Mike Panozzo - Part 3 (Building Billiards Digest and Watching Pool Go Global)

Mike Gonzalez 0:14

So as we approach uh Alley coming to America, which was uh 1995, the year before, you and uh your partner, Keith Hamilton, decided to buy the company. What was the major driver for you guys in deciding to make that investment?

Mike Panozzo 0:28

Um, you know, it was it was as simple as Mort uh was ready to retire, and he had three daughters, none of whom really wanted to be in the business. Um, and we had both worked for Mort for, you know, a dozen and 14, you know, a dozen years for Keith, 14 years for me. Uh Keith was a business manager. He was he had an MBA and he was the business manager for the company. He was very sharp. Um and so when Mort came to talk to us, I had no business being a business owner. I didn't know, you know, I did not know my way around, you know, a PL statement. And so, you know, I knew how to watch costs on having the magazine printed and spending and things like that, but not running a business. But he couldn't get a camera out of your hand. That's why otherwise I'd be hitting you know like uh an adding machine if I knew how to do that. Uh but yeah, so so Mort came in and and suggested the two of us buy it because he had that business background and I had the publishing background. And then what I'll tell you, the last thing you need is a business partner is someone who does the same job you do. So you find someone who does one job, you do the other, and you have a fit. And so, you know, I just I was just honestly I was just along for the ride. You know, Keith put the whole business plan together. Keith set up the meetings with the bank, Keith put all the projections together to pay off things, and I just nodded my head and told my dad, listen, yeah, I I need a $25,000 check to get to, you know, to to throw into this deal. And um, and so Mort sold it to us, and it was just again, I I I'll say it a million times, just one lucky thing after the next falls into place for me. And uh we hit hit this at like the boom period for the magazine company, period, and we were off to the races. And that was that was that was a ton of fun. But billiards, you know, Keith, I'll give him credit from from day one, he knew that the bowling magazine was the bread and butter of the company. And we started another, a second bowling magazine shortly thereafter, kind of more of a business-to-business magazine, and that's where our money was being made. Uh, but he knew that I my love was with Billiards Digest, and he was fine with me spending 75% of my time on Billiards Digest going forward. Uh, and he would take a bigger role in the bowling magazines, you know, in the bowling industry as kind of a a face of the company um and allowed me to spend all my time with billiards digest. And so that was, you know, again, like I said, just one of those, another one of those things, it's just everything just couldn't have worked out any better.

Mike Gonzalez 3:11

Yeah. Well, again, reminding our listeners, this is 1994. So if you look at the list of winners on the uh on the women's circuit, the first tournament of the year won by this newcomer, Jeanette Lee, who was to make a name for herself in the game. Uh it wasn't too long after where uh you had uh the Duchess of Doom show up on our shores uh and win uh well, win a few, but uh certainly won uh you know before she closed out her first year in 1995. And and then uh uh you know, several other I mean, while Allison was winning most of the tournaments, uh several other uh foreigners came over like Gerda and and others that we've talked to. And and uh I I suppose the the women's game was uh was not going to look back from that because uh it was probably rocking and rolling about that time.

Allison Fisher 4:01

Also, I think Mike, you saw the change, didn't you, when the the women decided to leave the guys. They were playing alongside each other. So how was that? What year was that?

