Why Pool is not a major sport.

First off, we all need to take a step back and realize this isn't a sport. Lets be honest with ourself here. If you continue to try to be something you are not, and clearly not, you will continue to wonder why.

With the exception of teams sports like soccer, football, hockey, etc, the majority of games are held in that gray area between 'sport' and 'game'. Golf, curling, bowling, skying, are examples. Either way, the distinction makes no difference whatsoever to the success these games have achieved.

A lot of people shun the gambling aspect of pool as they think it holds pool back. I 100% disagree. Embrace it. Gambling happens in tons of forms all over this country. People love gambling. 85% of Americans gamble in some way each month. (I've done the research). The most mysterious part of our game is the hustlers. That topic alone has made two movies great and surged pool in the 60s and 80s, as people wanted to be hustlers like Paul Newman.

This part however, I agree with 100%. Gambling is part of the games history, and always will be. Gambling did not stop poker from exploding, so why would it affect pool? If anything, it adds drama, mystery, and an element of surprise to the game that will only help to make the game more popular if shown in the right way.

Anyway, good post Cleary.
 
To thy own self be true.

Please don't take this post the wrong way. I don't mean to sound negative, I'm not. I just think it's important to find ones self. I was always told, you have to love your self before anyone can love you. Not sure that applies here but it sounds good!

To thine own self be true. Hamlet or Polonius in Hamlet giving advice to his son. and thats exactly what that means. what you wrote underneath.

And if you want to get all Shakespearean, there is a certain amount of that statement that rings true in your Big Tony Movie.
Think about it Andrew, you have a little bit of WS in you. Also, one of the main themes of all Ws plays is that, man is a master of his own destiny, also an underlying theme in the BT movie. I knew that watching the BT segments, that other than being a comedy, it really has a deeper meaning than that. And just maybe, thats what Big Tony wants us to learn from that movie, then again, maybe I'm just full of s h i t as usual.

Sorry for derailing the thread, just a somewhat great coincidence in the BT movie.
 
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The entertainment factor in pool is very low for those who don't play, probably not much higher than chess to be honest. I know about 2 rules of chess and probably would watch soap operas before watching it played. .

Interesting and thought provoking thread. I've oftened wondered the same.

According to the BCA approximately 1.7-2 million pool tables are in US homes and about 200K are sold annualy (not including halls or bars). It is estimated 35 million people play pool in US, placing it fourth in participatory sport, behind golf, tennis and bowling. Makes one wonder, with that type of participatory interest the sport is not nearly as popular as the preceeding three.

I am inclined to believe the lack of corporate sponsorship and in turn TV coverage are primary culprits. If one argues only players are interested, if the above numbers are to be trusted, thats a considerable audience certainly worthy of dollars and coverage if only on a regional level. So, in my mind the question becomes "why has pool been shunned"?
 
None of the above and all of the above. Until there is some real money to be won in pool, it is a sport that will not be taken seriously by the masses. If somehow a player could win a million dollars in a pool tournament, that would immediately get people's attention.

Contrary to some opinions expressed here, people (lots of them) do enjoy watching pool played by good players. These same people would follow the sport and the players if there was real money to be made playing it. That is the missing ingredient! No, I don't have THE ANSWER!
 
The entertainment factor in pool is very low for those who don't play, probably not much higher than chess to be honest.


This is a common misconception. Take golf for example.

If you were to take two players and follow them around the course, you'd watch 95% walking, and 5% golf shots. It would bore people to tears. Instead modern golf broadcasts stagger tee off times, and follow numerous big names around the course, cutting back and forth to show highlights as each golfer progresses through the course.

Now take pool coverage. Two guys hitting balls for an entire match. You see everything....and most of it is boring as sin. Like golf, it does not have much to offer unless you choose to showcase it in a way that MAKES it spectator friendly.

The same applies to poker. The best coverage is the World Series of Poker where they cover numerous tables at once.

In other words, pool can be spectator friendly. It just needs to be approached differently.

I've actually had a few major tournament promoters approach me and ask my opinion and how they can make their productions better. Funny thing is, they ask, but don't want to hear the answer. It's a shame, mainly because I actually have a way of making this possible with a minimal budget.
 
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None of the above and all of the above. Until there is some real money to be won in pool, it is a sport that will not be taken seriously by the masses. If somehow a player could win a million dollars in a pool tournament, that would immediately get people's attention.

jay, I have to disagree. I've watched many exciting sports events, football, hockey, tennis, etc. I had no idea what amount of money was on the line at the time, nor do I to this day.

Huge sums of money are crucial only in game shows and poker. Why? Because people use these games to fantasize about changing their lives, sort of like buying a ticket to a lottery (even though they stand a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning).

