Pool Cue News and Review

I’m not sure how many have noticed, but over the past six months there has been a serious shift for billiards programming on ESPN.  There is now a glut of billiards programming on ESPN Classic, a little bit on ESPN 2 and almost nothing on the ESPN flagship station.  So the issue at hand is how this effects the billiards industry.

Having programming on ESPN and ESPN 2 is extremely important from the perspective of audience size.  Classic reaches 1/4 the amount of subscribers that receive ESPN and ESPN 2.  Instead of 80 million potential viewers, for the most part billiards in the US now reaches approximately 15-20 million viewers.  Further, the majority of the programming is on in the “non peak” hours, meaning that even on classic, billiards is relegated to midnight showings.

As I’m sure you’ve seen, this has been a boon for the Poker business, as poker continues to run nonstop on ESPN 2, essentially taking the spot of the majority of the billiards programming.  As for reasons, consider the quality of the programming.  Billiards programming is dull and boring.  It looks the same today as it looked 20 years ago.  There’s no personality, there’s no new technology.  The announcers are painfully dull (sorry Mitch and Ewa, but its true).

Keep in mind as well that there was poker programming on 15-20 years ago too.  The stats and the peek cam are what brought poker into the forefront of popularity.  So billiards producers… get out of the 1970s and come up with some interesting ways to shoot the sport unless you want to see programming get moved to “The Ocho”.