a different venue soon, for action. I hope it works, JCIN knows about it. We will make a announcment when the time is right and the plan is worked out. What it biols down to is me doing my part for my friends at TAR, friends that I wont turn my back on.
I hope TAR has the ability to choose better marquee matches than they provided. Personally I wouldnt pay $20 a day for those matches. Perhaps mixing in some marquee mens as well will help
I agree with focusing on Action Challenges. I think that having a few marquee events per year, selling tickets at the door, and having ample time to market it aggressively would do so much more than diluting the brand providing tournament coverage.
Nothing can top the drama that was Alex and Shane. Watching those two battle it out at Derby with Shane coming out on top and Alex running around to get staked and putting himself in the box - then the interim with them playing in Nashville and Alex getting a little back - to the showdown in Vegas where Shane was cruising to a win only to have Alex claw back on pure heart and take it at the end.
I mean these and other Action Challenges are the stuff of legends. No one will remember or really care about this or that tournament match up.
But Shane and Corey, Harriman and Schmidt, Appleton and Frost, Shane and Alex!!! those matches are legends and heroic efforts by all the players.
I really think that the wisest decision is for TAR to focus on ACTION. Spend the time trying to arrange marquee match ups and the people will come.
I'd love to see the Action Report website be about action reports. Who is getting down with whom, what rivalries are forming, what were the games. Who is flush and ready to give the world the seven?
I'd be there every day checking the forum, blog, whatever, if that kind of thing was there.
Don't forget the podcasts and video interviews though - those are the NUTS as well!!!!
Nothing can top the drama that was Alex and Shane. Watching those two battle it out at Derby with Shane coming out on top and Alex running around to get staked and putting himself in the box - then the interim with them playing in Nashville and Alex getting a little back - to the showdown in Vegas where Shane was cruising to a win only to have Alex claw back on pure heart and take it at the end.
I mean these and other Action Challenges are the stuff of legends. No one will remember or really care about this or that tournament match up.
But Shane and Corey, Harriman and Schmidt, Appleton and Frost, Shane and Alex!!! those matches are legends and heroic efforts by all the players.
I really think that the wisest decision is for TAR to focus on ACTION. Spend the time trying to arrange marquee match ups and the people will come.
I'd love to see the Action Report website be about action reports. Who is getting down with whom, what rivalries are forming, what were the games. Who is flush and ready to give the world the seven?
I'd be there every day checking the forum, blog, whatever, if that kind of thing was there.
Don't forget the podcasts and video interviews though - those are the NUTS as well!!!!
Johnnyt said:
There is a lot more support happening than you realize. Companies in the Billiard Industry donate product, sponsor with cash, help with setup and logistics and a lot of other ways. I don't know that this is a billion dollar industry but no matter what the size of it is don't confuse INCOME with PROFIT.
Most of the companies in billiards are considered to be small businesses. There are very very few that make enough revenue to be classified as medium level businesses.
Advertising is a catch-22 though because it's hard to reach all the potential customers using the existing mediums inside the industry and often too expensive to use the ones outside the industry.
And honestly, in today's world, a billion dollars just isn't much any more. Would be great if I had it but when it's spread out among all the people in the pool business there isn't much for each company to call it's own.
I know that Sterling Gaming and CueSight donate upwards of $20,000 a year to various tours and tournaments and charity events. When we partnered with King's Bay promotions we did around $50,000 in product in addition to the other things we had going. Sterling also spent several hundred thousand on professional player salaries during the first few years it was in business.
I am certain that other similarly sized companies do a lot as well. I would bet that Brunswick puts well more than $100,000 a year into pool events and players it sponsors.
I am sure that if we really did the math then we could come up with tens of millions that go back into pool. If true then where is the money? Well since part of that is in product it's not turned into cash unless that product sells in some fashion. The rest goes to expenses and prize funds I would think. I doubt that any single person is becoming rich by skimming off sponsor's money or product sponsorships.
