slowstroke
New member
[snipped......]
A lot of notions and nostrums have collapsed these past four weeks. Brazilian invincibility and the rise of American soccer, and English hooliganism and French geriatric ineptitude inspired a lot of pretournament words that proved empty.
Brazil faded, the United States never rose, England's pugnacious claim that "football's coming home" died with a whimper, and France's aging brigade did what it did.
Even the prevalent view that soccer can never have mass appeal in the United States was dented. Viewership is up 125 percent on ABC and 76 percent on ESPN, compared with the 2002 tournament.
[......snipped]
Link
As someone who works in marketing and deals with sports marketers periodically, I was duely impressed by these numbers. And I got to thinking how pool in 20 years or so can be where soccer is today.
The IPT is certainly the most financially viable entity to try to take control of the professional pool scene, by at least an order of magnitude if not more. With deep pockets and marketing chutzpah, Kevin Trudeau and the IPT seem to have the wherewithal to steer pool in the U.S. towards mainstream acceptance.
If successful, the rewards for Trudeau and IPT will be fabulous riches and kudos as first-to-market visionaries and entrepreneur. For the pool professionals, financial stability awaits.
And for the 10,000 or so U.S. pool addicts, there will be regular, more readily available, higher-quality fixes.
On a note of positive marketing comparison, NASCAR and WWF (now WWE) were started by questionable characters and languished for years before shrewd marketing propelled them skyward. Vince McMahon on paper even briefly became a billionaire.
And they shared a primarily working-class demographic with pool. Although nowadays, bluntly put, pool would be in the lower working-class demographic, wrestling lower-middle class, and NASCAR positively middle-class.
The typical NASCAR fan spends an average of $146 in admission, parking, food, booze, and merchandises in every event attended. The average wrestling fan spends around $80 per event. There are no generally recognized figure for pool. But I doubt it would be more than $30-35. (Yes, I reckon a lot of you spend more than double that, as do I, but don't forget to average in the vast numbers in every pool tourney who spends little or nothing)
On the negative side of marketing comparison, in an action-oriented society such as the U.S. with a swashbuckling attitude towards any and all sports, pool is just too sedentary, too undramatic, too somber and meditative an endeavor to market, even to the majority of its players. The heavy action bias in U.S. sports viewing will always be an great anchor for pool to bear.
In Northern European and some Asian societies, which are more contemplative and less action-driven, televised billiards sports have acceptable ratings. This started with the "Pot Black" snooker program on BBC in the late '60s, which even housewives and grannies found relaxing and uplifting to watch. You can also find chess, curling, and lawn bowling in certain European sportscasts.
In the good old U.S.A, only golf, equestrian sports, sailing, swimming, tennis have a primarily middle-class or above grassroots participation. Not coincidentally, they are also relatively more cerebral and contemplative in their presentations and commentaries, and are expected and accepted as such by their general viewers.
Again, to be blunt about it, pool resides at the extreme opposite end of the sporting participation demographic spectrum. In America, having general sports viewers endure a Souqet, Basavich, Williams, or Archer go through on average 30 seconds or more of fidgeting, lint-picking, and endless contemplation for something as low-action and inconsequential (to them) as shooting a few balls down is just mind-numbingly dull. On the other hand, millions upon millions will watch live, riveted to their seats, Tiger, Phil, Annika or Michelle spends minutes conferring with their caddies, walking back and forth on their line, measuring, going through their pre-shot routines, and revel in the golfing megastars' composure, discipline, measured aggression, and deliberative excellence; and yes, their winsome good looks.
So why would the average casual first-time viewer be entranced by watching telegenic, WASPy, genteel Phil Mickelson goes through a final round of a Major, slogging away stoically? But the average casual first-time viewer would feel disinterested, even exasperated watching Danny Basavich twitching away and re-setting time and again in a pool final?
In Social Psychology, there is a concept called "Cognitive Dissonance" (Defintion 1, Definition 2), which tells us that an average viewer not only will put up with, but admire someone like Phil for taking his time -- because watching him, to be in his presence, rightly or wrongly, they feel elevated -- whereas unless someone like Earl is ranting or raving (thereby giving us trainwreck-like action), the generally lowlier pool personages in the average viewer's stereotyped, subconscious mind do not merit their TV viewing time for offering little in the way of mind stimulants (i.e. gratuitous violence or fast-action athletic excellence).
