Billiards Comeback Racks Up Big Profits : Public Takes Cue From Popular Movies, Moves Pool Into Top 10 of Participation Sports

In the two years since the Paul Newman-Tom Cruise film “The Color of Money” rekindled the American love for pool, a boom has been in progress that could put the warnings of Professor Harold Hill to rest once and for all.

Meredith Willson’s fictional “Music Man” attempted to admonish the townspeople of River City, Iowa, about the intrinsic evils of the game, even though he acknowledged that it cultivates “horse sense, and a cool head and a keen eye.”

Loyalists are convinced that a far greater number of people are finding other virtues in pool as well.

And while both “The Color of Money” and Newman’s original performance as “The Hustler” 27 years ago explored some unsavory aspects of staking one’s life on a pool cue, recent surveys into American gaming habits would support the loyalists’ point of view.

Moves Into Top 10

Studies by the Gallup Poll and the National Sporting Goods Assn. placed billiards in the top 10 among participation sports. Last February, Gallup estimated that 33 million Americans are pool players, ranked billiards fourth among games played by men and claimed that the percentage of all players has grown by 430% since 1959.

Equipment sales have increased better than 100% since “The Color of Money” was released in 1986, according to surveys taken by the Billiards Congress of America, an organization representing manufacturers, retailers and players of every stripe.

A staggering $500 million is now spent annually on the game, said Paul Roberts, an organization spokesman.

“Billiards has always gone through cycles,” Roberts said. “You are dealing with a game that goes back centuries. Washington and Jefferson were players, and Mark Twain made it a part of ‘Every Man’s Education.’

“At the turn of the century, it was a gentleman’s game. In the ‘30s, it was a Depression pastime, and there was a love-hate, romantic rogue appeal attached to it. It always seemed that over the course of decades, it could be huge and the next minute it’s out.”

Logical Alternative

But with or without an assist from Newman and Cruise, Roberts said, pool became a logical entertainment alternative after home video games reached their peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“People were looking to get back into actual games again,” Roberts said.

Los Angeles table manufacturer Patrick Murrey was fortunate enough to latch on when Touchstone Pictures began production of “Color.”

The Murrey tables were used exclusively in the film, with logos prominently displayed throughout. “It turned out to be one of the best advertising moves we made,” Murrey said. “That kind of exposure, with major stars like Newman and Cruise playing on your table, you just can’t put a dollar figure on it.”

But Murrey is hardly alone. Even the astronomically priced, hand-carved tables sold by the Peter Vitalie Co.--which can cost $100,000--have become so popular that Roberts said the company has left its original home base in Anaheim for the wider open spaces of North Carolina, where it plans to operate 80,000 square feet of factory space by 1989.

Untapped Markets

Smaller companies such as Dave Maidment’s World of Leisure, based in Covina, are sharing the wealth by carefully scrutinizing untapped markets. Maidment said many of his tables serve more than one purpose, converting into furniture-quality dining tables or poker tables.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Maidment said. “Two years ago we did $1.2 million in sales, and this year we’ve jumped over $3.5 million.”

Maidment said there is sizable potential in sales to senior citizens’ centers. A billiards organization survey found that out of 12,000 centers nationwide, 90% of the facilities include billiards among the recreational facilities.

“With the addition of these senior citizens’ centers, the days of the old pool hall dungeons are past us now,” Maidment said. “We are back in the black tie era.”

A spokeswoman for the venerable Brunswick Billiards company in Bristol, Wis., said the game has crossed all demographic lines.

Gets Teens off Streets

“It’s a very good game that is attractive to all ages,” said Pat Kelly, sales administrator for Brunswick. “It gets teen-agers off the street corners, sharpens up their skills, gives them a sense of competition. And a lot of the halls that are opening up today are non-alcoholic.”

Typifying this trend is a 21,000-square-foot, scrupulously clean family center in Bellflower that is incongruously known as Hard Times Billiards.

There are 35 tables in the facility, including 10 suitable for championship-caliber events. No liquor is allowed inside, special rates are offered to senior citizens and Hard Times employees are active in community anti-drug campaigns.

“The image of smoke-filled pool rooms really perpetuated a bum rap for the game over the years,” said manager Fred Yamashita, 31, who was introduced to a billiard table 25 years ago at a boys’ club.

Yamashita said the formula for Hard Times evolved after he and owners Chuck and Mike Markulis studied the best and worst aspects of public facilities. He found the mixture of a clinical and reverential atmosphere in Japanese pool rooms to be closest to ideal.

“They were really bringing a lot of class to the explosion,” Yamashita said. “That’s really what we were after.”

Murrey agreed with the Japanese ideal from a suppliers’ standpoint, but he said the once overwhelming demand in Japan for expensive, exotic American equipment has peaked.

“They have a lot of people who typically want only the best,” Murrey said. “That’s been good for us, but I think we’ve now reached the saturation point. When you’re competing with 400 companies in Taiwan that can sell at half your price, it gets tough.”

Billiards industry manufacturers, retailers and tournament players agree that new growth in the billiards boom must be generated by professional players and the potential for expanded television coverage.

Popular in England

“There’s precedent for this,” Roberts said. “Over in England they play a variation of the game, called snooker, and it is now the No. 1 spectator sport on British television.

“There are more than 385 hours of snooker tournaments shown there now, and some of them get 52 shares in the ratings,” Roberts said. “Even ‘Cosby’ on a good night doesn’t get a 52 share.”

But Murrey said manufacturers cannot afford to absorb the expenses of sponsoring a full season of professional play.

“Corporate sponsorship, much as you see in any other sporting event, is the only way to go.”

The prospect tantalized the top tournament player, Mike Sigel, who won an unprecedented seven consecutive events in 1986, a year that also saw him crack the six-figure mark in earnings.

“But can you imagine if I was a golfer and I’d won seven straight tournaments?” Sigel said. “You’re talking a million easily. That’s the difference when a sport has corporate sponsorship. I have enough titles. Now I have to start thinking about money.”

Television Interested

That could also be just around the corner. Sigel said negotiations are close to being completed for as many as nine tournaments to be shown exclusively on Ted Turner’s Atlanta-based cable network, TNT.

“And ESPN is dying for pool now,” Sigel said. “A couple of years ago, we had to go begging to them.”

The lure has also been strong enough that one of the game’s top female players, Peg Ledman of Hollandale, Wis., quit her job at United Parcel Service last November to concentrate on playing full-time.

“I’m not earning more money than I did at UPS, but I’m enjoying myself more,” Ledman said. “There’s a lot to be said for liking what you do.”

The talk of a pool renaissance is also enough to fuel the competitive fires of one of the game’s legends, Willie Moscone.

Moscone, 75, said from his home in Camden, N.J., that he has also begun discussing the possibility of returning to competition under the aegis of Bill Cayton, the manager of heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and a longtime sponsor of pocket billiards events.

‘I’d Had Enough’

“I retired from competition in the ‘50s, figured I’d had enough,” Moscone said. “My wife has laundry on the (billiard) table right now.”

But Cayton wants Moscone to square off one more time against the player who assumed the name “Minnesota Fats” after Jackie Gleason played a character with the same name in “The Hustler.”

“I did it before, in the 1970s, with an event called ‘The Legends,’ starting with the Moscone-’Fats’ matches,” Cayton said. “Got good ratings for ABC.”

Moscone hasn’t heard from “Fats,” who is now living in Nashville, “for seven or eight years,” since the competition folded.

“But I still don’t need glasses, and I’ll beat the Fat Man,” Moscone said. “Matter of fact, I’ll spot him. And that’s the truth.”