So it's a bit unfair to say that the industry doesn't care about pool. I think that the biggest part of the problem is the BCA doesn't know how to sell pool and they are the ones who should be engaged in doing that. The BCA should be a way for the industry to support pool in a concerted way that would channel the money to better uses. But the BCA itself can't do the job that is their mandate so we are stuck.
Just throwing more money into the ring isn't going to grow the sport.
The customers need to see the money
John,
I'm not going to disagree with your numbers, I have no idea. I can tell you that the average pool player and fan doesn't see the companies putting much in. When sponsors write a check for $20,000 or $50,000 everybody knows where it came from. When they pay the same money for a venue or broadcast costs we have no idea if they paid $2,000 or $200,000 but we tend to dismiss their sponsorship because we don't have a number attached to it.
My opinion, most sponsors aren't beginning to get bang for their buck if they are spending the kind of dollars you indicate and it is their own fault for not being more visible. On my local scene, the sponsor that spent less than $100 an event was often higher profile than the one that spent several thousand an event. Spending money that nobody is aware of is not good advertising.
Hu
John,
I'm not going to disagree with your numbers, I have no idea. I can tell you that the average pool player and fan doesn't see the companies putting much in. When sponsors write a check for $20,000 or $50,000 everybody knows where it came from. When they pay the same money for a venue or broadcast costs we have no idea if they paid $2,000 or $200,000 but we tend to dismiss their sponsorship because we don't have a number attached to it.
My opinion, most sponsors aren't beginning to get bang for their buck if they are spending the kind of dollars you indicate and it is their own fault for not being more visible. On my local scene, the sponsor that spent less than $100 an event was often higher profile than the one that spent several thousand an event. Spending money that nobody is aware of is not good advertising.
Hu
JB Cases said:
ShootingArts said:
I know you understand when I tell you that we weren't too happy to see that the people who paid the least got as much exposure on the billboards as the people who paid the most (us) for the last tournament we sponsored.
I agree with what you are saying about being more visible though. What people forget is that even when you sponsor someone or an event or a tour then you have to spend more money to market that relationship as well. Very often in the billiard industry that marketing is not done because sponsors forgot to or can't afford the marketing to go with the sponsorship.
An example of a brand that has successfully marketed the sponsoring they do is CueTec. They have continually put money into the sport in the form of player sponsoring and event sponsoring and been sure to advertise heavily promoting that.
But let's talk about "the fans". Who are the fans and where are they?
We need to get real for a second and understand that big money doesn't equate to more fans. Pool is not a spectator sport. It's a slow game that looks too easy to neophytes. Any drama in pool is often fictional or over-exaggerated by the announcers who have to explain WHY there is a tricky situation.
Pool has fans for sure but they are small in number and them seeing "more money" on the table isn't going to make them more of a fan than they already are.
When we talk about pool as a spectator sport and what kind of a fan base it has we need to be absolutely real about it and understand that pool's fan base of diehards is pretty small and the number of people that pool draws from the casual viewership is also pretty small in comparison to other people's numbers.
I bet that if you just surveyed people with a DVR or TIVO as to what shows they are recording then you would find pool to be a tiny tiny percentage. These are people who deliberately choose what they want to watch and so their choices mean much more than someone who sits down in front of the tv and channel surfs and chooses pool because it's better than the infomercials.
Let's just use AZ as an example of fans vs. actual draw. I don't know how user sessions correlates to number of real people who browse AZ Billiards daily. But for the sake of argument let's assume that 5000 real people drop in to AZ each day and spend about an hour on average here.
TAR marketed the WPBA PPV for a week before the event at least. So that's 7 days times 5000 equals 35,000 opportunities to see that TAR was going to do the WPBA PPV. So let's assume that most of these 5000 people was aware that TAR was doing it.
