What's going on with tournament promotions?

[Scott Lee]

Jamison...Have you ever been to the U.S. Open, in VA? They have local television coverage several times during the week of the tournament, and there is always an article in some of the local newspapers too...EVERY YEAR.
Barry Behrman does a good job of "getting the word out" to the local media, and they have responded well. Part of it, definitely, is because of the longevity of the event...but more is due to Barry providing some "grease" for the squeeky wheel!

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

Very rarely in the USA.

I was at a Carom Billiard tourney one time in NY,NY. I was talking with Charlie Ursitti, and I told him "Wow, the NY times is covering this." He smiled real big, and said "Wait until you see the story." Years of trying to promote pool that made him know what would happen.

Mr. 100 was there, his son and his sons son were all playing in the same pro event. All pro level billiard players. Mr. 100 is even a horseman (like a knight) in his country. He has won over 100 major titles in his life, a level I doubt anyone will get to again.

The story in the Times was about the worlds tallest billiard player. Nice guy about 8 ft tall... Crazy to me cause here I am getting to see the real king of cue sports. Mr. 100, and they are interested in the tall guy.

The real deal with pool is like what Fats said.

If you started a pool player on fire, and put him in Times Square, they still wouldn't watch him play.

 

[Scott Lee]

JCIN...Sad, but true...and the 250,000 APA players (plus another 200,000 VNEA/ACS/TAP), only make up 10% of the approximate 4,000,000 "hard core" (read: regular, weekly) players, just here in the U.S.A. How do we reach this 'grassroots' group? I don't know, personally...but if it could be done, pool would be huge!

I also spent a decade or more in the advertising biz, and repetition is the key to action. You have to see/hear/read something a MINIMUM of 3 times, to provoke any possible action. You get more bang in the print media by putting smaller ads in, on several pages...than you do with a full page ad. That's why I succeeded in the cable tv and radio advertising business, by selling businesses LOTS of frequency. I won a national award, in 1989, for a cable tv advertising campaign that ran a car dealer's ads once every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day, across 8 different networks...for a YEAR! You could not get away from the guys ads. They were professionally done, by an ad agency, and he switched them out every week or two. It worked like gangbusters for the client, and they "re-upped" again the following year!

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

The APA claims 250,000 members plus. If we can't talk to a quarter million people who pay money to a league to play the game and convince them to get behind tournaments of THEIR sport just how are we supposed to convince someone who could care less ?

I was into digital signage years back and did a lot of research into the number of ads people see, what works as far as recognition and how advertisers pay for ads. Some basic numbers I came across is that you have on average 6 seconds to catch someones attention and to actually get someone to remember time/date/place is brutal.