I have a regenerated passion for snooker. I once played competitively, albeit at a very minor level but I did win a couple of trophies in leagues that I am not sure even exist any more. I spent a lot of spare time playing with friends or even on my own practicing. I had a choice of venues to play at and many of the working mens clubs and political clubs had their own tables too. When I was good enough I purchased my own cue and soon outgrew that and bought myself an even better one. I went to the local sports shops and browsed through a number of options and even got to feel the quality of the cues. Even the local clubs had a reasonable selection for purchase and I soon found the one that felt right to me. This was before major televised snooker and really on the back of a television programme called Pot Black. However it was possible to go out an buy the equipment that was needed.
Now today, snooker is a major sport with massive funding across the world. Several snooker championships are televised with millions of viewers and players can command big prizes. You would think it was a hugely popular sport.
So why is it that in London the number of snooker venues has significantly diminished and places to buy cues and other equipment in any sort of variety have practically disappeared off the map?
I am not talking about specialist stores like Parris Cues who sell their own extremely high quality goods or Dunn Cues who, out of their home, create handmade snooker cues but have no retail outlet, but an independent sports shop that carries that sort of merchandise.
That is not to say that cues are not available on the high street. There are a few sports retailers that stock cues such as Sports Direct and ... hang on ... that's about it really. So let's have a look at their range ... OK so a sports emporium should stock cues of varying degrees of quality shouldn't they? So let's see ... Peradon? No. Craftsman? No. Powerglide? Well a couple of very cheap pool cues ... but snooker? No. Riley? No. Just some poor BCE cues and all at the very cheap end. So this sports megalith arrived in every town and did its level best to destroy any of the smaller competition such as independent retailers with heavily discounted major seller and in the process utterly destroyed the supply of the long tail.
You see a store lives and dies by the items it can sell in the bulk which is where large emporia can use their buying power to undercut smaller retailers. So in terms of football equipment, gym equipment, trainers etc. the larger stores can significantly undercut the items that people buy most regularly. However the smaller stores stocked higher quality and higher priced goods of niche sports as well as the more popular items. They cared what their customers were looking for, not what the bottom line showed. The larger emporia can't make huge deals on niche equipment and so choose not to deal with them at all unless they can make bulk deal at the cheaper end.
So for someone like me that wants a quality snooker cue, I just can't shop for one and try one out. I can of course buy one online, but then I don't get to feel that queue.
I am sure you can find many examples of where the long tail has been utterly destroyed by market forces and those that will defend that way of doing business but it is clear that unless there are some interventions, the market will be the destruction of niche areas
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