Most sports (games, whatever) rely on prestigious titles to generate the interest. I see no reason why pool cannot follow that route.
 
Now why pool has no money... It's pretty easy to see there is zero structur or organization. There are hundreds of amature tours across the US and none of them help as a whole. The bca/csi/apa/tap are kind of working against each other. A merger to ONE league that connected amatures and professionals alike, everyone working together, would be the structure needed to make pool profitable. A way to grown children into professionals and a reason to choose that path.

But organizations, large and small, make profits. Tours, leagues, etc. They see thier short term gains and don't think about how they hold back pool as a whole.

Think if all the amature leagues (bca/apa etc) came together as one. Formed a structur that would promote growth in pool and take away reasons to sandbag. Get rewarded for moving to the next level all the way up to pro. Monthly large scale tournaments for all levels.

Pool could be saved, but it would take a lot of people working together and putting short term profits aside in hopes of long term profits.

There is a way, just not a will. If I had the money or the investors, I think pro pool could be saved. Until then, we all just spin our wheels and do our thing.

You make a lot of sense in your post and I wanted to add a few things that should be taken into consideration. The BCA paid for a study and the results were.....56 million people play pool at least once a year and of those, 32 million play at least once a week. They call them recreational players. If you take every league player, Pro and want to be a pro player in the USA they total about 1 million lets call serious players. The question is, how do we get those other 31 million recreational players to support the sport/game? Imagine $1.00 per player per year.

IMO until you find a common game that those recreational players can play and compare themselves to how well the Pro's play , like Golf-Bowling and other games that are score based, you won't get them involved. When you say lets go bowling or play golf, you pretty well know what you are going to do. When I say lets go play pool, imagine the questions.
Until you elevate the billiards industry to the point a Pro can apply for a mortage and when the banker ask what he does for a living and the reply is " I'm a professional pool player" he doesn't get laughed out of the bank.
Last but not leased, I believe gambeling is a major part in moving pool forward. How many people would watch the NFL if you couldn't bet on it? Again you have to have a game that can't be "Fixed".
Sorry for the long post but I even have more ideas but I will spare you.........thanks:smile:
 
In golf, there is 150 people out there, and they are only covering, about 5guys, the ones playing well and winning, the other 145 never get on TV, who cares. They keep moving from player to player, so you dont get bored.

I have a big collection of snooker, and years of the early pot black TV series. Many of these matches, stunk, Hr 12, boring defensive contests, missed shots, poor play. And now and then, some bloke ran 112, or even a 147, and that's is what got on the tele. The good stuff, they edited out, all the bad stuff, and that is what ESPN was too lazy, too cheap and too dumb to do.

What really killed pool was ESPN, they dont pay pool millions to put it on like golf, they charge the promoter 150K to put it on, and then they use it like a filler, showing it no respect, and they stick it in at bad times. They film it like it is, and put it on as cheaply as they can. As long as we pay them to get on TV, we are dead ducks. The womans tour, was paying out 80% of what they made, to stay on TV, and they are almost dead now like the men, with like two events left, and the first one trying to pay 60 people, a total of 10 grand, meaning they all go home broke.

Kt tried to sell his tour to the big TV networks, like golf, and when they laughed in his face, he dumped the entire tour as a loser, sold it to Ho in Macau, the feds busted that deal, and he ran off fast to new and better cons.

What killed pool was the demographics, they dont lie and we are the male, blue collar, smoker, beer drinker 35 to 40 yr old. The last guy on earth you want to spend money on. There is no woman audience, no kids, no young people. The only women, are, girlie girls, who are basically men, buying jeans, drinking beer.

The corporate people spend their money, where the kids are at, or teens to early 20/s. Hook one of them on your product, and they are in your world for the next decade. They target young audiences, they avoid older ones. A 40 yr old pool bum, is bull headed, opinionated, knows it all, and wont change and buy anything new. He is set in his ways. He is a lousy sale and he does not make a lot of money. No body wants to sell to truck drivers. So Tennis and Golf has Rolex, IBM, Cadillac, and we never will.

The only corporate sponsor we really ever got, was RJR, who did a study that told them their final market was Nascar, Beer drinking Bikers and pool players. Beer sponsored the early leagues, busch, AB. Imagine in your mind, what a real pool player looks like, I see, dirty old tennis shoes, dirty jeans with a hole in them, cheap T shirt, hat with cat on it, cigarette hanging out of his lip, long neck bud in one hand, cue in the other, and that is how the fortune 500 marketing people see us as well. Show up at any tournament, look around at the players or the crowd, it looks like we emptied out the drunk tank. They all dress like bums. They see the pros as a bunch of hustlers.

