Live on Sky Sports Extra in the UK at 7pm and also a Mosconi cup live stream here. (external link we are not responsible for).
Todays Matches:
Match 6 - Van Boening/Archer v Souquet/Feijen
Match 7 - Deuel v Hohmann
Match 8 - Dominguez/Hatch v Appleton/Immonen
Match 9 - Archer v Appleton
Match 10 - Hatch/Deuel v Feijen/Hohmann
I reckon Europe could still be in with a shout if they win the session 3-2 tonight!
The last two weekends I have made the trip to Club 147 in Leicester. Probably the best pool club in the country with a management team fit for promoting pool and with it their own business.
Both weekends featured live broadcasts, the first on Cuesport TV and the second on new channel American Pool TV.
On both occassions I was on hand, with my wife, to broadcast two different challenge match evenings. This is something we have been banging on about in the UK for some time. We have, without doubt, got the best pool players in the world at this time. It was great to see both Darkside Promotions and Tonic Promotions creating these nights of entertainment.
There was a lot of similarity between the two promotions, the undercard matches were 9-ball featuring players from the lower ranks in the UK and the feature matches were both 10-ball.
I think the real success here in my eyes is that finally we produced a stream of quality, as ever there is work to do to improve, but the response from viewers has been excellent.
10-ball does seem to drag on a bit though, 3am and 5am finishes, I kid you not.
There needs to be more of these events but we as a company need to further promote the events long in advance. I would also say that there is a call to shorten the races.
The matches from both of the events mentioned will all be available on the channel shortly so keep checking back.
Over the next two weekends (August 8th and August 15th/16th) Cuesport TV are involved in live streaming three separate big money match ups.
Burford vs Gray - Saturday 8th August, 5pm (UK Time) - Cuesport TV
The first on August 8th features, European Junior 9-ball Champion, Phil Burford and former European number 1, Mark Gray. These two stalwarts of the British 9-ball scene go head-to-head for £1000 per man. The game is 9-ball and it will be a race-to-30, winner breaks.
The action for this event will be live over at Cuesport TV to paid up subscribers, something you can do for as little as £2.95. The action starts at 5pm with an undercard match between Andy Appleton (brother of World Number 1 Darren Appleton) and young up-and-coming player Louis Clarke. They are playing for £500 per man race-to-21 I believe and will be live also in advance of the main event.
£10,000 Scotch Doubles Challenge - Saturday 15th August, 5pm (UK time) American Pool TV
Another evening of entertainment that starts with a tasty undercard match, UK Pro players Scott Higgins and Alan Millership match up for £500-per-man. Race-to-15 9 Ball action. A good precursor for what is to come at around about 7pm.
The big match up on the cards on this particular night is an interesting one. Rarely do we see scotch doubles matches outside of the Mosconi Cup so this will be a treat.
Karl Boyes & Chris Melling take on World number 1 Darren Appleton & Imran Majid.
The Prize?
A killer £10,000 winner-take-all pot. The match is 10 ball with a race-to-35 in operation, I expect a very close match, Boyes/Melling have a 5 rack start to make it even more interesting.
This live event will be the first one shown on American Pool TV where you can buy the match in advance for £4.99 or on the night for £7.49 make sure you buy it, amazing match up.
Simon Ward v Craig Reynold’s - Sunday August 16th, 3pm (UK Time) Cuesport TV
Another match for Cuesport TV subscribers.
Simon Ward, one of the most consistent players of the 2008 season plays renowned money player and IPA professional Craig Reynol’ds for a £6,000 pot.
Played to WEPF World Rules this one will appeal to the small-ball fans throughout the UK and Europe, possibly further afield.
To watch this one a subscription is required.
I am back at the TCC Pro-am Snooker this evening with World Number 6 Ryan Day in action.
This week is one of the most exciting of the qualifying rounds with two other professionals competing. Matthew Stevens, who like Day is seeded into round 2, and Daniel Wells who will play in the first round.
Stevens and Day will start their own matches at around 9:15pm after the conclusion of the first round matches.
Tonights draw is below:
Round 1:
Daniel Wells v Jerry Connors
Andrew Pagett v Anthony Davies
Round 2:
Ryan Day v Wells or Connors
Matthew Stevens v Pagett or Davies
Main action starts at 7:30pm and once again is exclusively live to Cuesport TV Subscription holders.
