I don't have an insular view at all. Facts are facts and stats are stats, and they show that American pool is the most popular participation cue sport in the world, due to our population size and the population of other countries that play it. The Philippines, where pool is the 2nd more popular sport (not cue sport, but SPORT) is nearly twice the size of England alone. Then factor in Taipei, Mexico, South America, and most of Western Europe. I've already admitted snooker is probably equally as popular as pool over in China, but I have no data, since China is tough to measure. But their female stars are massively popular and they have a few great male players, as well. And given Chinese Nationalism, I expect Chinese 8 ball to become their dominant cue sport in the next decade, which is an English/American 8 ball hybrid, but still pool.
Most people in the West watch snooker? Really? Give me some television ratings outside the UK. I bet they're abysmal. And where's all the great Western European snooker stars from Germany, The Netherlands, Scandinavia (I'm reading a blog post right now that is describing the ONLY snooker room in Sweden), and Southern Europe? Since no other Western European Country has produced a great snooker talent (like they have in pool over the past two decades) leads me to believe they don't really play it that much.
Also, pool is taking off in the Middle East from the World Championship being held in Qatar.
My comment about "prize money should be higher" implies that people in the US alone (I'm not even talking about the world) could make American pool a far larger tournament attraction than snooker is in the UK. The Selby/Ronnie final in '09 drew 5 million viewers in the UK, nearly 10% of the population. Yet, we can't get .0001 of the population to watch pool here. And snooker is a much slower, less flashy, less television friendly game than 9/10 ball (not insulting snooker, but modern tastes like flash), but it's important to British culture, so they support it, unlike how Americans have totally ignored pool over the past 2 decades.
Okay, so we're not a cue sport watching country anymore (one time, we kind of were.. The Mosconi/Fats matchup drew big numbers for ABC). So let's hit those markets where people would actually watch it, like the Philippines and Taiwan, and base the pro tour out of there.
That's my main point. There's a big potential television market there that could transform the game to snooker levels of prestige and maybe beyond, but no one has seemed to figure out how to exploit it.
