Pool Cue News and Review

Anyone who’s seen the latest BCA “news”letter was once again treated to pretty much nothing in the way of actual news. Rather than discuss issues such as how pool halls should deal with the smoking ban and how the BCA is putting member dollars to work, instead we were given a list of PR spots, none of which were even remotely impressive given the fact that the BCA pays Alan Taylor Communications what is likely an insane amount of money for the return (standard monthly fee for a account the size of the BCA would be $10-20K).

With that hard earned money, the BCA claimed news placements in the Times-Standard (in and around densely populated Humbodt County) and the Oneida Daily Dispatch in upstate NY between Syracuse and Utica. As an added bonus, for some unknown reason, the BCA put on their PR list the 2007 In/Out List which stated that pool tables have been bounced from the list in favor of Ping Pong tables. Nice job guys. Here’s a thought: Since the BCA is so keen on calling Pool a sport, why not work on getting event scores listed in the sports section of newspapers around the nation. They list bowling, some even have a weekly poker column. Hell, I’ve even seen weekly pro wrestling columns in the sports section. Surely the BCA can push for box score listings for their “major” tournaments.

In other BCA news, I decided to check out their buried quarterly report to see the real state of the BCA. BCA Business Membership is down from 1,127 in 2005 to 995 in 2006. Overall Instructor memberships are down from 805 to 795. Junior membership is down from 569 to 480.

On a positive note, the BCA is quite healthy from a financial standpoint. Net assets of almost $3.9 million and net income of $747K. Maybe, just maybe its time to start putting those membership dues to work instead of just having it sit in the bank.

New CEO Rob Johnson hasn’t been sitting on his laurels though. His first two major announcements: The BCA is moving from Colorado Springs to Denver. The BCA is outsourcing its membership, financial, marketing, IT and administrative services to a company called Meeting Expectations. Of course, this begs the question: If the BCA has outsourced essentially everything that the BCA does, what are the people in the new Denver office going to do to kill time all day? According to the press release, Johnson said “…restructuring with Meeting Expectations will allow the BCA to become more responsive to the membership’s desire for marketing-enhanced services such as information on consumer attitudes and opinions relative to the billiard industry, trends within the industry, business improvement tips and seminars, and consumer marketing programs.”

Can’t wait to see some of those nifty cool reports, Rob.

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