Mike Panozzo 4:12

Uh that was yeah, early 90s, uh late 80s, early 90s, maybe 91 or so, when the women, you know, they they tried to form a kind of an alliance between the two and market themselves together. I loved, you know, when Mark talked about the women playing alongside the men at these tournaments, that was my favorite part of the tournaments then was that the women and the men were playing in the same place. It was just it just made the events more interesting. And I enjoyed so much talking to the women players, they they were always so nice and and had a little more depth to them than a lot of the men players. And so they were great conversation, they were great storytellers as well, and I really enjoyed that. But yeah, push came to shove, and the women decided we're gonna go out and do this uh on our own. And it was a bold move, and it was a brilliant move. When you're kind of forced into these situations, you become creative and you become you dig your heels in and you say we're gonna make this work. And and all the credit to um, you know, Sherry and Harold uh from from Pool and Billion, who were the magazine publishers at that time, and Ava and and Vicky uh for putting together what uh became the classic tour. Um and they were they were on their own, they were selling their product by themselves, and they went and sold the industry on sponsorships to title sponsor, you know, eight events in the first year and 10 events in the second year, and things like that. And so they they put together this entire tour. Um, and at that time, people like Allison, Gerda was the first, one of the first ones to come over, and and she won the very first classic tour tour stop uh in San Francisco, if I if I remember correctly. And so, and then the women got the S an ESPN deal. And so they were able to do something that that nobody thought they could pull off and create their own their own tour, self-sustaining tour, which was which was remarkable. And it was, you know, I I didn't like it because now I had to go to men's tournaments in one part of the country, women's tournaments in another part of the country, and you know, how many can I go to in a year? Uh but um but it was really uh the industry was really proud of the way the women took that bull by the horns and developed something out of it that really um, you know, was a was a huge boom for the whole industry. Uh from a visibility standpoint, it was a big boom, obviously. Uh, we talk about 1992 in Munich, and it was during that tournament that the New York Times magazine article with Ava on the cover came out. And that was an even bigger game changer for Pool and for the women's VPBA in particular. This big expose on Pool that um, you know, kind of ended up being a little bit more about the women and about the dysfunctionality of the men, um, and showed a little bit of the CDC. It was, you know, there were a lot of people who read it the first time and said, boy, this is terrible. This is the worst thing that ever happened to us. Well, it wasn't. It was the best thing that ever happened to Poole and to the to the women. The best thing it's just the color, you know, to come this on the heels of the color of money was a really nice follow-up. Um and Ava became a sensation overnight. The women's tour became a sensation overnight. Um, you know, the men's tour picked up a lot of, you know, uh momentum as well. They had their own television deal going. And so um, it was a really good time for professional pool on both sides of the fence.

Mike Gonzalez 7:55

What do they say? There's there's no bad publicity.

Mike Panozzo 7:58

Yeah, just it I don't care what you say about me, just talk about me. And uh so yeah, it was it was a uh that was a really amazing, you know, that was lightning in a bottle, that was.

Mike Gonzalez 8:08

So all this upward trajectory of the game that we're talking about, how did that then uh get reflected in the way the magazine evolved?

Mike Panozzo 8:16

Well, you know, the magazine got thicker. We we went we went monthly in the late 80s, and um that was, you know, because we couldn't, there was so much going on news-wise in the industry, business news. There was so much going on tournament-wise, there's so much going on in amateur pool. We couldn't, you know, we needed it certainly justified 12 issues a year. Um, and luckily the advertisers were swimming in money back then too, and so they were all, you know, looking for more market share. They were happy to get in the magazine. So the magazine went to, we were running 1, you know, minimum 128 pages. And for trade show issues, we were at 188, 190 pages uh for an issue um on a monthly basis. So it it was the growth was exponential. It was just ridiculous. We were doing so well. Um, and we ended up with, you know, I'm a staff in the publishing company of about 17, 18 people between designers, editors for the various magazines, Salesforce, business offices, things like that. And it was, yeah, it was it was it was a fun time. We got to do a lot of fun stuff back then with special issues of the magazine. We always did our special Christmas issue, which with these great photo shoots with the with the players for our Christmas holiday issue, and that was always a lot of fun. So we got to focus more again on things that I loved, which was telling stories through imagery and and having great photography and really splashing up the cover and making, you know, our our top billiard room section and things like that. We were having we were having a lot of fun in those days.

Mike Gonzalez 10:04

Yeah. You know, we focus a lot on with this program, Legends of the Queue, a lot of players, but we also have a desire to talk to others that have been influential in the game, and that includes people that make equipment and people that make the rules and govern the sport. So let's talk a little bit on the equipment side tables, cues, cloths. Who were some of the characters you remember from the early days that represented some of the big companies and brands in the sport?