The BCA blew it pushing this putting us in penguin and trying to hide what we were, gamblers. They tried to sell us as something we were not. Poker did not do that, they took bums, real bums, and sold them to TV, how, they played for millions and we played for peanuts. We could have done the same thing and been in fat city now, like they are.

The only real people we got, was the ones wanting to sell to us, what we use is a lot of, cigs and beer. When both of them went away, the game slowly died and nobody took their place.

What we have, nobody wants, that is the problem. And the industry, wont finance the growth, they long pulled out just to skim the gravy off the top. I see this, as being terminal, with no coming out of it. Short of us hooking another rich billionaire like Kt, we are all screwed. :mad:
 
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:clapping::thumbup: Thumbs up for cleary! Agree 100%... I don't see the point in trying to hush about the gambling... It has always been there and it always will be and we'll have to live with that. Respect for all contributions in this thread, you guys have a lot of good points.
 
None of the above and all of the above. Until there is some real money to be won in pool, it is a sport that will not be taken seriously by the masses. If somehow a player could win a million dollars in a pool tournament, that would immediately get people's attention.

Contrary to some opinions expressed here, people (lots of them) do enjoy watching pool played by good players. These same people would follow the sport and the players if there was real money to be made playing it. That is the missing ingredient! No, I don't have THE ANSWER!

Jay - I think we get closer to the answer if we define what "success" looks like for pool. Everyone wants to start with "IT NEEDS TO BE LIKE GOLF"... Well, that is the wrong place to start because it is just unrealistic.

As a 1st step, I believe that realistic success for pool (that is achievable) would be 1 SOLID pro tournament per month. Where promoters would begin to truly communicate, coordinate and work together for the overall health of the sport. If we can do that successfully, I believe that we will not have to go out and chase sponsors anymore... they will more than likely begin to come looking for us IF we can begin to shape a healthy, marketable product.

In my opinion, that would be a great foundation and would get us closer to steps 2 and 3, whatever they may be... But we have to start somewhere.

- Josh
 
This is the problem, every one here has ideas, knows how to do this, but who pays for it, give me 250K and I'll put something on TV for you.

You all miss the point, until you figure out who pays for it, then it all goes nowhere, its all just woofin in the wind.

The reason the game is dying, is we have been putting on tournamets, paying out a lousy 25K, and the promoter losing 25K. And you wonder why this has all collapsed.
 
Agree with most that's been said. Pool players here in the UK are mainly thick, selfish ego-maniacs, barely able to string a coherent sentence together. They give nothing back to the sport whatsoever - more so the higher up the rankings they are. I appreciate some earn a living at it, so have a different perspective, but the majority are legends in their own lunchtimes, out for what they can get.






This sums up many professionals in other games/sports . Hell , even politicians , especially politicians . Pool is what it is , a social pastime that many enjoy , and that some take to a high level . It will never generate the tournament payouts of Golf , maybe bowling.

I use to watch bowling on Saturday afternoons , they have been relegated to Sunday's now , and the bowlers look like walking billboards. Broadcast stations now have little in the way of sports or games anymore , it is all on sports specific cable or satellite stations . On Saturday afternoons they are running infomercials.


Maybe the pool related products industry could uh , pool their money and resources and have a 30 minute to an hour pool news and event program that aired at off hours when broadcast time is cheaper. And have a events calendar every show to let people know about tournaments . The show could air weekly.

I wouldn't count on this , because their are to many competing interests who wouldn't want anything but their product endorsed .
 
How many people would watch the NFL if you couldn't bet on it? :

I dare say that the great majority of fans watching the NFL every week do not have money on the games.
Not everybody needs to gamble to enjoy sports or games.

Steve
 
Why I think pool has a tough time in the sports world.

There has always been a lot of talk about why pool is not a big money and popular sport. I have a few ideas from my experience with different types of businesses and by being involved in a few different sports throughout my life.

There are distinct differences that I see. The one thing that finally hit me after struggling with this question for years is that there really aren’t any fans of pool. Besides the few who used to play ,and or can’t play anymore, everyone who is a potential fan is a player with his or her own ambitions. This makes it very difficult for any up and coming player to be the the focus of enough fans to make any money or get enough attention to pull major money in promotion deals. Let’s face it, when you look across the table at an opponent, what is the chance that you are going to be wearing a t-shirt with his name on it?

This is partially right. BUT my experience being out in public with Kelly Fisher and Allison Fisher proves that there are fans among the general public. We have been in restaurants and people come up to ask for autographs. So it's my view that consistently being featured on TV does generate a fan base. I think that the major problem is lack of focused organization.