*******
So, will the IPT bring us any closer in those FIFA World Cup viewership numbers' direction? I think the fair answer is: nobody really knows at this point.
Is it even a geniune first step in the right direction? Quite possibly. But again, only time will tell.
Is it even a financially viable tour in the medium- to long-run? That would depends almost entirely on the TV deals, present and future, that Kevin Trudeau can negotiate and structure for the IPT. On the scale that KT purports to operate the tour on (that would be $ 50M++ per annum if one includes all the tourney operations costs, amortized start-up costs, loss carry-forwards, depreciations, etc.), merchandisings, admissions, lower-level tour spinoffs, qualifying tourney incomes, etc. will be a pittance.
And one can be 100% certain that no major corporations will ever consider co-sponsoring the IPT with naturalcures.com.
Tying this back to soccer, I think pool and soccer in the U.S. have similar grassroots participation numbers, putting aside for the moment that soccer here is predominantly a youth sport and pool is overwhelmingly an adult sport from both a viewing and a participatory standpoint.
After 20+ years of infrastructural and grassroots development, coupled with shrewd team and personal marketing, United States Soccer Federation (website) has finally put soccer in the average sport fan's consciousness.
Reaching the quarterfinals (where they lost 1-0 in overtime to eventual runner-up Germany) in 2002 out of 32 teams and entering 2006 with a FIFA #5 World Ranking surely would perk an average sports fan's interest, even if he has no great love for soccer to begin with.
Winners in sports, as in life, are usually taken notice of. More so if they seem to have come of out nowhere and are perceived to have admirable and heroic qualities.
Just reference one Lance Armstrong. And what he has done to raise the profile of pro and amateur cycling in the U.S.
With new fans come increased media coverage, more grassroots funding, and perhaps a nascent commercially viable pro league.
And presto, a significant fan base with life-long devotion to a new, hitherto niche sport will follow.
Which begets more TV ratings, larger-scale corporate sponsors (which put up 90%+ of prize pool & tourney costs: think Wimbledon and the Masters -- which are antithetical to pool and especially poker, with only 90-93% of total players' entries comprising the prize fund and then only around 9% of the entire field getting paid: the math is just brutal, those poor souls
) and parental streaming into the sport at a young age.
And parental streaming is the last hurdle before a new sport will be entrenched in the general sporting psyche. Again, reference soccer, hockey (both sports being far below the radar screen a quarter century ago; now NHL first rounders are as often American as Canadian or European), and cycling (with the Tour de Gerogia and the new Tour of California).
With pool having such a disreputable rap for the last 75 years or so, parental streaming of kids into pool -- and that would mean picking pool over Little League, football, swimming, etc., even if their kids show equal aptitude for them -- if it ever comes about on a mass level a la soccer and hockey, we can then envision a day when press releases to newspapers and TV sports networks will be transmitted, phone calls to sports reporters and editors returned, behind-the-scene stories written up, tourney scores carried, and regular column-inches in the sports sections maintained. As they were in the mid/late-19th Century to around the time of the Great Depression.
In pool's case, it will have to progress from bare parental tolerance to acceptance and then to eventual active streaming. Mind you, I am thinking of the average parents and not the average forum user here which is more fanatical by definition.
Lastly, the major sports (think the IOC, FIFA, NFL, NBA, PGA) gets billions from the networks for the rights to broadcast their products. And they get, to a varying but generally large extent, to dictate to the networks the manner and formats in which they are portrayed. This is how an NFL team can have a $90M salary cap. Or the Redskins can have a $1B current book value.
Pool (think WPBA, for example), at the other extreme, has to pay the network to broadcast their products, with very little control over formats, in return for a portion of the advertising revenues. Certain other sports, like beach volleyball and MLS, straddle the middle, with co-sponsors prominent in the background and contributing a significant percentage of their revenues.
Is Kevin Trudeau having any success getting Eurosports or OLN to pay for the rights to IPT broadcasts? Or is he mortgaging the IPT's present for some stock promoter's rosy future by signing WPBA-ESPN type deals? Well, pool fans do not know the answer to this one, and the IPT certainly isn't telling.
The truth of this will determine if IPT will survive beyond 2006-2007.