Mike Panozzo 10:32

Well, you know, like we said, like I said before, it was really cool. The earlier days of the industry when I was in it were much more family-operated businesses, small businesses, mom and pop, you know, the McDermott. Jim McDermott was a really interesting guy, a great, you know, self-built manufacturer/slash marketing guy, Viking Q, Gordy Hart, bigger than life guy who, you know, was around in the Johnston City days watching those tournaments. They were they were pool people. Um, they just weren't players. I mean, Gordy could play, there's a lot of these guys could play, but they ended up starting companies. Um, Olhausen, you know, Butch Olhausen, guys like that were just really interesting characters. So the cue makers and the table makers, and and and virtually everything was being made in the U.S. at that point. There were tons of table manufacturers and cue makers and accessory, you know, uh dozens of guys who made cue cases. Um and and there were some there were some really, you know, the the custom cue makers were really interesting. Ernie Gutierrez from Gina Q. Um, you know, Gus Zambodi was still around back then. Um, you know, there was there were some there were some real characters in that part of the industry as well. And I loved that because, you know, I always the bill industry has a big trade show every year. And from the mid-80s into the early 2000s, um, the trade show was huge. And it was all especially in the early days, it was all industry people. Um and you know, the mom and pops who started their own companies. And we would have the Hall of Fame banquet every year during the trade show. And they'd get, you know, four or five hundred people in these Hall of Fame banquets every year. And it was all the manufacturers and their staff. And they would the last day of the show, they would stop tearing down until the next day and go get gussied up and and come to the Hall of Fame banquet. And it was it was so much, it was much more of a family back then than it is now. And it's not, you know, it's not, it's I'm not gonna play the old, you know, it's not like it wasn't the old days type of card, but it was just different. It was just different. And it was it was a very, it was a really cool part of the industry to see all these people come together and and because they were so family oriented, most of those businesses. Um and a lot of them are still around. I mean, you look at someone like Peach Hour Q's's is a multi-generational, you know, still multi-generational and and in the business. Um you know, so uh, you know, it it's it's it's evolved differently, but but those those were some of my favorite days.

Allison Fisher 13:14

I love those too. I remember those days. We used to have a lot of people.

Mike Panozzo 13:17

Your early days in the trade show had to be, yeah.

Allison Fisher 13:19

Every night it was a different party, a different manufacturer, wasn't it? It was, it was.

Mike Panozzo 13:24

It was a lot of fun. We had we had great times and and everybody knew each other so well. You didn't have, you know, the big business turnover that you have in in other industries. You know, these you saw the same people and you know all the time. I mean, I uh still to this day, there's people in this industry that I call for information or advertising that I've called for 35 or 40 years. And it's one of the really special things about this industry overall is how long people are in it.

Mike Gonzalez 13:59

In addition to equipment providers, in addition to the professional game and big events, what other aspects of the game were you covering?

Mike Panozzo 14:09

Well, yeah, we did a lot of instructional stuff. We did a lot of amateur tour coverage. We tried to do a lot of business coverage. We tried to cover the political side of the the sport and of the industry, uh, the decision makers. Um, you know, we always tried to make people think and make people talk about issues that were affecting the business. And so, you know, we were never afraid to take a stance or at least to broach a topic that maybe everybody wasn't really comfortable with. And a lot of times it was, you know, our advertisers who weren't comfortable with it. But that's, you know, if if you're if you're going to be ethically straightforward with your magazine and what you tell people it is, you have to live by those rules, right? So, you know, we took chances and lose an advertiser now and then, but you know, you had to say what you had to say, you know, because a lot of the advertisers were the big wigs in the industry associations. And so uh when you criticize the association, by extension, you criticize the advertiser and then you get an angry phone call. I mean, I've gotten I've gotten my share of phone calls over the years that would make uh that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush.

Mike Gonzalez 15:26

There's a there's a blast from the past, that never you go. Well, you you talked about you talked about governance. Just give our listeners some insights from your perspective as to how the governance of the game has evolved and and maybe a little commentary on where it is today. Is it in a good place? Because uh I think one of the things Q Sports has an eye on is trying to become an Olympic sport perhaps in the next you know, six to eight years. Uh what's your perspective on all that?

