You are right. My old eyes fail me sometimes.
WNT Hanoi Open 2025, Vietnam, Oct 7-12
- Thread starter jbart65
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Badpenguin
Well-known member
It should probably be mentioned that she has done all of this while being fought tooth and nail every step of the way by the WPA parasites.
The way that they have handled streaming, and the availability to watch outside of broadcast partnerships, has been atrocious. It started with the DAZN partnership, and has graduated to the complete lack of availability to watch by the US audience without paying for yet another poorly implemented streaming service. There has been no coherent schedule for simple things like being able to schedule a time to watch a match. Things are great for almost every audience but the North American audience, which is a significant market that is worth pursing. Matchroom is in no way going to win the viewership of the average US league pool player with this approach. Stream it for free for the US audience via something widely available on TV sets, like youtube.
Their choices in emcees has also been terrible in my opinion, but that is probably mostly a matter of taste.
you do know that europeans also have to pay to watch MR events, and has always had to? sometimes more than US/canada. i set my VPN to US in order to use WNTTV, instead of viaplay for $42/month
Thanks for your well-considered insights.
Agreed that DAZN was a nightmare and that the streaming services that have replaced it are not yet good enough. Also agreed that WPA has obstructed Emily's plans in ways that almost qualify as malicious, but she has, for the most part, fought through it and continued to grow her tour.
WNT match schedules, in my experience, are always available on the WNT live scoring app. For example, during the Hanoi Open, I always looked up the schedule for the next round and matches, so I was able to plan around it.
Although, as you have noted, they need to do more to make the WNT product more accessible to the America-based viewer, Matchroom made a very big investment this year in American pool, rolling the dice on a new major in Florida. I attended and it was wonderful.
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I have seen several posts from you over the years where you wished for or valued the success for a woman/women over the success for whoever was most deserving based on merit. That shows a clear bias in favor of women at times, even if that isn't the value you aspire to, and so it is certainly possible that your current bias for Emily could be in part due to that. What's between somebody's legs should never, ever, make any difference to us though, nor is it ever a form of merit.
That is not what I said though. I said that I haven't seen anything that we know of that we know that she herself has done well as opposed to her team (but should have instead said "that has been particularly impressive"), but we can sure point to many cases of her pure incompetence. And I'm talking at the CEO level type stuff, not things like "she shows up for work on time every single day" or "she works hard".
If true (and we don't actually know what part of the credit for that is due to her verses due to the team around her, but if true...), then her position with Matchroom should very clearly be in sales or PR because that is where her competency actually lies. Where her competency very clearly does not lie is in being CEO, as she has displayed many egregious incompetencies in the type of decision making needed at that level.
Matchroom already had the know how for making niche sports successful long before Emily ever came along. It is exactly what they do, their very purpose, and they have a long track record of doing it so that framework and team with that know how is already solidly in place. You are acting like Emily has come up with something when the whole company is literally long built around the very formula of doing that.
In the business world it is customary for people to feel that when a CEO displays gross incompetencies that they should be replaced by somebody who is actually competent.
I've not said any such thing, although the exact opposite of that is exactly what you keep saying, that anything good that has happened must be because of Emily and can't be because of anybody else. What I've said is that of the good things, we don't know for sure how to attribute them (they could be due to Emily, or they could be due to the team, or some mixture of both). But without question we can attribute incompetencies at the disqualifying level to Emily.
To my knowledge they never made any serious effort to grow pool for whatever their reasons at the time, so of course they weren't likely to grow pool when they didn't seriously try to grow pool.
We don't know that either of those things has happened unless you are privy to their financial statements. Even if it does ultimately happen, knowing that Matchroom already had the know how and experience for making that happen since they have done it several times previously in other sports, and knowing how incompetent Emily has been on even very basic common sense type things, would make guessing the amount of attribution each of them is likely to be due a pretty common sense proposition to guess for anybody that just looks at the facts. I do hope it ultimately does become and prove viable though (if they get rid of that abominable purple five ball anyway) regardless of who is most responsible for making that happen.
TL;DR
Here is the bottom line. If Emily doesn't even have enough sense not to put the color purple onto the wrong ball number (the five ball) when for all practical purposes it has exclusively been used only for the four ball all around the world for hundreds of years and they are inextricably linked, what on earth would make you think she is some secret genius the rest of the time on everything else? Your average 7 year old would know better that to do something so obviously dumb, but yet you would have us believe that she she is otherwise some secret genius?
And if she doesn't even have enough sense not to employ as her head referee someone who has repeatedly proven that he does not possess the knowledge that would make him capable of making even the very most basic and obvious of calls correctly, tell me what again would lead you to believe she is some secret genius the rest of the time on everything else? On this one even your average 5 year old would know better than to ever allow it to be able to happen, forget about needing to be 7. But Emily would run circles around Stephen Hawking the rest of the time outside of all the times of sheer stupidity and gross incompetence, right?
Look, nobody can seriously believe that someone that doesn't even have enough common sense to get rid of a purple five ball or to get rid of a head ref that can't make even the most basic of calls accurately is actually competent to be CEO. She clearly is not the sharpest tool in the shed, clearly is not cut out to be CEO, and clearly needs to be replaced by somebody who does actually have the competency for it. It would be best of all if she could also be placed in the position for which her competencies do actually lie, which might be sales or PR, or might be something else. Fortunately in the mean time the team behind her has been able to prop her up and hold things down for the most part.