A lot of notions and nostrums have collapsed these past four weeks. Brazilian invincibility and the rise of American soccer, and English hooliganism and French geriatric ineptitude inspired a lot of pretournament words that proved empty.
Brazil faded, the United States never rose, England's pugnacious claim that "football's coming home" died with a whimper, and France's aging brigade did what it did.
Even the prevalent view that soccer can never have mass appeal in the United States was dented. Viewership is up 125 percent on ABC and 76 percent on ESPN, compared with the 2002 tournament.
[......snipped]
Link
As someone who works in marketing and deals with sports marketers periodically, I was duely impressed by these numbers. And I got to thinking how pool in 20 years or so can be where soccer is today.
The IPT is certainly the most financially viable entity to try to take control of the professional pool scene, by at least an order of magnitude if not more. With deep pockets and marketing chutzpah, Kevin Trudeau and the IPT seem to have the wherewithal to steer pool in the U.S. towards mainstream acceptance.
If successful, the rewards for Trudeau and IPT will be fabulous riches and kudos as first-to-market visionaries and entrepreneur. For the pool professionals, financial stability awaits.
And for the 10,000 or so U.S. pool addicts, there will be regular, more readily available, higher-quality fixes.
On a note of positive marketing comparison, NASCAR and WWF (now WWE) were started by questionable characters and languished for years before shrewd marketing propelled them skyward. Vince McMahon on paper even briefly became a billionaire.
And they shared a primarily working-class demographic with pool. Although nowadays, bluntly put, pool would be in the lower working-class demographic, wrestling lower-middle class, and NASCAR positively middle-class.
The typical NASCAR fan spends an average of $146 in admission, parking, food, booze, and merchandises in every event attended. The average wrestling fan spends around $80 per event. There are no generally recognized figure for pool. But I doubt it would be more than $30-35. (Yes, I reckon a lot of you spend more than double that, as do I, but don't forget to average in the vast numbers in every pool tourney who spends little or nothing)
On the negative side of marketing comparison, in an action-oriented society such as the U.S. with a swashbuckling attitude towards any and all sports, pool is just too sedentary, too undramatic, too somber and meditative an endeavor to market, even to the majority of its players. The heavy action bias in U.S. sports viewing will always be an great anchor for pool to bear.
In Northern European and some Asian societies, which are more contemplative and less action-driven, televised billiards sports have acceptable ratings. This started with the "Pot Black" snooker program on BBC in the late '60s, which even housewives and grannies found relaxing and uplifting to watch. You can also find chess, curling, and lawn bowling in certain European sportscasts.
In the good old U.S.A, only golf, equestrian sports, sailing, swimming, tennis have a primarily middle-class or above grassroots participation. Not coincidentally, they are also relatively more cerebral and contemplative in their presentations and commentaries, and are expected and accepted as such by their general viewers.
Again, to be blunt about it, pool resides at the extreme opposite end of the sporting participation demographic spectrum. In America, having general sports viewers endure a Souqet, Basavich, Williams, or Archer go through on average 30 seconds or more of fidgeting, lint-picking, and endless contemplation for something as low-action and inconsequential (to them) as shooting a few balls down is just mind-numbingly dull. On the other hand, millions upon millions will watch live, riveted to their seats, Tiger, Phil, Annika or Michelle spends minutes conferring with their caddies, walking back and forth on their line, measuring, going through their pre-shot routines, and revel in the golfing megastars' composure, discipline, measured aggression, and deliberative excellence; and yes, their winsome good looks.
So why would the average casual first-time viewer be entranced by watching telegenic, WASPy, genteel Phil Mickelson goes through a final round of a Major, slogging away stoically? But the average casual first-time viewer would feel disinterested, even exasperated watching Danny Basavich twitching away and re-setting time and again in a pool final?
In Social Psychology, there is a concept called "Cognitive Dissonance" (Defintion 1, Definition 2), which tells us that an average viewer not only will put up with, but admire someone like Phil for taking his time -- because watching him, to be in his presence, rightly or wrongly, they feel elevated -- whereas unless someone like Earl is ranting or raving (thereby giving us trainwreck-like action), the generally lowlier pool personages in the average viewer's stereotyped, subconscious mind do not merit their TV viewing time for offering little in the way of mind stimulants (i.e. gratuitous violence or fast-action athletic excellence).
*******
So, will the IPT bring us any closer in those FIFA World Cup viewership numbers' direction? I think the fair answer is: nobody really knows at this point.
