What happened to pool on TV?

[jay helfert]

They mainly just use it for cheap daytime filler. Look at the listings. Most of the matches are from 1999-2004. At least Fox Sports ran the last Mosconi Cup (depressing) but you need a DVR if you don't want to take off from work or stay up 'til the wee hours of the night. ESPN will be showing a couple of matches from the recent San Diego Classic on a Sunday afternoon in early May.

Please don't compare pool's TV ratings to those of MLS--I can't think of any legitimate sport so ignored and unpopular in the US! Twice or three times the ratings of MLS means pool's ratings still suck big time.

ESPN taped the final three matches of the recent San Diego Classic - two semifinals and the finals. WATCH THESE MATCHES! You are in for a treat. Monica Webb plays the best pool by a women on television of all time! She puts on a performance you may not see again for years. I'm not kidding, she's that good.

 

[Cameron Smith]

The point of comparing MLS and WPBA was simply that ESPN pays for the MLS contract (thanks Posh and Becks) and they get the WPBA stuff in swaps. That being said, you do have to keep in mind that pool is a pretty niche sport. Its not powerlifting niche, but without a drastic change to how pool is shot for TV, its always going to pull around a 0.4 (except when Jasmin plays of course).

But isn't that decent considering that pool is aired at around 1pm or 1am, 4-5 months after being taped?

I believe there is potential for increased television coverage, snooker has proved that in England. People will watch anything provided it is well presented.

Millions of people play the game and that doesn't even include league players. If we could just get 20% of them to tune in, the ratings would improve significantly. But that will never happen so long as the presentation is dry, the time slot sucks, advertisement for events are non-existent and events are aired many months after their initial taping.

 

[predator]

For pool, I need to surf around and watch live streams if possible. For example, Eurotour has live stream, and it's not that bad. For the last tournament they even had a German commentator (speaking in English) who knows his way around the table. There is some progress going on, but there are so few camera angles.

Eurosport covered IPT pool tournaments a while ago. It's a shame that it didn't survive. I wish Eurosport would cover at least final stages of Eurotour.

There was Billiard masters 3 cushion tournament on Eurosport 2 a month ago or so. Very nice coverage.

BBC covers snooker, yes, but the trouble is that BBC is not available on TV outside of UK. For the rest of Europe, Eurosport comes to rescue because they follow all snooker ranking events. Coverage is simply superb, with great commentary of knowledgeable players. They have lots of camera angles and also use Hawk Eye technology like in pro tennis. I wish pool had that kind of coverage.

 

[OBX]

Professional Snooker is suffering in the UK and Commonwealth countries, mainly due to the loss of sponsorship by the tobacco companies. That said, it still receives much more TV exposure than pool does in the US (like night and day). Billiards (3-cushion and other kinds) remains quite popular in Europe and Asia. As much as I love pool, I don't see it ever gaining back the popularity it had in the US during the late Nineteenth and the early Twentieth Centuries. As to TV, it is kind of a catch-22: ESPN is not a dummy--it doesn't give pool better exposure because it knows too few will watch.

The three San Diego Classic matches sound good. At least we may not be seeing the same WPBA players over and over and over. I used to like attending the WPBA tournaments in person so I could enjoy watching the matches between some very good players that rarely made it to the final TV segments, but then their tournaments became too far away and too few and far between.