World Games - no one seems to care...

Roy Steffensen

Roy Steffensen

locksmith
Silver Member
Tomorrow is the finals, and in the men's division Ralf Souquet will play Ching-Shun Yang, while Jasmin Ouschan will face Allison Fisher.

The tournaments are 16-players single elimination, races to 11 and 9.

World Games is the "olympic games" for the sports that are not yet in the Olympics. It attracts a lot of coverage and fans, but it seems to not attract any interest in the world of pool. Sad, but true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Games

The few threads started about World Games died rather quickly here in the forum, and neither AZBilliards or InsidePoolMag has one single report/article on their homepage.

If pool wants to make it big and become parts of the Olympics, this is THE event we should support and be writing about. Instead we are wasting our time on here debating if Grady will beat Jasmin in a 14-1 match that will never happen...

For those interested, here's the link so you can get live-coverage for tomorrows finals... www.wpapoolonline.com
 
You are so right! This is the tournament ranked below the Olympic Games and people do not seem to care. Instead they go on about whether or not pool is a sport...

I hope AZ will have a decent article on the front page tomorrrow covering the finals.

Go Jassy:)
 
I just checked out that wiki link you posted. Some of those games are just ridiculous. Casting? Yeah, let's see who can cast a fly into a hoop. Very entertaining. How about net ball? Oh wait, we already have that, it's called basketball. I hadn't ever heard of the World Games and now I see why.
 
hi roy,your right.when is it on in the us,est.will it be streamed live? thanks george
 
I'd be interested if....... 1) the site gave better understanding of when to check in for streaming and how to get streaming (11:00 what time zone!!), 2) the people involved had done more to encourage interest, 3) if there were live coverage that I was aware of because of (see #2).

Good luck to Ralf and Allie :smile: (no offense to Jasmin).
 
http://video.sportcentric.com/channels/media/43/141

A video from last time World Games were held, in 2005.


1) It is held in Taipei so it is the time-sone for Taiwan...

2) I think that it is first of all the pool-community's responsibility to publish articles about World Games and how to check live-updates etc. When the mainsites in the world, like InsidePoolMag and AZBilliards fail to write about it, we can't expect the organizer to personally send each and one of us an email about it?

3) It is published live on tv in Asia, and I am sure it is available through SopCast or whatever, but once again, I feel that the newssite should be searching for this info...
 
XxMerlinxX said:
I just checked out that wiki link you posted. Some of those games are just ridiculous. Casting? Yeah, let's see who can cast a fly into a hoop. Very entertaining. How about net ball? Oh wait, we already have that, it's called basketball. I hadn't ever heard of the World Games and now I see why.
Click to expand...

Well, now you know about it. Pity you seem to not care.


Btw, here's the objectives of the International World Games Association:

• to develop the popularity of the sports or disciplines of sports of International Sports Federations in membership with IWGA,

• to raise the status and image of the Member Federations in international and national bodies governing sport,

• to improve the prominence of the sports or disciplines of sports of the Member Federations through excellence in sport, and

• to strengthen the bond of friendship between Member Federations and to conserve the traditional values of sport.

For this purpose the IWGA shall

• provide, at intervals of four years, an international top class multi-sport event for sports or disciplines of sports of the Member Federations known as The World Games,

• strive to provide the widest possible exposure of the sports or disciplines of sports to public and media through the World Games concept ...
 
I'll look around for the stream and figure out the time differential (used to know that from the Volvo Cup and Olympics coverage).
It kind of makes my point though about the people putting it on don't seem to have promoted it very well except in asia. As for AZB and Inside Pool and others they rely on press releases from event organizers and press who are on scene. Apparentley there are few press releases and I doubt AzHousepro can translate chinese.
 
This may link to a stream for todays 11:00 match. It's mostly in chinese though and I still am going to have to figure out the time difference cause the time that came up for me makes no sense.

EDIT- was just informed by John Galt (with a indeterminant rep no less instead of a PM) that the link installs spyware so I am deleting and letting you know. I did get a pop up request for installing some windows media stuff. Hasn't done anything to my compter yet.
 
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Thanks Kristi you beat me to it. It's 10:00pm here in central time. I don't know if the link is free or if I have to sell something....hmmm cat,dog,major organ??????
 
Thanks Tbeaux, I didn't see the link you removed. I have spyware and it didn't warn me...maybe I need to upgrade!
 
AZBilliards would love to have coverage of this and all the major events around the world. However, most events do not have a press officer who is charged with distributing news updates and photos to the media. We always offer our services to the promoters and they tell us they have it covered and then we get no news from them. (They would need to cover our travel expenses to have us do video, photo and print coverage which we would distribute to ALL billiard media. We do this now for events like the World 8-Ball Championships whose promoters understand the value of not holding tournaments in the dark.)

On the World Games, the WPA does have live scoring and news on their site, the link to which is in the first post in this thread by Roy (thank you, Roy) but we have received no emailed info to write stories with. One of the problems with events is that they want fans to come to their websites, not AZB, to get the coverage. This is understandable because they want their sponsors to get attention. But it is a lot like the old argument of taking the mountain to Mohammad. We would hope that promoters everywhere understand that if they send us coverage that includes sponsor logos or mentions that we will certainly make sure that the sponsors receive their due. We do understand the importance of recognizing sponsors.

Promoters have a difficult time of allocating resources. Paying for us to come cover events means they might have to do less local advertising or cut corners elsewhere. But it does not seem out of the question to have a local reporter do the coverage and send it to us. If requested, we would then happily re-send the info to all of the billiard media. We have the addresses of every billiard editor of note around the world and they run the coverage that we supply. But again, we have to get around the desire everyone has to drive up their own pageview counts. Perhaps if they give us short versions of the news we could print that with links in the stories that take all of our viewers to their websites for the details that might satisfy those desires. We are willing to work with anyone who is willing to work with us.
 
See Roy.....people care. I watched the Allison vs Jasmin match. It was great pool. They really put on a show! Now back to figuring IF Grady needs any weight. lol :smile:
 
I honestly wasn't aware that pool was even played in the world games simply because it is one step below the Olympics.
 
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