Pool Cue News and Review

Its been about a year since I last took a look at the search traffic for “pool cues” and “billiards” as a measure for interest in our happy little industry. According to Google, these are the two most searched terms in the industry, so we can assume that they are decent bellweathers to watch. As much as I’d like to say there was an upswing in 2007, it simply isn’t true.

As you can see from the above graph, search volume for “billiards” is once again down from its 2005 peak. Q4 traffic was down significantly from 2006, which was down from 2005. In order to confirm this trend, we also look at the traffic for the term “pool cues”.

As you can see from the above graph, “pool cues” is in far worse shape. Q4 2007 wasn’t anywhere close to where it was in 2006, which was lower than 2005, which was lower than 2004… you get the picture. So what should be done about this disturbing trend. As I’ve said before, the only way the industry will grow is to get new players and casual players playing. The BCA seems to be leaning in that direction, although the last time they tried this with Enjoypool.com, nothing really happened. We’ll see what Generation Pool ends up being like.

What else can we do? Here’s a thought… next time you see a group come into your local pool hall to knock some balls around and have a good time, instead of seeing them as marks, why not buy a pitcher of beer and show them that pool halls aren’t the smarmy, pit of vipers that they’ve been made out to be in the news and in movies?

For you pro players out there who bitch about the crappy prize money, think about ways to get fans excited about the game and to attract new fans to the game. You know why golf gets giant prize purses? Because they can draw 80,000 people to an event. Because golf ratings are 10-20 times higher than first run billiards programming on ESPN.

Here’s a thought… the Super Billiards Expo is coming up next month and it draws a pretty decent crowd from the east coast. So when you lose your matches, instead of running off and going home, hang out for a couple of days and mingle. Not because you’re getting paid to mingle, but because you want more people to be excited about the sport.

More People = More Ratings = More Money

That’s all I’ve got for my annual rant. Hopefully this time next year we’ll have more positive trends to review.