Billiard Congress of America (BCA) is a governing body for cue sports in North America (here defined as the United States and Canada exclusively), the regional member organization of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA).[1] It was established under this name in 1948[2] as a non-profit trade organization[3] in order to promote the sport and organize its players via tournaments at various levels. The BCA is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado.[4][5] The voting members of the organization are mostly equipment manufacturers.[6]
The BCA publishes a rule book that includes rules merged with the WPA World Standardized Rules for games such as nine-ball, eight-ball, and straight pool, as well as rules for other games that are not presently the subject of international competition, such as cowboy pool, rotation, American snooker, and Chicago among many others. The BCA holds an annual trade show, the International Billiards & Home Recreation Expo. Also annually, it inducts great players, and those who have made great contributions to the sport, into the BCA Hall of Fame.
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The origins of the BCA began with the National Billiard Association of America (NBAA), founded July 25, 1921. The organization rapidly became the de facto governing body of the sport in the United States, with 35,000 members by 1928, and was closely tied to the Brunswick-Balke-Collender company, a major equipment manufacturer. After a decline in influence in the late 1930s, in part owing to a dispute with world carom champion Willie Hoppe, the NBAA reformed in 1941 as the Billiard Association of America [7](BAA or BA of A).[8] Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and calling itself "the Governing Body of Billiards", the BAA produced a concise, portable, inexpensive rulebook of carom and pocket billiards games, that was to serve as the model for future BCA releases.[8] The BAA in turn became the BCA, 1947–1948.[6][9] The BCA formed with, and for several years shared offices with, the promotional trade association National Billiard Council (NBC), now defunct.[9][10] Early BCA rulebooks were essentially identical to the 1946 BAA edition, including the cover art and the absence of the increasingly popular game nine-ball from the ruleset.[8][11] (Nine-ball still did not appear in the 1963 rulebook, despite being one of the pool gambling games of choice by that era, but did appear in the 1967 and all subsequent editions.[12][13]) The BCA rulebooks have remained in near-annual continuous publication to the present day.
During its first thirty-two years of existence as the BCA, the organization had various addresses, including in Toledo, Ohio[14] and Chicago.[15] In 1980, they opened their longest-term permanent office in Iowa City, Iowa, and moved it in 1997 to Coralville, Iowa for a brief period.[16][17] In 2000, the BCA relocated to its current headquarters in Colorado Springs.[18][19]
Also in 2000, the BCA made the major move of adopting the WPA's World Standardized Rules for eight-ball, nine-ball and other games subject to international professional competition. The BCA had by this time become the national affiliate of the WPA, the International Olympic Committee-recognized world governing body of billiards and pool. In the new edition of the rules, the organization expressed a commitment to seeing pool and carom billiards become Olympic sports (and in fact selected Colorado Springs for its new headquarters for proximity to the US Olympic Committee).[20] The rules changes have not been without controversy, as some of them upset US player expectations; various leagues have ignored the new rules and continued with traditional US rules (e.g., in the game of eight-ball, legally pocketing the 8 ball on the <dfn style="border-bottom:1px dotted #0645AD; font-style:inherit;">break shot</dfn> has commonly been treated as an instant win).
The results of the 2009–2010 Board of Directors election results were announced in Las Vegas during the June 24, 2009 BCA General Membership Meeting:[21]
| Date | Winner | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | George San Souci | Jeremy Jones |
| 2000 | Johnny Archer | George San Souci |
| 2001 | Cory Deuel | Jose Parica |
| 2002 | Charlie Williams | Tony Robles |
| 2003 | Ralf Souquet | Francisco Bustamante |
| 2004 | Tony Robles | Santos Sambajon |
| 2005 | Thorsten Hohmann | Johnny Archer |
| 2006 | Ralf Souquet | Johnny Archer |
The BCA's annual Billiard Expo (as it is known for short, or simply the Expo, within the industry[23]) is the largest mostly-cue-sports trade convention in the world, and despite its broad name is primarily focused on pool (pocket billiards). It has been held in various locations, most frequently [[Las Vegas Valley|Las Vegas, Nevada, since its founding in 1984.[23] The Expo is exclusively sponsored by the BCA (and its members),[3][5] and is managed by William T. Glasgow, Inc. of Orland Park, Illinois.[5][24] The expressed purpose of the event is to "provide industry manufacturers, distributors, retailers, dealers and poolroom operators an annual venue for new business opportunities, including education, new products and networking."[3] Vendor attendance in 2006 was nearly 300 companies filling between 1,300 and 1,400 10 sq ft (0.93 m2) booth spaces.[25][23] The June 25–27, 2009 event at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas saw 116 exhibitor in 412 booth spaces, with 1,120 buy attendees.[22] The next event will be held June 14 (Wednesday) through 16 (Friday), 2010, at the Las Vegas Convention Center,[3] with registration for attendees opening February 15.[5] These were not the original dates, and some debate surrounded the matter, with the dates being finalized only as late as September 2009, and chosen to ensure maximum attendance by billiard entrepreneurs, most of whom have business peaks on weekends.[3] By the end of the 2009 Expo, 65 companies had already contracted for 326 booth spaces at the 2010 Expo.[3]