Is it even a geniune first step in the right direction? Quite possibly. But again, only time will tell.
Is it even a financially viable tour in the medium- to long-run? That would depends almost entirely on the TV deals, present and future, that Kevin Trudeau can negotiate and structure for the IPT. On the scale that KT purports to operate the tour on (that would be $ 50M++ per annum if one includes all the tourney operations costs, amortized start-up costs, loss carry-forwards, depreciations, etc.), merchandisings, admissions, lower-level tour spinoffs, qualifying tourney incomes, etc. will be a pittance.
And one can be 100% certain that no major corporations will ever consider co-sponsoring the IPT with naturalcures.com.
Tying this back to soccer, I think pool and soccer in the U.S. have similar grassroots participation numbers, putting aside for the moment that soccer here is predominantly a youth sport and pool is overwhelmingly an adult sport from both a viewing and a participatory standpoint.
After 20+ years of infrastructural and grassroots development, coupled with shrewd team and personal marketing, United States Soccer Federation (website) has finally put soccer in the average sport fan's consciousness.
Reaching the quarterfinals (where they lost 1-0 in overtime to eventual runner-up Germany) in 2002 out of 32 teams and entering 2006 with a FIFA #5 World Ranking surely would perk an average sports fan's interest, even if he has no great love for soccer to begin with.
Winners in sports, as in life, are usually taken notice of. More so if they seem to have come of out nowhere and are perceived to have admirable and heroic qualities.
Just reference one Lance Armstrong. And what he has done to raise the profile of pro and amateur cycling in the U.S.
With new fans come increased media coverage, more grassroots funding, and perhaps a nascent commercially viable pro league.
And presto, a significant fan base with life-long devotion to a new, hitherto niche sport will follow.
Which begets more TV ratings, larger-scale corporate sponsors (which put up 90%+ of prize pool & tourney costs: think Wimbledon and the Masters -- which are antithetical to pool and especially poker, with only 90-93% of total players' entries comprising the prize fund and then only around 9% of the entire field getting paid: the math is just brutal, those poor souls
) and parental streaming into the sport at a young age.And parental streaming is the last hurdle before a new sport will be entrenched in the general sporting psyche. Again, reference soccer, hockey (both sports being far below the radar screen a quarter century ago; now NHL first rounders are as often American as Canadian or European), and cycling (with the Tour de Gerogia and the new Tour of California).
With pool having such a disreputable rap for the last 75 years or so, parental streaming of kids into pool -- and that would mean picking pool over Little League, football, swimming, etc., even if their kids show equal aptitude for them -- if it ever comes about on a mass level a la soccer and hockey, we can then envision a day when press releases to newspapers and TV sports networks will be transmitted, phone calls to sports reporters and editors returned, behind-the-scene stories written up, tourney scores carried, and regular column-inches in the sports sections maintained. As they were in the mid/late-19th Century to around the time of the Great Depression.
In pool's case, it will have to progress from bare parental tolerance to acceptance and then to eventual active streaming. Mind you, I am thinking of the average parents and not the average forum user here which is more fanatical by definition.
Lastly, the major sports (think the IOC, FIFA, NFL, NBA, PGA) gets billions from the networks for the rights to broadcast their products. And they get, to a varying but generally large extent, to dictate to the networks the manner and formats in which they are portrayed. This is how an NFL team can have a $90M salary cap. Or the Redskins can have a $1B current book value.
Pool (think WPBA, for example), at the other extreme, has to pay the network to broadcast their products, with very little control over formats, in return for a portion of the advertising revenues. Certain other sports, like beach volleyball and MLS, straddle the middle, with co-sponsors prominent in the background and contributing a significant percentage of their revenues.
Is Kevin Trudeau having any success getting Eurosports or OLN to pay for the rights to IPT broadcasts? Or is he mortgaging the IPT's present for some stock promoter's rosy future by signing WPBA-ESPN type deals? Well, pool fans do not know the answer to this one, and the IPT certainly isn't telling.
The truth of this will determine if IPT will survive beyond 2006-2007.
Last edited:
.
. I'm not much of a fan of the game myself. But I wouldn't go telling any chess players that One pocket is more cerebral. I used to play high level chess and I assure you that although there is strategy in One Pocket it doesn't begin to compare.