World Pool Championships expected to reign in TV ratings
By Kate V. Pedroso
Inquirer
Last updated 08:10pm (Mla time) 10/29/2006
MANILA -- With billiards growing to be one of the country's most popular spectator sports, more than one in two adult Filipinos are likely to watch the 2006 World Pool Championship (WPC) on television when it comes to Manila next week, according to a survey by the Social Weather Stations.
From November 4 to 12, about 29 million Filipino adults and millions more teenagers, may be watching the WPC, the Third Quarter 2006 Social Weather Survey found.
The WPC will be televised from the Philippine International Convention Center for several hours daily. Previous champions include Efren "Bata" Reyes in 1999 and Alex Pagulayan in 2004.
The SWS survey found that 9 percent watch "always," 9 percent watch "often," and 38 percent watch "sometimes" -- a total 56 percent of adult Filipinos -- whenever they find billiards on TV. This figure represents an increase of five percentage points from the 51 percent registered in August last year.
Billiards is more popular among men, who make up 18.7 million (73 percent) of those who watch the sport. Of those who watch billiards on TV, 17.7 million are from class D.
The survey also found that "enthusiasm for playing the sport is high," SWS said in a statement. Among men, 17 percent said they have played billiards within the previous month -- higher than last year's 15 percent.
Enthusiasm is also steady across all socio-economic classes, with 13 percent among classes ABC, 8 percent among class D and 10 percent among class E saying they had played the sport within the last 30 days.
The survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews of a national sample of 1,200 representative households in Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It had a margin of error of plus-minus 3 percentage points.
The survey was conducted pro bono by SWS for the Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines, the national sports association which helped bring the 2006 WPC to Manila.
In the most prestigious international 9-ball tournament, 128 players from at least 42 countries will compete for the WPC. Among the 116 pre-qualified players are 13 Filipino athletes. The 12 remaining slots will be filled in by a qualifying tournament from October 28 to November 1, involving 110 more aspirants, 35 of them Filipino, from 21 countries.