Play Meter

the
pool table with
the Velvet Touch
innovators of
the industry
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Zenith, Crest, Adjust-a-price
Pool Tables
Sportacard
Sportaball
TV Cocktail Table
Bimbo
United-Sardi Soccer Tables
United
Billiards Inc.
51 Progress St .• Union. N.J . 07083
(201,686·7030
10
designate one as the tournament table. The players
can practice on the others. By the way, we play the
tournament on whatever pool table they have in the
location. If there's a Valley in there, fine, U.S.
Billiards, fine, Irving Kaye, OK. We're not
demanding that the operator buy a U.S. Billiards
table to get into the tournament.
PLAY METER: The $150 fee you charge for each
location goes for the prizes and materials?
" 'ARMER: Yes, it goes toward the purchase of pool
cues for the eight weekly tournaments at each of
the 200 locations. Plus there are trophies for all the
weekly winners at each location, plus the cost of all
the printing materials, the banners, the scoring
charts. At the finals, there will be baseball caps
given to the players that read "Ohio Eight-Ball
Championships." The A players will get red caps,
the B players yellow caps, and the C players blue.
And then we have to purchase a pool table to put on
the floor for the finals. So we're putting out a lot.
The balance of that money goes to the tournament
fund to be given out to the players.
PLA Y METER: Have there been any attempts by
operators to use their tournaments to get better
commissions or things like that?
FARMER: That's the secret of the whole thing .
There have been a few operators who have been
able to put their tables on fifty -cent play because of
this tournament. You can imagine what that does to
collections. It doubles them. And the players don't
object to that because that way each player puts up
a quarter for each game. Really, pool should be at
50 cents a game. It's the best buy in the world.
Phone calls in Ohio are now twenty cents. Video
games are a quarter per player, and still pool is
twenty-five cents per game no matter how many
are playing. Twenty-five cents per player or fifty
cents per game is much better. What I'm finding is
that it's the operators and the location owners who
are afraid to push the price up to fifty cents, not the
players. The players don't object. They're already
paying twenty-five cents for one play on a video
game, and a video game lasts about three minutes
as opposed to a pool game which lasts much longer.
So really, there's no comparison. Even if after the
tournament, the playing time on the table is cut in
half, you will still be taking in the same amount. So
a tournament like this is really an avenue to push
prices up. People are, after all, used to prices going
up. After every increase, they know the prices
won't go back down. I think new pool tables could
be put into the locations on that condition. A new
table means fifty·cent play. I think it's a very
saleable idea for the location.
PLAY METER: And from all this promotion you, in
turn, hope to benefit by selling more pool tables?
FARMER: Yes, we hope that the guy who
sponsored one location will buy one pool table from
us. And the guy who had five locations will buy
maybe two. As a matter of fact, two of our biggest
customers have purchased in excess of ten U.S.
Billiards tables because they appreciate the work
we've done for them and their locations. So it's
really been a happy thing all around. It's really been
successful for the locations, but it remains to be
seen if we are going to sell all the pool tables we
October, 19n, PLA Y METER