Mike Panozzo 15:55

It's kind of like to a certain extent, it's it's like the more things change, the more they stay the same. I mean, if if I look at, you know, I'll do this every once in a while. I'll pull out a magazine from the late 80s or the mid-90s, and I'll look at an editorial or I'll look at a business story that we wrote. And I was like, geez, if I was really lazy this month, I would just take that story and I would put it in this month's issue and no one would know that it was 20 years old. It's it's all the same topics and it's the same arguments and it's the same. Listen, the downside, or not really downside, but one of the effects of being an industry that's a small mom and pop-driven industry is that it's not overly sophisticated in terms of business and governance, because it's being governed by the people who run the businesses, and the people who run the businesses are furniture makers who decided to make queues or tables or whatever. And this is not a slight on them at all. It's not a this is not an educational slam or anything like that. But um there are, you know, there weren't a lot of MBAs and business, you know, big business wigs and and big-time accountants uh or big-time marketing firms making decisions on behalf of the industry. So that's always held it back, vision versus execution. And one of the other things that is is always held it back is fragmentation. The industry has always been very fragmented in terms of player associations, in terms of amateur associations, in terms of governance associations. And so with that, you have turf protection. And with turf protection, it makes it really difficult to turn a battleship, right? And so, because someone's got to give up something that they've worked to get, to play ball with everyone else. And it's just not something that happens easily. So it's an industry that over 46 years that I've been here has had, you know, as many fits and starts as you could possibly have and still be in existence as an industry. So um, you know, but I don't mean to make it sound all doom and gloom. I mean, they've made some some amazing strides and some amazing things have happened. Um so, you know, is there is there a long way to go? Yeah, there's still a long way to go. You look at the pro circuits, and and the women have done a great job of maintaining WPBA in the US and and making it the biggest women's legitimate tour that there is in the world, which is why you have so many of the international players at all the WPBA events, players from China and Taipei and Singapore and Indonesia. They they all come here to play. So kudos to the WPA for doing that. And then you've got uh a company like Predator with its Pro Billiard Series pushing more women's tournaments. So the women's part of the game seems to me to be probably the most um unified of the groups, right? Then you've got the men who are, you know, mercenaries looking for an event to play in, and multiple promoters who put on all these events worldwide that are fantastic events, but these are promoters who have very different business models. You know, a predator versus a match room versus a WPA as an association. It's just very their business models, how what they're looking for out of what they do and how they get it is very different. And so, how do you get all those people to sing from the same hymn book if your goal is to be in the Olympics? Um, it's a challenge. It's a real, it's a real challenge. Now it can be done, uh, but it takes in in a lot of these cases, it takes uh selfless leadership, right? It takes someone who's essentially a volunteer, who's willing to, you know, work for nothing because there's nothing to pay you with at this point, but we know that there is something at the end of the and so you have these you have to find these people who will devote a decade of their life to help unifying everybody and getting everything in the right direction, someone that everybody believes in. To me, that's that's one of the keys to the future of the sport is having that that one entity or person or whatever who's who's can really hold that vision together and figure ways to pull all these disparate parts of the of the sport together for a particular thing, whether it's the Olympics, whether it's a legitimate worldwide professional tour for the men and for the women, whatever it is. It doesn't really answer your question, I don't think, but it's it's kind of I don't know, Mark and Alison, I'm I'm anxious. I I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are on that short dissertation because it's it's it is kind of one of those difficult things to wrap your arms around, right?

Allison Fisher 21:06

It's very difficult. I mean the players have their aspects and then the businesses like Match Room, Predator, their businesses, they're different types of businesses. One's all you know, their products and TV, and the other one's a TV production company who sells the product worldwide. That's how they make their money, and they've been successful in many other sports. And then you've got this the Chinese who are pushing hay ball now to try and get that in the Olympics, and there's a guy with a sort of a bottomless wallet trying to push that, and they're putting tournaments all over the world for that. So like you're saying, it's kind of torn apart, isn't it? It's it's it's not come together, it's not glued together yet. I don't know what the answer to that is. The WPA seem to be moving in a better direction now, now that somebody's left there. Mentioning no. Names. How do you feel about the WPA at this point in time? What they're doing.