Of those people only 30ish have signed up to watch the event. That's less than 1% of the people who can be considered above average fans. What does that say for the opportunity to pull in more people who aren't above average fans? I say it's a TOUGH sell in today's world of things vying for people's attention. The average person sees something like 10,000 advertising impressions a day. How stellar does something have to be for it to cause people to react and purchase it? If the offer is not outstanding then it has to so repetitive that people give in.
So it's really not fair to say that making pool thrive is just a matter of putting more money into it. That money needs to be spent very carefully and concertedly for the purpose of bringing more people to the game so that THEY bring more money into the sport. And the way that happens is when pool can prove that it is a big enough draw then major outside industry sponsors will WANT to spend money on seeing their name attached to pool.
I never see a number attached to Golf or Tennis sponsorships. I can't recall hearing the announcers talking about how much money Buick is spending to sponsor this or that tournament. I mean we hear about big big things like Tiger's 60 million contract with Nike but I really can't recall reading or hearing about how much advertisers are putting into particular events. Not to say that this information isn't available but I have to respectfully disagree that this is something that matters to the fans of those two sports. And I don't think it matters to the average pool fan either. I think it matters more to the fanatical pool fan who knows what the players have to go through to attain the skill to make pool look too easy.
I have said this before and I am saying it again. The problem with "pool" is that it's too fragmented. Starting with the fact that we have professional events in four disciplines and five if you count the trick shot shows. Then comes the fact that we have umpteen "governing bodies." Add in a healthy dose of general ignorance of what's happening in pool among those who do actually play fairly regularly and you can see how easy it is to lose 10-20 million in sponsorship money. Byt that I mean that the average pool fan can only get slices of what's happening because there is no consistent landscape to get familiar with.
Anyway, this has turned into a much longer piece than I wanted it to be. As someone who has been giving for a long time - not nearly as much as some - I see that the money we spend does indeed have a very small impact simply because the game itself does not have enough draw nor enough distribution.
a little confusing
John,
I have to say that what you said in the long post is a little confusing. You seem to have changed positions from the beginning to the end of the post.
When you say that you have a small fan base and a small customer base that makes it even more important to reach them and make them aware of what you are doing, not less so. We aren't talking about golf or tennis where you only need a small percentage of market share, we are talking about pool where you need every customer you can get. When I see a string of sponsors scroll across a screen all in the same sized text and apparently random or alphabetical order, I have no idea if each contributed equally or if some contributed much more than others. It might give you a little name recognition if you have none but I am as likely to spend my dollars with one sponsor as another or even worse, quit watching when this same tired string of sponsors is shown again.
You make an excellent point that sponsorship without marketing means little. Most of the pool corporations aren't getting bang for their buck because they aren't marketing. Although the names on the program may be the same size it does matter to me if Seybert put in $100 and Sterling put in $10,000 but it only matters if I know it. Once I found how the game was played I often put in token sponsorship of local events to get my name on the list of sponsors. I often got the same bang for $20 that the local big business got for contributing several thousand. Nobody knew what either of us put in the pot and sometimes the names appeared in the order the contributors donated putting my business name at or near the top since it was well known that I would kick in a few dollars for most local causes.
I didn't advertise the amount I contributed because it was to my advantage not to. However if I contributed largely, I would have had a line at the bottom of my ad's mentioning "Over $XXXXX.XX contributed to local causes" or similar specifying what I gave in the last calendar year, whichever was to my advantage.
How many likely customers of yours have any idea what you have contributed to the sport in the last year or in total? It matters to a lot of us.
An interesting fact about the WPBA event. I PM'ed Justin several days before the event because I noticed that payment was made to the WPBA, not TAR. I asked him if it was of more benefit to TAR for me to buy this or some later event as I was interested in supporting TAR, not the WPBA. I did make it plain that I was talking about benefit, not necessarily cash. I never heard from Justin and I didn't have time to watch but a little of the event anyway so I never purchased it. I am aware of what TAR gives to the sport and I will support them. I have no idea what the WPBA gives to the sport, if anything, so I wasn't inclined to make what was basically a donation if it was to them.
