Well we have been showing Blackball pool live online now for the best part of three years, however, what happened at the weekend in Limoges, France was a first.
Blackball, that game we call English Pool, was broadcast live on Eurosport 2 (The World Championship to be precise). This is a channel with a reach of 120 million homes across 59 countries that packs awesome weight in the world of sports broadcast.
It was a good debut, Kozoom (who used to provide pictures of the Eurotour 9-ball events), were the production company and the set-up was faultless. It made a very good advert for a fringe sport that is almost dying out in England except for s few small pockets.
A broadcast like this could open all sorts of possibilities, giving the sport new focus and direction. TV brings sponsors, sponsors bring prize money and prize money brings big name players.
The one thing against a renaissance of Blackball in the long-term though is cost, I have heard to figure of €30,000 being touted for the two-day shoot. (In actual fact this was supposed to be for 6 broadcast hours but the organisers failed to fill the time slots.)
If the game is attractive enough, which I think it is, then sponsors would like to get involved, the WPA or EBA or whomever was involved should be using this footage to now grab new sponsors in a massively competitive market. There is scope for a World Tour as the game has a following in Europe and across Africa, and Australasia. Now is the time to push on.
On a side note, Scotland’s Jayson Shaw won the World Championships live on TV beating Sebastian Ramier of France in a fantastic display of pool and how the game should be played. Huge congratulations to Jayson, I know he is a fan of Cuesport TV and has featured numerous times on the channel over the last few years.
Could we be seeing more of the same?
