Tourneys
Topic: The Future Of The EPT - From Mark Segal

Guys

I'd like to elaborate on the suspension of The EPT. Just for the record, Daryl was so disapponted when we had to cancel the last event. The EPT means everything to the guy.

Basically we have a number of problems that have prompted this action:

As many of you know we needed to cancel the last event at short notice because of a date clash with other tournaments. To the best of my knowledge these other tournaments were announced after we had set our own date but sadly many players decided to / had to go elsewhere.
Had we proceeded, we would have had less than 50 runners. This would have been a joke. We need to suspend for now because we cannot be confident that the same thing won't happen to our next scheduled tournament. We need to look at ways of strengthening our position.

As many of you know The EPT has been a loss making venture thus far. The money to finance these loss making tournaments have come directly out of my pocket. Never been a problem because I love the game and the players and understand that as with any venture, it takes time to grow and reach a break even point. We were getting very close to that point but clearly the events prior to our last tournament were a step back and made me realise that we needed to strengthen this model in order to ensure that we have no issues with other tours and we can hold our own in this arena.

I hate hitting my head against brick walls and it is obviously hard for me to put my heart, soul and money into something if I am not getting the support from the very people that I am trying to help. I need to look at the model with Daryl and find a way to strengthen it. We need to move forward and grow and just to make it absolutely clear, The EPT has been SUSPENDED, not cancelled. I love pool and I love a challenge. I am not the kind of person that gives up. I refuse to fail. Its not my style. I need to find a way to make our tour "The Main Event" so that no other tour will clash dates with us and if they do, they will regret it.

I don't know when our next event will be but what I will say to you is that I am working ... We need to make this a bigger tour. I'll share a few of the angles that I'm working on NOW. - Even without any of the below, there are more angles that we can look at that I believe will help us achieve our aims.

- I am looking at TV and there is a chance they will be interested if we bring in a couple of my snooker friends
- This will enable us to bring in Big sponsors
- This will mean a lot more prize money
- another angle is that certain satellite channels WOULD CHARGE US to air our tournaments but again, this would enable us to bring in sponsors which would cover this cost and the prize money.
- Even without TV we could still get in decent sponsors, but we would need to bring snooker names to our tournaments. This is not a problem, I have friends.
- Pool has always been boring to watch for people at home who don't know the players or understand the game. It will be presented differently and then it will become interesting to the viewers at home and will succeed.

If there is a lot more prize money this will mean that people will never miss our events - if we are on TV this will mean that people will never miss out tournaments. This will mean that if any other tour decides to hold an event at the same time as us, they will be wasting their time, not ours. I will not allow other tours to dictate to us - we will be THE tour. People that show us loyalty will be rewarded.

I hope that I have made our position clear

God Bless

Mark

Yes i agree its about time we took action and hopefully in time bring pool to the level it deserves,on the bbc like snooker and many other sports.I would also like to point out that when snooker started to come on tv it was only to fill the remaining airspace,now decades later its a popular game.Maybe we should do something like this for pool,give it time to grow with the public.If there are so many players that are in love with the game why can't the public be.I hope you do everything you say Mark as it would be fantastic for Pool.

Pool will never feature on the BBC.

Even as the BBC fights to hold on to it’s so called sporting jewels I can never envisage the day that a media that is firmly controlled by the upper middle classes ever entertaining the idea of showcasing pool as a sporting event.

Admittedly ‘English’ pool featured (albeit in twenty minute snippets) on ITV’s World of Sport, but this is from an era that I can remember watching Big Daddy ‘belly splashing’ Giant Haystacks on a Saturday afternoon and the ever smooth Dickie Davies winking to the camera. To aspire to featuring a ‘new’ sporting event on the BBC in this fragmented media age would be tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot.

Snooker struggles even with its established creditionals as a recognized sport and viewing figures are a far cry from it’s heyday in the latter part of the Eighties.

The options for pool seem limited but not without hope. Avenues such as online viewing and obviously the cable channels would seem to be sensible options to increase advertising exposure which in turn increase the potential of the sport.

Ask the average person their view on pool and the vast majority will air an opinion that is dismissive and disparaging to any skill or entertainment level on offer.

The packaging of a product has to be appealing. The fundamentals are simple know your audience and sell it accordingly.

I’m not aiming to be negative or purposely offer a view that is dismissive of any attempt to promote pool in general, but one things for sure, in its current format pool will continue to lose it’s top talent like Steve Knight to sporting obscurity.

^^^ I would've said the same thing about poker a few years ago!

I don't think you can completely rule it out.