Hu
John,
I have to say that what you said in the long post is a little confusing. You seem to have changed positions from the beginning to the end of the post.
When you say that you have a small fan base and a small customer base that makes it even more important to reach them and make them aware of what you are doing, not less so. We aren't talking about golf or tennis where you only need a small percentage of market share, we are talking about pool where you need every customer you can get. When I see a string of sponsors scroll across a screen all in the same sized text and apparently random or alphabetical order, I have no idea if each contributed equally or if some contributed much more than others. It might give you a little name recognition if you have none but I am as likely to spend my dollars with one sponsor as another or even worse, quit watching when this same tired string of sponsors is shown again.
You make an excellent point that sponsorship without marketing means little. Most of the pool corporations aren't getting bang for their buck because they aren't marketing. Although the names on the program may be the same size it does matter to me if Seybert put in $100 and Sterling put in $10,000 but it only matters if I know it. Once I found how the game was played I often put in token sponsorship of local events to get my name on the list of sponsors. I often got the same bang for $20 that the local big business got for contributing several thousand. Nobody knew what either of us put in the pot and sometimes the names appeared in the order the contributors donated putting my business name at or near the top since it was well known that I would kick in a few dollars for most local causes.
I didn't advertise the amount I contributed because it was to my advantage not to. However if I contributed largely, I would have had a line at the bottom of my ad's mentioning "Over $XXXXX.XX contributed to local causes" or similar specifying what I gave in the last calendar year, whichever was to my advantage.
How many likely customers of yours have any idea what you have contributed to the sport in the last year or in total? It matters to a lot of us.
An interesting fact about the WPBA event. I PM'ed Justin several days before the event because I noticed that payment was made to the WPBA, not TAR. I asked him if it was of more benefit to TAR for me to buy this or some later event as I was interested in supporting TAR, not the WPBA. I did make it plain that I was talking about benefit, not necessarily cash. I never heard from Justin and I didn't have time to watch but a little of the event anyway so I never purchased it. I am aware of what TAR gives to the sport and I will support them. I have no idea what the WPBA gives to the sport, if anything, so I wasn't inclined to make what was basically a donation if it was to them.
Hu
JB Cases said:
Matt90 said:
Matt,
You too are a stand up guy for passing on this week's big Men's Florida Pro Tour Tournament to not cut in on TAR's (www.theactionreport.com) streaming of the WPBA tournament. I know you did a fine job of streaming and making DVD's for those of us that made it to the Gulfport one pocket tournament last weekend.
I'm glad you and I talked about your cancelling the streaming of the Florida tournament and look forward to seeing you in our regional area in the future.
JoeyA
John,
Good posts, and your right more $$$ dosent do much-in the short term. nobody(consumers) or going to change their spending habits because there is more advertizing going on, if they do it will be insignificant at best.
What is the issue?? the issue is participation and audience sizes, simple as that, with the lack of participation and interest there is, no advertizing will happen when there is no one to watch it. The WPBA thing this past weekend told us alot more about the WPBA and its product than it told us about TAR. It said that "Nobody is watching". TAR does get its audiences with other events, they didnt this time and there obviously isnt much interest outside of TAR, I thought for sure the familys of the players would at the very least watched. Shame too, the WBPA is as healthy as I thought-if those numbers are any indication, and I believe they are, AZB is a, if not the #1 poolsite in America(i dont go to others so i'm not sure) and nobody here wanted to watch-thats bad no matter how you mince the words.