The vast majority of attendees are industry insiders, rather than players. In 2006, 94% were billiard retailers, 5% billiard hall operators, and 1% "other" (e.g. bowling and amusement center operators).[23] In 2009, only 70% were retailers.[5] In that year, 83% were from the United States and 7% from Canada, with the remaining 10% being from elsewhere around the world.[5] Despite operators not being in the majority, the event is geared toward them, with "Business of Billiards" seminars on successful hall operation,[5][23] and exhibitors principally in the business of supplying such venues. Exhibiting vendors typically include product lines such as pool equipment (tables, cues, racks, chalk, etc.), billiards-themed apparel and accessories, instructional materials, bar and billiard furniture and furnishings (stools, neon signs, juke boxes, etc.), business services (food processing, point-of-sale computer systems, etc.), other commercial gaming equipment (darts, table shuffleboard, foosball, video games, pinball machines, etc.), plus assorted home recreation categories (poker, home spas and pools, tanning beds, sound systems, outdoors equipment, etc.), and billiard-related services such as cue repair.[25][23] The BCA claims that, as of 2009, 55% of attendees make purchasing decisions for their businesses, 50% buy there, and 20% more buy within one month of the show.[5][24]
While Las Vegas is the most frequent host city for the event, it has also been held in Charlotte, North Carolina, Houston, Texas, Baltimore, Maryland, New Orleans, Louisiana, Kansas City, Missouri, Orlando, Florida, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, and Ft. Worth, Texas.[23]
As of the 2010 event, the cost per 10 sq ft (0.93 m2) exhibitor booth varied from US$1,350 to $1,800 depending upon BCA membership status, with a $100 attendance fee for non-exhibitors and non-members[24] (up from $1,200 and $50, respectively, in 2007[23]).
The BCA Pool League (BCAPL) is one of the major amateur pool leagues in the United States and is present in over a dozen other countries outside the U.S., with a significant presence in Canada.[26] Initially a division of the Billiard Congress of America, since 2004 the BCAPL has been owned and operated by pool and billiards event promotional company CueSports International (CSI) of Henderson, Nevada. CSI is owned by billiards promoter and 2009 Billiards Digest "Man of the Year" Mark Griffin.
The BCA Pool League has approximately 450 local leagues with 60,000+ members. Leagues are played on both bar-size 7-foot (2.1 m) and regulation 9-foot (2.7 m) tables. The BCAPL National 8-Ball Championships held every May in Las Vegas, Nevada has been called "The Greatest Pool Tournament in the World", with 22 separate divisions including singles, scotch doubles, teams. The event also hosts two professional tournaments.
As of the 2009/2010 season, CueSports International (CSI) introduced a secondary league system, the USA Pool League (USAPL), which is structured exclusively around eight-ball match play.
Both the BCAPL and USAPL (who share a rulebook) use BCA rules, with the addition of wheelchair rules, team play adaptations, and "Applied Rulings" from years of large-scale tournament administration.
In addition to the BCA Pool League and the USA Pool League, CueSports International (CSI) is also well known for producing some of the largest and longest-running open events in the U.S., including the Jay Swanson Memorial 9-Ball Tournament at Hollywood Billiards, Hollywood, California; the U.S. Bar Table Championship in Reno, Nevada; and (starting in 2010) the U.S. Open 10-Ball Championship.
The United States Billiard Media Association (USBmA) was organized in January 2007[27] to elect "billiard media members to the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame Board".[27] This media-focused suborganization also lists other goals in its materials, including "elevating the visibility and status of billiards in the media at large" as well as various member support functions.[27] Membership is strictly limited to "professional print, radio, TV, public relations and Internet media persons who cover cue sports", as determined by the USBmA executive board.[27] As of February 2010, the group listed 33 members, including most of the better-known names in US-based cue sports publishing.[27] USBmA is nominally based in Chicago, Illinois at the same address as Billiards Digest (Luby Publishing).[27]
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