Nonsense. If you wish to cite some examples, go ahead, but this blanket, and insulting, accusation is way off base.
I tried to debate you with civility, but as you have now chosen to make this personal, I will politely bow out of this discussion. I respect your right to have an opinion, but not your right to publicly attack me.
Nonetheless, I wish you everything good and hope that the Matchroom product evolves in a manner that pleases you.
jax_joe
Well-known member
Don't forget the grey cloth or dumb ass striped 9 ball.
With all the posting you've done on the subject, you keep circling back to the ball color and a referee issue. If those two things form the core of your judgment, just let us know so we can decide whether to weight them like you do.
Calling the kinds of judgments listed above "clear" is not providing support.
WTH , AJ Manas? Dumbest decision of the decade
Matchroom has lost the plot and making it up as they go.
Last year Reyes Cup (RC) they follow MC qualification criteria 3 by rankings+2 wildcards https://matchroompool.com/reyes-cup...yes-cup-to-launch-in-the-philippines-in-2024/
This year they changed to 2 by rankings+ 3 captains pick /wildcards. https://matchroompool.com/news/the-road-to-reyes-cup-and-mosconi-cup-2025-players-qualification
MR should be goalpost manufacturer instead cos they like to shift goalpost.
It wasn't personal, or an attack, and I am sorry you chose to feel that way but you shouldn't. You asked why I had mentioned that perhaps some of your bias for Emily might be because she was female, and I answered only with the truth, and did so in a very non-attacking way.
I don't remember specifics too much any more but one of them I half remember was something similar to "I wish a woman would win this mixed event", with you wanting a woman to win simply because you wanted to see a woman win as opposed to a man. Why would one care in the least what sex won as opposed to just wanting the deserving player to win? Why was what they had between their legs important in any way in the least? Bias is the answer. When we don't care, we don't care. It's pretty low on the scale of gratuitousness, but it doesn't change what it actually is even if we don't want to have to admit that to ourselves.
He was just more visible on social media hanging with Roy's Basement, playing money games one time playing long set with JF . No offence to Dodong but I wouldn't put him in shortlist to win major. Yes he did win team event WCOP but so has Petri and team event is different ball game altogether
CIA or some other spook agency has a saying "They all break"
Same with pool-All pro players self destruct.
If you have not seen a pro self destruct, it is either (a) you have not watched all streamed matches or (b)the matches they self destruct were not streamed
There are no definitives in sport. When pros say things (like I always call foul on myself, I don't miss easy balls ), take it with big pinch of salt.
There's more, some of which I don't remember off the top of my head, and some of which I just chose not to mention because I feel those were good enough examples for the point (and with one of them being directly related to the missed call incident that was discussed in this thread). If somebody thinks that keeping a head ref around for years who doesn't have the knowledge to make even the most basic of calls indicates the type of competency fitting for a CEO, then they just aren't using reason and no amount of other examples are going to make a difference. You can't hardly get any more incompetent than that, you could only get worse by being that incompetent on more things more often.
If someone made the argument agreeing that keeping Marcel around for the past few years was grossly incompetent, but they didn't feel that would make it more likely that she would do other similarly incompetent things, and that they felt she did enough other things well enough to more than offset that and on net still felt that nobody else would likely be able to do a better job, then that might be reason to give further examples, but nobody really argued that (sjm went sort of in that direction, but his position didn't seem to get all the way or maybe even half way to that argument).
Exactly! The Mosconi and now the Reyes Cup picks have shown what a joke Miss Emily leadership have proven to be. They want and reward loyalty, but seasoned players are dumping them for whatever they think is best for them. Matchroom is making millions and rewarding the players with peanuts ... well, players are not monkeys.
I admire your effort, sjm. But after I read the rants - er posts - of the AZB member I just rolled my eyes. I saw no point in trying to debate his rather jaundiced views of Frazer and Matchroom.
I had to laugh when he accused others of bias! Hah.
Matchroom has its flaws, of course, and its a work in progress. I like most, but not all, of what I have seen. I just want to see steady progress. It will probably be irregular progress, and that's fine. So long as they keep pushing the ball forward.
The poster to whom you refer is right in suggesting that there are things that must be fixed, but I've seen every major pro tour of the last 50 years and, at least for me, this is the best one since the PBT of the 1980s and 1990s, which eventually folded.
I was quite puzzled when this poster accused me of being biased in favor of women. After my numerous replies concerning Dr Dave's article on gender in pool, a couple of posters accused me of being biased in the other direction. Still, I continued the dialogue with that poster for as long as I could tolerate it.
Like you and the poster to whom you refer, I am hoping for a better offering from Matchroom, but it's hard not to be impressed with what they have accomplished in such a short time frame.
Much as I don't like these two picks, Matchroom is sticking to its rule that players have to participate in big WNT tournaments to be eligible for the Reyes/Mosconi. That rules out SVB, Filler and the Ko brothers. So MR had to scramble a bit.
MR wanted a native-born American on the World Team at Reyes and Frazer would have wanted Shane. But he went a different route. The Sky pick can at least be justified based on his Mosconi history.
As for AJ, Frazer seemed to suggest she was nervous about the pick given his youth, and that it was Bustamante's choice. Maybe so, but Bustamante almost certainly knew what MR wanted.
Still, Manas will be surrounded by Yapp, Biado, Duong and likely Chua. So still a helluva team.