Back to audience sizes. What came first, the chicken or the egg?? we dont know, but what we do know is you have to have audience sizes to sell advertizing. We know that if people dont participate in something or have interest in it they wont be in the audience. And thats the problem with pool-no kids getting involved, league players who dont know who Archer is, no movies in 20 years(if pool was popular H-Wood would be making movies), the list goes on and on. Alot of this can be helped by re-organizing the existing "pool world" for lack of a better term, meaning getting more out of what we have-and thats by orginazition and keeping people interested in pool, not just throwing $$ at it-as you correctly indictated.
We need people playing pool first then the rest will come right in time. With nobody playing pool will go by the way like the hola hoop, and 8-track tapes.
Good posts, and your right more $$$ dosent do much-in the short term. nobody(consumers) or going to change their spending habits because there is more advertizing going on, if they do it will be insignificant at best.
What is the issue?? the issue is participation and audience sizes, simple as that, with the lack of participation and interest there is, no advertizing will happen when there is no one to watch it. The WPBA thing this past weekend told us alot more about the WPBA and its product than it told us about TAR. It said that "Nobody is watching". TAR does get its audiences with other events, they didnt this time and there obviously isnt much interest outside of TAR, I thought for sure the familys of the players would at the very least watched. Shame too, the WBPA is as healthy as I thought-if those numbers are any indication, and I believe they are, AZB is a, if not the #1 poolsite in America(i dont go to others so i'm not sure) and nobody here wanted to watch-thats bad no matter how you mince the words.
Back to audience sizes. What came first, the chicken or the egg?? we dont know, but what we do know is you have to have audience sizes to sell advertizing. We know that if people dont participate in something or have interest in it they wont be in the audience. And thats the problem with pool-no kids getting involved, league players who dont know who Archer is, no movies in 20 years(if pool was popular H-Wood would be making movies), the list goes on and on. Alot of this can be helped by re-organizing the existing "pool world" for lack of a better term, meaning getting more out of what we have-and thats by orginazition and keeping people interested in pool, not just throwing $$ at it-as you correctly indictated.
We need people playing pool first then the rest will come right in time. With nobody playing pool will go by the way like the hola hoop, and 8-track tapes.
PinoyAko
Registered
I don't like watching girls play, no offense
if SVB, Pagulayan, Orcollo, Alcano, and the other big name players would play on PPV i would buy the live stream.
Have Filipinos play i would pay to watch that. of course im biased and i love rooting for my country men. mabye thats what TAR needs to do. I buy and watch for the fact that i have Favorites that i want to win. People always buy tickets to games when they are rooting for thier team to win.
if SVB, Pagulayan, Orcollo, Alcano, and the other big name players would play on PPV i would buy the live stream.
Have Filipinos play i would pay to watch that. of course im biased and i love rooting for my country men. mabye thats what TAR needs to do. I buy and watch for the fact that i have Favorites that i want to win. People always buy tickets to games when they are rooting for thier team to win.
ShootingArts said:
LoL I do that a lot. Maybe I could campaign for president someday.
I think I mentioned the importance of this as well and explained why it's not happening (lack of matching marketing funds and lack of planning). Another reason why it doesn't happen is that it's tacky. You and I both know that a lot of people would be turned off by companies constantly showing off the amount of money they "donated".
Exactly. So how am I supposed to reach you if you look at all sponsors equally? If the event gives equal billing to each sponsor regardless of the amount that each sponsor put in then how are you going to know who did more and thus who to give your money to, using your example? And how would you get that information? Let's say that you decided to go to our website and we said that we donated $50,000 so the event. Would you then surf to all the others sponsor's websites and see if they listed what they spent on the event and then give your support to the one who spent the most? I don't see this being typical behavior for any consumer of anything. I think it's the very very very rare consumer that will do that much research before making a purchase. Not to mention that the information you are looking for probably won't be there. Nor is it likely to be verifiable either in any easy way. I doubt that the BCA will disclose the amount of money that Sterling and related brands paid for the sponsorship of the recent GenerationPool 9 Ball event in Charlotte.
