Eklent Kaci has revealed his intentions to skip certain tournaments on the World Nineball Tour calendar because of players competing at a financial loss.
Kaci, who was beaten in the first round of the Arizona Open Championship by Taiwanese youngster Sun Yi-Hsuan, expressed his frustrations on social media during the tournament.
He said: “Tournaments with 128 to 256 players and an estimated $250,000 to $500,000 in all players’ expenses, yet only $50,000 to $100,000 in total prize money – it’s simply bad business.
“It’s like a meme coin scam and totally bearish. I’ll be skipping them and I suggest you do the same.”
There was confusion surrounding which events Kaci was referring to. One commenter suggested that he wouldn’t have complained had he not suffered an early exit in the Arizona desert, to which Kaci responded: “Maybe. But in this case I had plenty of time in the middle of nowhere to do the math”.
The two-time world 10-ball champion later clarified his comments and instead hit out at the smaller ranking tournaments due to combined player expenses being four times larger than the total prize fund.
“To clear up any misunderstanding from my previous post, there is money in pool, and we’re grateful to have Matchroom, the WPA, and Predator investing millions into this beautiful game,” Kaci added.
“When I referred to ‘bad business’ I was talking about the smaller ranking events, like the Bucharest Open, the Vice City Classic, and by the way my brother won them both.
“There are still plenty of tournaments that pay very well. I’ve built a good life by playing the game I’m passionate about, I have consistently earned a good living from it over the years and you get to see every inch of the world.”
Classic Billiards in Lauderhill, Florida, organisers of the Vice City Classic, responded to Kaci’s comments and revealed their intentions to develop from this year’s inaugural edition.
“He’s not wrong,” they said. “There’s a reason why there were several events that got cancelled earlier in the year, because of the economics essentially.
“Moving forward, specifically regarding Vice City, because we threw the event, now we can go to outside sponsors and show them the product, the entry list, to get more money in the pot for next year. Sometimes in business you just gotta do it, learn, and try to improve.”
