Pool Cue News and Review

In what continues to be a disturbing trend, popularity and interest in billiards in the United States appears to be waning. The industry hasn’t had a significant bump since the release of Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money some 25 years ago. Looking at the most recent data from Google Trends suggests that people are continuing to lose interest in the sport.

Taking a look at the 3 year chart below for searches on the term “billiards” in the United States, you’ll notice a rather disturbing flatline. As the pool season goes, a dip during the summer months is expected, but typically the sport gets off the mat in the fall and spikes in Q4. This was not the case in 2006, where search volume flatlined through the fourth quarter.

Billiards Traffic Graph

The outlook was just as bad for the term “pool cues” according to Google, which saw a severe dip in the summer of 2006 and never fully recovered.

Pool Cues Traffic Graph

What does this all mean? Well, considering the increase in pool hall closures due to among other things the smoking bans that have popped up across the US in the past couple years and the fact that watching pool on TV is about as exciting as watching paint dry, the industry is on the table, waiting for a jolt from the crash cart. You don’t believe me? Check out the graph for the other pseudo-sports it competes with. In the graph below, you’ll see the term “darts” (orange) right in the middle of “billiards” (red) and “pool cues” (blue).

Billiards/Pool Cues/Darts Graph

Let’s take it a step further though and look at the comparison with the real 800 lb gorilla for pool and billiards: Poker (orange). Sure, poker’s been crashing since its high point in 2005, but the level of popularity is still far beyond billiards.

Billiards/Pool Cues/Poker Graph

The numbers don’t lie folks. If pool players want the big paydays they think they deserve and if fans want to see something more than 4 month old first run taped matches on ESPN and 10 year old matches on Classic, the BCA (the governing body of pocket billiards since 1948) better do something and do something fast. The organization recently hired Rob Johnson as the new CEO, but we haven’t seen much from the BCA HQ since his tenure began.

[digg=http://digg.com/other_sports/Billiards_and_Pool_Cues_Downward_Trend_Continues]