all over a few dollars, i just dont get it. i hope the players get paid
Pool is nowhere near where people want it to be or think it should be. This isn't golf, tennis or poker. To survive as a professional pool player, you eat what you kill. Pool players have been taken advantage of many many times because of lack of money, lack of proper direction and business knowledge. At the same time, exposure is exposure and you never know what could come out of it.
Lets take a look at golf for example and their most popular player, Tiger Woods. Tiger makes dough, we all know that. When he's playin in the field, no matter if he's in first or last, he's on tv. Golf on TV exploded when Tiger came around. Everyone involved profited. CBS, ESPN, NBC etc went to town putting golf on tv. However, Tiger doesn't get paid a penny from the networks. The PGA and whatever network produces the coverage that event own the rights to all of that footage to use, sell or show however they see fit. When Nike wants to make a Tiger commercial with some of his historic shots, Nike pays the PGA rights to that footage. The PGA provides Tiger with a platform to play, money to be won and the opportunity to sponsors.
Now that might not be the same for all things. I'm not sure how poker on tv works. They may pay the poker players an appearance fee. That, I'm not sure of. Maybe Dippy could chime in on that.
But to be honest, the pool world is almost better to the players than big time sports. TAR for example pays the players a flat rate for all of their PPV events. The problem is, pool doesn't have the coverage of golf. They don't have the big dollar sponsors or huge market to push products on like golf. Its just a small community of people with larger than life expectations. You cannot blame the players for thinking the sky SHOULD be the limit, it just doesn't work like that.
So by the players being on dvds, live streams etc, they might be making money directly from this they may in the future. I know I'm more likely to donate to Alex or Efren because of the magic they've shown me on my computer screen than some mid level professional that never makes the tv table. Or even lessons... I can't imagine Alex being a good instuctor, bouncing around and busting into Elvis every 10 minutes is not a great learning environment, but I would pay $100/hour to hear what he has to say.
So while he may make $0 from his one pocket challenge dvd from Jay/tv mike, he can win a couple hundred playing me because of it and more than likely make more than jay/tvmike do off dvd sales.