I will get the news out of the way first. Mika Immonen has won the third World Ranking event of the year, The Qatar International 9-ball Open, with a 13-10 victory over Taiwans Ko Pin-Yi.
In addition, by reaching the semi finals, Darren Appleton, has gained enough points to become the first ever British World Number 1 player. Congratulations to both players.
What I really want to mention though is the lack of International coverage of such a prestigious event, $40,000 was paid to the winner and the world’s best players were in attendance. There was regular live scoring and updating of the tournament sheet but in this day and age fans want to watch tournaments like this.
My understanding is that the event was broadcast in Qatar and that a live stream was supplied. Nobody that I know of actually got the live stream working. It is no good using a technology that nobody else can tap into.
With my next comment I don’t want to sound bitter but we approached the organisers in the first instance back in February/March 2008 for last years event. They wanted stupid money for something that had not been done before, even though all we would do is take a feed from the broadcaster and pump it out to the world.
This year there was no reply! These events need to be seen, whether that be through our technology or somebody elses it needs to be robust and of a standard that most of the Internet public can use. Cuesport TV is of course this solution but it is difficult trying to convince rights holders what can be done without them wanting rediculous sums of money for something that as yet it not worth what they are asking.
The future of TV, and in my opinion broadcasting of niche sports like pool and billiards, lies with the Internet. Vendors and rights holders need to grasp this now and actually need to take some risks. A company like ours can take a satellite feed of an International event and broadcast it worldwide at very high streaming quality for a fraction of the cost of traditional TV. The exposure of the sport would potentially be massive, the risk comes from not wanting up front payments, afterall the event is already being broadcast by a TV station in the home territory. It needs rev-share agreements to come into force. Get this right and licence fee’s can be discussed in future years.
Who else tried using the Qatar Open Live Stream? Did you get it to work?
Last night saw the first of seven weekly transmissions from the TCC Snooker Pro-am. An event that has been running for 10 years at the Tredegar Cons. Club in Newport, Wales.
This years event has attracted Shaun Murphy, Mark Williams, Matthew Stevens and Ryan Day plus a host of other professionals and top level amateurs.
For us it was our second move into live snooker streaming, and obviously it is key with the move to subscriptions imminent, that we provide a good show. From my own point of view I think yesterday went well, the number of live viewers was small but this was due in part to the event being advertised as a paid event. I think the viewers that did watch probably would have paid anyway.
The key ingredient to the success was the mounting of a ceiling camera to give the typical full table shot we see on the BBC and Eurosport. This was quite comical really, we had brackets designed specifically for the job, however, the camera then would not tilt so all we could see was the light rig - a nice light rig, but not quite what people wanted to see.
Rather than actually start drilling into the ceiling of the TCC we made use of the suspended ceiling and using a plank borrowed from my son’s old bed set about creating a mount for the camera, it paid off and gave us the desired result. Although I was sweating it a bit with the camera precariously over the second table, secure though I must add!
The club is quite small and with 80 spectators crammed in we didn’t think there was going to be space for two cameras, but we did manage to add a second angle through the use of a tripod. The natural lighting in the club was perfect and a great nights entertainment was had.
Streaming at 450kbps is a first for us as we are normally stuck with small standard connections but the stream was smooth with no buffering and very little delay thanks to Virgin Media for that one!
Anyway you can watch the videos for yourself later on this weekend over at Cuesport TV and feel free to make a comment or two.
We will be providing live coverage again next week as well so stay tuned.
Well I will answer this question with Monday Night!
For us as a broadcaster it was our most successful live event yet. 1300 viewers converged on the video player to watch a mediocre (I am being fair with that comment) challenge match between John Kelly and Tony Halpin. Lots of money being played for, in fact £10,000 per man.
1300 is not a lot in the wider scheme of things, but when you add in that we only really advertised it with 2 hours notice on 4 message boards and couldn’t even get out an email it is quite amazing.
The channel will grow this year, because we have introduced multi-camera angles, live score graphics and live commentary all which add to the viewer experience.
But the biggest reason in my opinion is viewer-interaction, on Monday night we received over 200 comments on our blog whilst people were watching. This adds something to live broadcasting that you will never get with traditional TV and also gives a reason for a viewer to stay online.
Most surprisingly 92 people were still watching at 1:40am when the last 8-ball was potted.
Roll on the next live event I say!
