SPORT is big business in the United States, The Index, publication of the New York Trust Company, shows:
"Before the depression," it says, "Americans were spending something like £200,000,000 a year on sport. By 1933 this had been cut in half, but now the annual expenditure is rapidly mounting again to its former peak."
"What is the most popular sport in the United States? Fishing. About 6,000,000 persons obtain licences for it annually, and 'possibly twice this number fish' (Fishing licences are not needed everywhere in the country.) "Next to fishing in popularity comes billiards. It is estimated that there are 8,000,000 players. After that come bowls, ping-pong, trapshooting, tennis, and golf—so far as number of actual participants is concerned."
"As a spectacle, the most popular American sport, judged by the number of people who pay to watch it, is basket-ball. (There were about 8,000,000 paid admissions last year.) This is followed by baseball, football, boxing, horse-racing, wrestling, hockey, dog racing, bicycle racing, motor-cycling, track and field events, swimming and ice skating, in that order, before the number of paid attendance in a year sinks below 1,000,000."
"All the figures show that Americans tend to spend less on watching sport and more on taking active part in it. The result is better business for those providing sports goods and facilities."
THE above report is extremely interesting, particularly when we ask how far the same may be true in our own country. We are rather too apt to regard cricket, football, golf and tennis as easily at the top of what may be called participatory sports. They are truly great games, we would be the last to belittle them, but it is surely a mistake to regard angling and billiards as among the "also-rans."
It is not our business to do more than congratulate our many angling friends on the pride of place awarded to their sport. But billiards, which includes snooker with us, comes second, far higher than it would be placed by many who reckon themselves judges of the appeal of all-round sport.
We remember astounding one of them by asserting that billiards and snooker have a greater following than football. He looked as if wondering whether we were serious or not. We then explained that if you stopped any 20 of the spectators entering the ground to see a football match, it would be a safe bet to make that at least 18 of the 20 had either played billiards and snooker, or watched those games being played, more than once during the week before the match. Add the very large public which does not attend football matches, but does patronise billiards and snooker, and the justice of our argument is incontestable.
It would be very interesting if a cue census could be taken. The idea may appeal to Mr. George M. Watson, Secretary of the T.A. Committee of the B.A. & C.C. For business reasons, it is known in trade circles that we have at least 100,000 full size tables in play in the United Kingdom alone. If this could be expanded on the American lines to give us the number of players, we should have something that would be of great help, particularly when billiards or snooker happened to be criticised, even attacked, by those who know nothing whatever about the national appeal of these games.
It is impossible to conclude without expressing the regret that American and British billiards are too far apart to permit of championship or other competitive play. The striking American statistics show what could be done if the games could be brought together. The attempt has been made and always failed, even when John Roberts in his prime played his "compromise table" matches with Ives, the American champion. The ineradicable trouble is that the two games, both great of their kind, differ fundamentally in technique. Walter Lindrum would have to begin again at the bottom to stand any chance of defeating the American champion at their game. The American champion would have to begin again at the bottom to stand any chance of beating Walter Lindrum at our game, the position is an impossible deadlock.
It may be quite different at snooker. From what Walter Lindrum and Tom Newman discovered in New York, it would seem to be well within the bounds of possibility to bring the American pool cracks into our Snooker Championship. That is, so far as rules and playing conditions go. The gate-money aspect may not be so amenable. No actual figures are available, but we gather that American guarantees might be too much for our pockets.