The state of pro pool. Who's really watching?

Culinarytracker

Culinarytracker

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
After reading so much about the struggle that pro pool is in right now, I decided to get a feel for how much attention the players in my leagues pay to pros.

There are about 60 players in my two VNEA leagues, ranging from D players all the way up to some strong A players. I would say that about half would recognize names like Efren , Archer, or Earl Strickland. Also Corey Deuel, mostly because he's somewhat local (I'm in central Ohio). One of the older guys know a few more older names like Siegel, Grady, etc....

As far as events, it seems like only a handful of people are aware of the Mosconi Cup, and a few don't act too clueless at the mention of the US Open. Only one other person has ever admitted to actually watching some Mosconi Cup, or US Bar Table Championships on YouTube. Even the guys that are taking lessons with me, and putting in lots of work to improve their games don't seem interested in watching good matches that I send them links to. Even though they are always asking how to improve their patterns and strategies. Some of them will watch an instructional DVD, but apparently not a match.

Female pro's are a little more recognized. Mainly Jeanette Lee, Fischer, Jasmin Ouschan, and Karen Corr. Understandable because of their ESPN presence.

Anyway, last night our team played the strongest team in the league. Made up of VNEA AA players that won the AA division state tournament a few years ago. These guys are strong players that have been active in serious pool for around 30 years each. I flat out asked them if any of them watched any pro pool. The answer was no. This surprised me because I know these guys have had exposure to pro's over the years. Paul Gerni and Dave Pearson have been regular visitors to our neck of the woods in the past and both of them would recognize most of the guys on this team even if they just randomly met on the street.

I know these guys love everything about the game of pool. They play well and love to talk strategy and technique. If a couple pros, or even area shortstops were playing right in front of them they would watch every rack while quietly commentating among themselves. So, if these guys aren't even in the target audience who in the heck is?


Carl

P.S. Our team got slaughtered by those guys. :embarrassed2:
 
I'm new to this as I just started playing an APA league this summer. I stumbled upon Mosconi cup matches as a way to improve my 9 ball. My brother started in the league with me and he is an APA 2/2 so I told him to watch these mosconi cup matches to help him. He just fell in love with the drama and watched 2010-2012 over one three day weekend. Other than the local short stop that's on my team I've brought up Van Boening, Archer, Morris etc with many players in our league (about 100) and maybe 2-3 know what I'm talking about. I've learned a lot over the last 5 months and wish that pool would be shown on one of the 4 million sports channels I have on cable but its nowhere to be found. I really feel like Van Boening could have the Chris Moneymaker poker effect if they would just show some events on TV. Just the US open or the Mosconi cup. It's a shame because pool is way more fun to watch than poker. The average person understands Texas hold 'em more than they do 9 ball which is sad.
 
It's a good question, and a great point.

Maybe JCIN could chime in on this. Maybe see what his audience is like for TAR, as far as numbers and demographic?
 
drv4 said:
I'm new to this as I just started playing an APA league this summer. I stumbled upon Mosconi cup matches as a way to improve my 9 ball. My brother started in the league with me and he is an APA 2/2 so I told him to watch these mosconi cup matches to help him. He just fell in love with the drama and watched 2010-2012 over one three day weekend. Other than the local short stop that's on my team I've brought up Van Boening, Archer, Morris etc with many players in our league (about 100) and maybe 2-3 know what I'm talking about. I've learned a lot over the last 5 months and wish that pool would be shown on one of the 4 million sports channels I have on cable but its nowhere to be found. I really feel like Van Boening could have the Chris Moneymaker poker effect if they would just show some events on TV. Just the US open or the Mosconi cup. It's a shame because pool is way more fun to watch than poker. The average person understands Texas hold 'em more than they do 9 ball which is sad.
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You...we, actually are not qualified to comment on the perceived acceptance of pro pool by 'the public'. We like pool, so we are obviously predisposed to enjoy watching it.
It is fun to do but far less fun to watch.
 
Black-Balled said:
You...we, actually are not qualified to comment on the perceived acceptance of pro pool by 'the public'. We like pool, so we are obviously predisposed to enjoy watching it.
It is fun to do but far less fun to watch.
Click to expand...

I get what you're saying but if they scheduled the US open 9 ball during a sports dead time (aka Non football time) and put it on ESPN the ocho plenty would watch. I'm 30 and started playing in the pool league because my buddy really wanted me too. I prob would have started years back if I had seen the mosconi cup on tape delay in say 2007 at 11pm on espn2. If the national heads up poker tourney can be on NBC during the day on a Saturday during baseball season, then so could pool. Pool really needs its Tiger Woods, or Moneymaker moment. Someone the average person is drawn too. I think Van boening could be that guy.
 
Some random musings

I think the issue is a little more complicated. First, pool rarely makes an appearance on television, so for a non-avid fan to watch they need to actively search for it on Youtube or find the stream. How many of these people would sit and watch pool if they happened across it on TSN?

Viewership I think is also dependent prestige of tournaments and popularity of the players. Unfortunately, no tournament has any reputation for the general public and they also aren't familiar with the players so there isn't anyone or anything to root for.

Keep in mind viewership for the PGA is dependent on the factors I mentioned, and it suffered during Tiger Woods hiatus. But they have also already built a base of viewers which kept it going.

Pool also has to fade poor time slots and taped matches. I consider myself a tennis fan, I watch the events on television and I attend pro events when I can. But unless I get an itch to watch tennis, I won't go out of my way to watch a replay of a match, finals or otherwise. Once I know the result, that's good enough. I would have rather seen it live though.

I do think pool has a chance. Snooker does quite well, and there are worse things you can watch on tv. I would be surprised however if tournaments ever offered multi million dollar purses regularly, as that would require golf and tennis level attendance and participation. But certainly I think pool can achieve snookers level of success.

I think part of the puzzle is selling the players as much as it is selling the sport/game/activity/whatever you want to call it. People need someone to root for first and foremost.
 
Most people just enjoy playing pool, not watching it. I happen to enjoy both.

Earlier this year, some of the top pros were in town for the Swanee. I asked some of my friends to go and watch, but none of them really seemed that interested.
 
I've brought this up before. There is no connection between league players and professionals. The majority of league players here have no idea who the top players are.
 
I play with a bunch of casual players. The only name that a majority of them know is Minnesota Fats. They don't know anything about him other than the fact that he was a pool player. One guy knows the name Janette Lee because he saw her once on TV.

Pool just isn't a TV sport. In addition to not having a large enough audience, it takes too long and you can't really show a "highlight reel" like you can for football, baseball, skiing, etc. The "winning" shot is always a straight-in 10-ball in the corner that anyone could sink.
 
How does chess do this?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/chess-...-world-champion-magnus-carlsen-162459722.html

Apparently he won 1.5 million for the world championship? Surely pool could learn something.

And then there is,

http://www.chess.com/article/view/making-money-in-chess

It's 3 years old, but assuming this was accurate at some point the gist is the top 50 players in the world make at least 100,000. Players towards the bottom of the top 100 are making 50-70k.

These stats are better than snooker, so how can cue sports learn and capitalize from this example? Or is their other reasons why the game is lucrative (comparatively) for their players? I have to imagine there is a similar demographic of participants that, although they play avidly, probably can't name many top players aside from Kasparov, Karpov or Bobby Fischer.
 
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