CueSport TV - The Blog

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.

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Since we have been covering the TCC Snooker Pro-am from Newport each week we have seen a 5% growth in our viewers accessing our video on demand categories.

Some elements of the media suggest that snooker is dying and there is no doubt that it has undergone a decline since it’s heydey in the 1980’s, both in terms of playing numbers and TV audiences.

What these media types forget though is that for the decline in the UK there has been major growth in places like Germany, Belgium, Russia, The Middle East and China.

Although 60% of our website traffic still comes from the UK we are finding more and more of it is driven to access snooker related content. Viewers from all over the globe want to get a regular fix of high quality snooker videos. I would suggest (without any evidence I must add) that this could be due to the fragmentation of pool disciplines. It is easier to search and find snooker content as it is it’s own discipline, pool on the other hand comes in many forms and is a little trickier to find.

I have always said that the growth of Cuesport TV will come about by good quality snooker content and this is what we are finding.

I am hoping to announce another major tournament being added to our live offering over the next week so look out for that.

General Snooker cuesport tv, snooker, snooker video, snooker videos, tcc pro-am

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.

General Snooker live snooker, live streaming, mark williams, shaun murphy, snooker, tcc pro-am