I think the basic problem is that everyone is capable of playing pool, either physically, mentally, or cronologically. This isn’t true with sports that have diehard fans who sit outside a stadium waiting for tickets to watch the game. Even in sports like golf and tennis, most of the fans are outside of the sport and possibly have never even considered playing the game. Michael Jordan's fans were never waiting for him to sprain his ankle so they could have a chance. And, most likely, most basketball fans don't even own a basketball. This situation in pool creates for a lot of jealousy and has very much corrupted the possibilities of pool.

Actually basketball is the number one participation sport in the country. I seriously doubt that up and coming pool players or league players are thinking of being able to beat Efren Reyes and looking for every opportunity to do that. I think that your thoughts here are a bit overgeneralized when you say that most fans have never considered playing golf, tennis, basketball, etc... You might be right but that seems like a statement that deserves more exploration before being used as solid point.

On the jealousy issue I doubt very much that this is the case. I'd actually say the largest limiting factor is mistrust stemming from getting stiffed a lot.

Why don’t industry companies invest? Mostly because they are not interested in anyone outside of the people who are already in their sphere of influence. Why put money into generating interest in the general public when they are only interested in selling to the players.

If you mean billiard industry companies then they do invest in pool to the best of their abilities. I can't obviously speak for every company but I can tell you that Sterling Gaming has put at least a million into pool spread out over the ten years of it's existence. The problem however is that this money is spread out far too wide and the impact of any given sponsorship is barely measurable. I know other companies do a lot more.

Pool is like martial arts. Every martial artist thinks that he, and his system, is the best and is not interested in anyone else being number one. That’s why both sports are so disjointed. There really aren't any national tournaments like Golf. Most players don't see tournaments as a business. They resist tournament directors making money. They see it as theft from the pot, when it is actually the reason that no one wants to do it. And once they do, they hold on to it because being number one is the only way they feel that they can survive.

I think that a lot of players understand the business side. It's that as a group they won't be cohesive to stand up and conduct themselves as a professional group. They won't put rubber to the road as Buddy Hall said and get out there and work with promoters to make it work. They understand the business full well, they just don't want to do the work outside of playing.
People outside the sport don’t think it is interesting because they can’t tell how hard it is, kind of like chess. If you’ve never played pool, you may think that it is as easy as it looks when a pro is playing well. So, for most people, it comes down to "What’s the big deal?"

So true. Pool is in that catch-22 where the pros are so good they make it look too easy.
Competition for attention is extreme, and for what? So your competitor knows who you are. They're just interested in tearing you down.

I don't agree with this statement. I don't really see or hear of players tearing each other down so much. Sure some players feel that their accomplishments have been overlooked and they may speak to that but by and large I don't see a lot of players tearing each other down. Except for the occasional and rare barking match like between Harriman and John Schmidt.

You can’t charge pleople to watch pool tournaments in general because the only people who come to watch the tournaments are the people who play in them and they don’t want to pay to see people they play with. How many people do you see at a tournament who aren't playing against the players who they admire?

Again I disagree. The US Open is proof positive that you can charge and fill the seats. I think that aspect is truly one of promotion.
Yes, players buy DVD's and products from their idols, but that isn't to support the player, it is so some day they can beat them if they meet them in a tournament. Everything that the so called pool fans do is geared to going to the top.

I very much disagree with this. I can guarantee you that the majority of players who are interested in someday dominating their idols are out on the road getting seasoned in battle rather than consuming DVDs and books on how to play. I will bet that most of the audience for those products are average players looking for insight that they otherwise don't have the time to go get the hard way. I think that the pool fan IS truly a pool fan and not a predator.
Also, that is a reason that I have thought for a long time that it is very hard to find a good teacher, because in their mind they could be teaching the next person who wipes them out in a tournament. So you only get the general stuff.

Who says it's hard to find a good teacher? You are kidding right? I think you are a little out of the loop as to what's been happening with instruction in this country. And furthermore I can guarantee you that if you're willing to put in the time and pay for the instruction you can get taught from professional instructors as well as coached by professional players.

No doubt, there are other circumstances which effect the poor situation that pool finds itself in. In other countries, pool has flourished, but I think that the American mind set, as competitors, as well as no interest in National pride when it comes to sports come into play.

In what other country has pool "flourished"? I live in China and there are dozens of pool rooms around me and pool is not flourishing. Pool is in decline in Taiwan. In SOME other countries pool is more organized and enjoys more coverage on TV but it's hardly flourishing.

