Why Did the Beer, wine, & Booze Companies Quit Sponsoring Pool?

[JamisonNeu]

Well it is a real short answer. Pool is not popular enough to dump ad money into. It used to be one of the most popular games on the planet. Second to only boxing, and horse racing. Both of these are still going strong and have many great ad sales.

(My thought are you can trust a horse, and most boxers won't dump...So these other sports kept an honest reputation throughout the years.)

Another thought I have about it is...Why advertise to people that you already have hooked on your products? Seems like a waste of cash.

 

[sixpack]

I heard a preacher one time say that the devil doesn't bother going to bars, because he already has all those people, he goes to church.

I think the answer is demographics among beer, alcohol and tobacco companies. The truth is, for someone to be good enough at pool to watch pool on TV or live tournaments. They have spent a lot of time in bars. Their brand of cigarette, beer or choice of poison is pretty much determined. In other words, Coors already either has them or doesn't. And nothing they do in advertising will change that. Same with cigarettes and bourbon or whatever.

Beer companies really focus on trying to reach people under 25. After 25 the odds that you'll switch beers becomes next to zero. Same with cigarettes, same with booze.

I saw an incident at the Olathe CAMEL pro tournament one year that kind of drove home this point. A pro (I think) was sitting in the front row of the TV table watching the tournament. And he had his pack of Marlboro's sitting on the table in front of him. The TD (Don Mackey maybe?) came by and just asked him to put it under his napkin so it wouldn't be visible on TV since the tournament was sponsored by CAMEL. You would have thought he asked him to sacrifice his children to Zeus. He talked loudly about 'his rights' and held his pack up to the camera whenever he thought the camera was on him.

He was loyal to his brand and he didn't care who was putting money in the kitty. I was pretty embarrassed for pool at that point. I was not surprised at all when CAMEL pulled the funding shortly after that.

~rc

 

[JB Cases]

This is just a theory of mine, but it may be because of the Law Suit when Don Mackey sued RJ Reynolds. I know RJ Reynolds is a cigarette company, but they were a corporate sponsor for men's pro pool and the Pro Billiards Tour President (Don Mackey) sued them and took them to court. Maybe other corporate companies who could sponsor pool don't want to take a chance on supporting pool because of what happened to RJ Reynolds.......

James

I will bet that the PBT/RJ Reynolds thing isn't even a BLIP on the corporate radar.

The reason big corporations don't sponsor pool is that pool has no consistent platform to advertise on.

Big brands don't want to advertise to small markets. The want impact. They want eyeballs on their ads.

Pool doesn't have it. Even the most consistent pool product on TV, the WPBA Events, is INCONSISTENT in it's airings and is obviously not much more than over-edited fluff used as filler programming.

Let's all just reality. Pool is around a half billion dollar business yearly. That includes all the table sales, all the cue sales, all the table time, all the everything. People in the USA on average could care less about pool as a pastime or a sport. There is just too many other things for them to do and pay attention to.

On tv there are is an endless amount of programming to wade through, 50 reality series, 27 versions of CSI and NCS and 24, 48, and 72 as well as the Oprah Empire - then you have all the big sports, little sports, made up sports, spelling bees, and hotdog eating contests.

The fact is no one cares. And until you can show corporate advertising people that they will get x-amount of eyeballs on their brand for x-amount of dollars then pool will never be in serious contention for serious sponsorship by the big brands.

Oh, once in a while they will do a little here and there. Sometimes you can get the local beverage distributor to kick down some cash for putting the Coors logo on your flyer, or the local car dealer will let you use "Ford", but these are one-off things and not to be confused with real ongoing sponsorship by the brand owners.

So Johhny, the answer to your question is they stopped sponsoring pool when they stopped seeing value in it.

It's a chicken and egg thing. Pool will never get popular until something or someone works hard to make it that way and nothing and no one will make it that way until they see value in it.

 

[JB Cases]

I heard a preacher one time say that the devil doesn't bother going to bars, because he already has all those people, he goes to church.

I think the answer is demographics among beer, alcohol and tobacco companies. The truth is, for someone to be good enough at pool to watch pool on TV or live tournaments. They have spent a lot of time in bars. Their brand of cigarette, beer or choice of poison is pretty much determined. In other words, Coors already either has them or doesn't. And nothing they do in advertising will change that. Same with cigarettes and bourbon or whatever.

Beer companies really focus on trying to reach people under 25. After 25 the odds that you'll switch beers becomes next to zero. Same with cigarettes, same with booze.

I saw an incident at the Olathe CAMEL pro tournament one year that kind of drove home this point. A pro (I think) was sitting in the front row of the TV table watching the tournament. And he had his pack of Marlboro's sitting on the table in front of him. The TD (Don Mackey maybe?) came by and just asked him to put it under his napkin so it wouldn't be visible on TV since the tournament was sponsored by CAMEL. You would have thought he asked him to sacrifice his children to Zeus. He talked loudly about 'his rights' and held his pack up to the camera whenever he thought the camera was on him.

He was loyal to his brand and he didn't care who was putting money in the kitty. I was pretty embarrassed for pool at that point. I was not surprised at all when CAMEL pulled the funding shortly after that.

~rc

Yeah, that's the OTHER reason most big brands want nothing to do with pool. Sure other sports have plenty of "bad boys" but only pool has people who will ACTIVELY hold up a pack of Marlboros at an event sponsored by Camel.

 

[Blackjack]

The game of pool gets no respect from media or corporate America. The game of pool needs to grow up, look in the mirror, and figure out why and do something about it.

Until that happens, you had better get used to the regional "alphabet soup" tours dishing out the same prize money that's never changed for the past 25 years.

 

[nancewayne]

Why Did the Beer, wine & Booze Companies Quit Sponsoring Pool?

You're quote below is absolutely correct...pool players DO drink a fair amount of their beer. The National APA (American Poolplayers Association), which now has over 800,000 members was started as a " Tavern" league and still is !!!

To hold the fire to a particular company - ie band together pool players and not drink Budweiser until they started sponsoring pool - I imagine pool players drink a fair amount to their beer.