There you have it. You get so bored that you not only don't support the companies who support pool - you consider the repetition to be tired and stop watching. Who wants to see Cuetec sponsoring an event for the umteenth time. Now I want to see a show of hands though. How many people have ever purchased or recommended a Cuetec cue JUST BECAUSE they put so much money back into pool? Anyone ever felt charitable enough to just buy a Cuetec anything to support a brand that has put a lot of money back into the game? No, it would be the gross minority of "real pool fans" who buy Cuetecs. Actually it goes the other direction and we spend a lot of time deriding them and suggesting to newbies who end up here asking about them, presumably through the national ads run on TV and the tournament sponsorships they do, that they are better off with something else and how clueless could one be to not know that.
Again here is the rub, if Sterling says that they put in $10,000 and Seyberts says nothing because of course they don't want to say they just put in $100, then half the people will assume that Seyberts did the same or more than Sterling and the other half may assume that Seyberts did less but close. And that's counting the people who care about such things which is very small.
Good point and in fact Sterling should do more of that. I am a firm believer in advertising your good deeds/relationships if you are in business. However that requires a marketing budget and dedicated people to stay on top of all that and this is something that most of the small companies in the "billion dollar" (not sure where this figure comes from) billiard industry lack.
I am sure that very few likely customers have any idea of what Sterling contributes to the sport on a yearly basis. Still I can tell you that there are companies who give almost nothing back and they enjoy great business. Why? Because they sell at lower prices and the money flows right out of the USA. I am not on a protectionist kick but I think that a lot less people really do care about who is supporting pool than you think. Again though it's a tricky thing to "market" how much you spend on sponsoring. It can be quite tacky and distasteful to a lot of people and you run the risk of getting into numbers wars where no one knows the truth anyway.
That seems illogical. Why not support them both at the same time? Even if TAR had some sort of a deal where the WPBA got to keep all the revenue it would still support TAR to have as many people buy the WPBA feed as possible to show the WPBA that TAR can bring the audience. It would have helped to get TAR the position of PPV provider for the WPBA.
The WPBA brings international recognition that pool exists as a professional sport and is not just a bar game. They have been the most consistent face of professional pool for 20 years.
You seem to be more inclined to weigh the levels of support before giving yours. I submit that most people, the vast majority aren't so inclined to do so. Those people are bombarded daily with requests for their attention and they don't have the time or inclination to look around and see who is "worthy" in an altruistic sense of their business. I submit that most of them go for either the most compelling pitch or the most repeated one.
srs314
shooterville.com
Fatboy said:
This is so true, the decline of youth playing is evident. Pool now has to compete with so many forms of not only kid entertainment but family entertainment.
I remember back about twenty years ago going to a pool hall and having to wait for a table. I would go with my brother and Dad becuase that's what familys did. Haven't seen many familys in there these days. Seems these days rooms that are not sports bars first and pool second have trouble surviving.
As for the second point, about league players which of course is the largest demographic of pool players. Leagues like that BCA, APA and VNEA thrive off this mass of players. Now in this group probably only %10 can tell you that Johnny Archer is a pool player and maybe only %5 know Shane. That same %10 are the only ones that would turn their heads to even watch pool on TV at a bar or stop to watch for a bit if it happens to be on 1 of their 500 channels. I've been in many leagues and most people there are there for a night out with their friends and have no interest in anything more.
We are left I think with the task of making the game interesting and entertaining to the masses and if the people that play don't even watch we're in trouble.
watchez said:
I agree. What I said though is that the number is less than 1% and closer to .5% if the viewership was about 30 paid viewers. And if we increase the amount of unique humans who were able to view the advertisements and promotion for this PPV coverage then the response rate gets a lot lower.
Mike said at one point that there were over 10,000 unique session ids. I don't know how that is tabulated. I often have four AZ tabs open so I don't know if all that counts as one session id or not. I am not sure how to turn hits on a website into real individuals for the purpose of knowing how many real people are looking at my stuff.