Pool Cue News and Review

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but the BCA’s new consumer site has launched at http://www.generationpool.com. Pretty surprising that no one in the industry is talking much about this, but I’m guessing that’s because everyone is in Sodom and Gomorrah this weekend. At any rate, the site is quite an improvement over the old Enjoy Pool site/page within a site, disaster, but the real question is whether or not the site actually lives up to the goals outlined in their press release.

Goal #1 - “Providing interesting and informative content to players at all levels of skill” according to Ivan Lee. I’d say that the focus leans more toward the beginner or casual player here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The rules are easy to find, they have a pool hall search and an instructor listing. The instructor listing should make it easier to find an instructor though. Right now its an alpha listing and doesn’t feature the search by zip tool that they have for finding a pool hall or a place to buy gear.

Goal #2 - “Promote the Sport” according to Rob Johnson. This is a little on the hazy side. The events calendar is nice, but could have some more information about the events themselves. I was really surprised to see that they’re not heavily promoting their own 9 Ball tournament coming up in June. The news feeds are nice, but the real question still remains of how the hell is this industry going to ever reach beyond the hardcore players?

Most “gameroom” people have a pool table because it makes a nice addition to their house, but they never play on it. What is the BCA and their new site going to do about attracting new players to the game rather than just giving the existing players a new site to check out? The new site does have some potentially cool stuff, but the real goal is still to get mainstream coverage and a mainstream audience to the site.