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?
