yea, in TT, if you and your partner are 200 ratings apart, you start to lose some fun. But I still think that if the general public has more access to TT (like putting tables in parks), more people would like to give it a try. And I am sure a good portion of people would fine it challenging and fun and more or less get into the sport.
basketball is the exception in US sports in that it is more international.
The puck is fast, but we can still see the people and the sticks, and people+sticks hitting each other lol. Again, people like to watch sports that when you are behind, you can use your power to fight back, even though it's a fault. Imagine in table tennis, players would throw their paddles at each other or something, I am sure more people would watch.
this part I don't agree
he doesn't get out much.
Only active players can follow what's happening in a pro tt match, because only active players have a feel for spin. This is a big part of what limits tt viewership. Then there's the small size of the ball and the speed and subtlety of the game which don't come across very well on video. Table tennis will never match the more photogenic and easier-to-understand sports in broadcast popularity, but viewership can be increased by increasing the number of active players. In the US, making clubs and coaching more accessible can help on a relatively small scale; getting tt into school systems as a standard interscholastic sport is the only practical way to do it on a large scale.
I think you are right.
I think hardbat TT is fairly popular, it is just hard to commercialize given how TT has evolved.
He is clearly trolling really hard. At a certain point, responding to him only feeds him.
They very much are - in fact, being a fan of many sports requires you to understand the rules of the sport and usually, understanding the rules of the sport usually requires you to have played it on some level growing up. It's part of the reason why many Americans struggle to understand/watch soccer, but can watch baseball. If you can't engage with the sport as a feedback loop, it is hard to follow it.
We've had this conversation enough times that I'm not really interested in re-hashing it again. And I understand dealing with the leagues is part of your business, so naturally you prefer them to WTT. I don't care whether you call it WTT or rename it TTW or whatever, and replace all of the leadership and organize it however you want. That is not the point. The point is there needs to be a single organization with a near-monopoly on selling the top players' matches to advertisers, TV carriers, and fans, in order to make enough money to turn table tennis into a higher-profile sport outside of Asia.
Players are very often fans, but fans don't have to be players. The NFL is the most popular sports league (by far) in the US and only a small share of fans have played organized American Football at any point in their lives, let alone have more than a rudimentary understanding of the sport. Of course experienced players of any sport will tend to be more interested in the highest level of the game, but there is more to it than that for sports with big followings. It's about entertainment, drama, storylines and personalities. ~130 million people don't watch the Super Bowl because they played Pee-wee football and want to see how the nickel matches up with the tight end on third down, they watch because it's a cultural event.
The examples you give aren't great examples still, but the point is not to argue this to death because you have a point, it is just significantly overstated IMHO. A huge part of that NFL culture you are talking about begins with getting kids involved in the sport. Many successful businessmen played football or made connections in that business, especially in the middle American states, so there is an large subculture around the sport that is not visible on TV. The storylines and all the other stuff are mass marketing tools, but they all sit on a large base of hardcore believers who learned, played and watched the sport as children.