The other night I went to an annual banquet for Filipino expats here in Xiamen. I asked my table if they knew of Efren Reyes. No, blank stares, I said "the Magician", more blank stares, I said "Bata, the pool player", one guy says he heard of him. And this is the country where Efren is as close to a superstar as any pool player is likely to be in the modern era.

Well, what do you think?

Jim

I think that most of your points are off as to why pool is not mainstream. In my opinion pool is not mainstream for two major reasons.

1. No organized product to sell.

2. Too much competition for the public's interest.
 
This is the problem, every one here has ideas, knows how to do this, but who pays for it, give me 250K and I'll put something on TV for you.

You all miss the point, until you figure out who pays for it, then it all goes nowhere, its all just woofin in the wind.

The reason the game is dying, is we have been putting on tournamets, paying out a lousy 25K, and the promoter losing 25K. And you wonder why this has all collapsed.

Getting a on TV for a short period of time is not the answer to pool's problem...
 
Enzo basically nutted this one.

Pool is a great wonderful game, played by ugly people. Corporate America does not throw money at, or put ugly people on prime time and their name behind them.

KT, did put millions up, and proved, the game cannot be sold to corporate american or to big time TV, nobody wants any part of seeing Earl do a John McEnroe on TV. Kt proved, pro pool is dead, going no where, but back rooms of pool rooms like it was 50 years ago. Its real sad, but that is the truth. :(

He didn't prove any such thing. We don't know the inner workings of the IPT and until Deno Andrews writes his tell all book, The IPT: What Kevin Truedeau Doesn't Want You to Know - we won't know what efforts were made to "sell" pool to corporate America, if any, by the IPT.

All KT proved is that he is a liar and didn't have the money set up to fund the IPT out of his pocket for the first couple years as he claimed he did.
 
Rory, you make a lot of valid points in your post on the second page.

The only corporate sponsor we really ever got, was RJR, who did a study that told them their final market was Nascar, Beer drinking Bikers and pool players. Beer sponsored the early leagues, busch, AB. Imagine in your mind, what a real pool player looks like, I see, dirty old tennis shoes, dirty jeans with a hole in them, cheap T shirt, hat with cat on it, cigarette hanging out of his lip, long neck bud in one hand, cue in the other, and that is how the fortune 500 marketing people see us as well. Show up at any tournament, look around at the players or the crowd, it looks like we emptied out the drunk tank. They all dress like bums. They see the pros as a bunch of hustlers.

On any given weekend you could take the fans at a football or baseball stadium, racetrack, and transplant them to a pool hall and they'd pretty much all be the same as far as dress code goes.

There is a niche in the market for all of us. Maybe BMW or Rolex see us as write offs but you can sell us beer, Marlboros, hotdogs and potato chips. Oh man, us rednecks like our tools too. That and trucks, you can sell us big trucks, and bar b cues too. Other than that, great post bud.
 
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I heard frpm somebody once that the reason pool will never be a big money sport in the US is that Las Vegas won't book bets on it. My understanding is that several years back, Vegas was ready to embrace the game, booked bets and somebody dumped, causing some big Vegas losses. Since then, Vegas has shunned the game, won't book bets, and the game isn't going anywhere moneywise because of this. They don't trust pool players as far as they can throw them.

Hence gambling being a serious issue with pool.
 
I heard frpm somebody once that the reason pool will never be a big money sport in the US is that Las Vegas won't book bets on it. My understanding is that several years back, Vegas was ready to embrace the game, booked bets and somebody dumped, causing some big Vegas losses. Since then, Vegas has shunned the game, won't book bets, and the game isn't going anywhere moneywise because of this. They don't trust pool players as far as they can throw them.

I have heard this story a million times. So what? "Vegas" is pissed because they "think" some INDIVIDUAL dumped and that cost them?

Aren't these supposed to be the experts on how to structure wagering on anything?

It wasn't like Vegas wasn't booking bets on sports before that. And there are English companies booking bets on the EuroTour's matches and on Snooker Events and have been doing so consistently for years.
 
jay, I have to disagree. I've watched many exciting sports events, football, hockey, tennis, etc. I had no idea what amount of money was on the line at the time, nor do I to this day.

Huge sums of money are crucial only in game shows and poker. Why? Because people use these games to fantasize about changing their lives, sort of like buying a ticket to a lottery (even though they stand a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning).

Most sports (games, whatever) rely on prestigious titles to generate the interest. I see no reason why pool cannot follow that route.

Nathan, it doesn't get any more exciting than the Mosconi Cup. If we could put a few shows like this on television on a regular basis, we would build a much bigger fan base for our sport. Now, figure out how to do that!

I believe that all the internet shows the last few years have been a boost to pool. And they will help more in coming years as more people have the capability to view these shows.
 
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