Mike Panozzo 22:05

I think they are moving in the right direction. And the main part of that direction is trying to work with everybody and make sure players are not prevented the opportunity to play where they want to play when they want to play it. I think that that's been uh that kind of middle ground that they've reached on that has been really important. I think in the past year or two they've gotten distracted by hay ball money. You know, we all know that that stuff comes and goes. I mean, you can't you can't put all your eggs in the joy basket for your Olympic dreams when it's a for-profit manufacturing company who a year from now can say, well, poll's not what we thought it was going to be. We're shifting it. We're we're gonna go all into table tennis. And now you have to do it. Right. So, so you know, it's it's dangerous to to play that game too. That's why and I think the WPA has gotten a little bit sidetracked and distracted with that over the past couple of years because they were really starting to get on a pretty good groove with, you know, Americ the American pool side of it, right? Nine ball, ten ball, eight ball, whatever the case is. So they were starting to they were starting to make some you know headway there and getting the players to buy into what their vision is and trying to get match room to come along, trying to get predator to come along, and then help facilitate this working together for one for one big goal. So I think there's still potential there, but they've got to decide what they want to be when they grow up. And and I don't think that tied into a a single company for your future is the way to go.

Mike Gonzalez 23:42

Well, let's let's assume that the sport of pool in some form and fashion gets into the Olympics. What does that do for American pool?

Mike Panozzo 23:54

You know, that's that's anybody's guess. I mean, I always say, you know, be careful what you wish for because you know, for every sport in the Olympics that gets tons of visibility and tons of sponsorship and blows up, there are 70 more that just kind of pretty much disappear for the next four years. I mean, how many times between Olympics do you talk about curling? Okay, but during the Olympics, it's the biggest thing in sports. Everybody's watching curling, everybody's got to talk about curling. Well, yeah, you know, I haven't heard a lot about all these seven-digit curling contracts that have gone out since, or that all of a sudden, you know, Brightling is sponsoring the World Curling Tour. So, you know, uh the the other side of that is that uh Olympic recognition, uh Olympic participation has a huge trickle down to smaller nations in funding things like billiards because uh you get a lot of these small countries, their governments are looking for things to fund. They're not going to be able to compete with the U.S. in basketball. They're not gonna be able to compete with, you know, Holland and Netherlands in skiing or, you know, cross-country skiing or whatever it is. But they could put a pool, a billiard team together, you know, if if they sink some money into it, maybe they can build a billiard program. And and because every country is in the Olympics for one thing, and that's to bring honor and and visibility and respect to their country by their athletes' performances, right? And so so that's that's one thing that would help pool across the world, is more of these countries would find governments that would put that would help subsidize the growth of that sport. In the US, I wouldn't see that happening for one reason. I mean, we're not even a member of the USOC. So we're not gonna give government support if we don't even have, we're not a member of the national. So maybe that's the you know, that's that's a step that I think the BCA is trying to, the Billiard Congress of America is trying to move towards with its new establishment of this USAQ sports, is to develop something that's a little more in line with with IOC type of federations so that we can become a part of the USOC and and have these these opportunities. Even then, I don't know that that means that that you're gonna get, you know, all of a sudden this huge windfall of government funding. I mean, there's the US, even for for its top sports, pays its athletes, as medal-winning athletes, probably less than virtually any country in in the Olympics. Uh, some countries, you win a gold medal, you get, you know, a million dollars in a new house. In the US, you win a gold medal, you get about $40,000 from the USOC, and and thanks for playing the game. So um, so yeah, I I think that it it could certainly wouldn't hurt pool. I just in in America, I just wouldn't spend a lot of my money investing in trying to make that happen based on the ROA, what I vis what I see the ROI being. Gotcha.

Mike Gonzalez 27:06

Gotcha. Let's let's shift gears then and uh talk a little bit about how you've seen the image of Pool, particularly in the men's side. I think the women have been pretty upstanding over the years, but uh, you know, there's this there's this shady, seedy underworld side of Pool that we've we've talked about on the men's side. And Mark, you know, Mark lived it. We've talked about very candidly with a a lot of guests that weren't necessarily tournament players, they were hustlers. And that was a different side of the game. I'm just wondering how the magazine has treated that over the years. Have you featured players and pool rooms and situations that were part of that world?

