9BALL Ratings on ESPN in the 90's Were a Success
I hear people refer to the game of 9Ball as a "failure"....this entices me to stand up for the Game and present some facts, from working directly with ESPN and Prime/Fox Sports as Director of Operations of the Professional Cue Sports Association)...9 Ball was a TV Success and only in the last 13 years became a so called "failure" (more from someone not marketing televised events...it doesn't happen on it's own)....in the 90's the average viewing audience for 9Ball was a 1 POINT RATING (one million house holds)....I played a match in front of over 3.8 Million Viewers on ESPN ....and the total hours ESPN gave us in 3 years was thousands of hours (my matches were over 600 International Hours)....I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be classified a "failure" in the history of Television ...the challenge became "how to take that success to the next level"...however, there were some missing factors....and the pool game itself was not one of those factors. It takes people to get anything on TV, it's not ESPN, it's promoters that drive events on TV, you just don't see it now in major sports because it's already in place, however, in pool, it's not in place, as a matter of fact no one is even trying that's the fact of the matter.
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Nine ball is very much a skill oriented game, in spite of that many may call it a failure. To the people who know how to shoot AS WELL AS control the cue ball on the table, it is easy but there is NO limit as to how good the game can be played, like any pool game. You just have to practice and learn by association.Posted 09-16-2012 at 11:06 AM by Joey Fast Evola 
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When I have heard people in the industry refer to 9ball as a failure, they are lamenting the introduction of the soft break sometime around the year 2000. It's not as exciting as breaking the balls hard. Of course the rules can be tweaked (e.g. rack the 9 on the spot, or require several balls to pass the head string)Posted 03-02-2013 at 09:48 AM by jeffj2h