Mike Panozzo 27:41

Well, we we don't, you know, we don't cover a gambling match, but we we've talked about, you know, we've certainly done pretty exhaustive profiles on players who made their living through, you know, either being on the road straight up gambling or or hustling. Um, and there, you know, some there's some great storytellers that came through, especially through the 60s, 70s, 80s, who, you know, had fascinating stories about how that all unfolded during those times. We didn't ever try to glamorize that, but we didn't try to act like it didn't, it didn't exist. It's part of the game. It's part of the two faces of pool. Pool's two faces are legitimate sport and you know the the the action side of it. Uh, and they both have a lot of value if you're looking for visibility. I mean, everybody will, you know, you most people will tell you, geez, I think if they played up that element of the game more, you know, it would make a great TV series. It would make a great documentary. It's not something that you're gonna hang your hat on to try to build your tour off of and make all your sponsorship money off of, but it's certainly part of the game that's been around. It's certainly interesting, it's certainly something that that you talk to a a reporter for a newspaper or someone from a uh a television station, they love those stories. They love knowing that that type of thing existed. So I don't think you should ever, you know, try to get rid of that or act like it doesn't exist, and we didn't with the magazine. Um, you know, we we've always tried to cover both sides. But we try to play up the sport more because that's that's the the way we think we can help the game the most, and that's the way the game's gonna grow the most, for sure. But that other element is isn't is an interesting part of the pool culture.

Mike Gonzalez 29:32

Yeah, Mark, any thoughts on that?

Mark Wilson 29:34

Well, you know, a lot of it stemmed from when there was lack of a tour back in the 60s and 50s, it was all gambling, small stakes gambling, and then the pool room was central to that, facilitating it. And so players, you know, built their reputations. It's not even so much the hustling part of it. It was more the two gunfighters meet in the middle of the street and find out who's better, type of a thing. And it was quite a badge of honor, and it was it was fun, it was exciting, and it happened daily, and you got to compete and practice. And nowadays you know the economy doesn't support that. You can't, there's nobody left that will play. So you will see some big stakes matches with backers and like that for figures that way beyond what someone earns in the year. But it's not like the old days where you could play virtually every day, small stakes pool to develop your skill set. So uh and then the players oftentimes have come at it from the wrong direction. They come at it as a way to get by life by scamming something, and then the image, you know, filters over to the professional side. A lot of the professional players are not the hustler con uh druggy type people, but yet, you know, that's the image that gets portrayed because that's glamorized or accentuated, and to the extent that even my own family and high school friends didn't like pool. They didn't even play it, they've never been around it, they just assumed they knew what it was about, that it was bad. I always saw a beauty in it. And so, you know, my perspective is always from the player side where Mike straddles the line. He he he knows the background of the industry members, which I don't, and I know the player side, and he knows the player side intimately. So I'm gonna defer to his perspective on that because no, just because That's your first mistake. Well, no, because I I'm and sometimes Michael will tell you I'm militant about things, and you know, he has to talk me down uh and uh because I get angry, you know, and it's it but it's because my whole life's involved in it. So it's weakly American, isn't it? Yeah, very much so. And it's so interesting. Uh so I I don't I think it's more the players it didn't, you know, a lot of times came from a single parent and they just had to scratch by and they don't know better. I I sometimes used to get mad at them because realistically, how is it that we haven't had a tour since 2000, a men's tour? Right? So because you know the industry is certainly strong enough to support it, but because they kind of learned to detest the men's players, we don't have the support, and then we don't even have any leadership to use the support if we did have it. And then the BCA grew disinterested and they no longer hold the tournament and ESPN shuns us, and so it was just kind of a sad evolution of decay and breakdown, and we lost it. We had it for a while, and I was guilty too, right after the color of money. I didn't realize we should have been nurturing the sport. I thought you could never go back to being bad like it was. I thought it's just gonna be fantastic, it's gonna get better, it's gonna get better, and then you know, now it's completely declined because so many things came aboard, like internet and uh casinos in every town, the 150 channels of satellite TV. So, uh, but we need to go back to the infrastructure of building it from you know bottom up. We need college programs, we need high school kids getting involved if you're ever gonna sell cloth and stick some balls and leagues down the road. So uh I don't know that that I'm like Mike, I don't know that that answers the question. I'm just saying those are contributing factors. But you know, those are things that have to be you know weighed in when you try to make the final analysis. Yeah.

Allison Fisher 33:16

Thank you for listening to another episode of Legends of the Cube. If you like what you hear, wherever you listen to your podcast, including Apple and Spotify, please follow, subscribe, and spread the word. Give our podcast a five-star rating and share your thoughts. Visit our website and support our full history project. Until our next golden break with more Legends of the Cube. Salong everybody.