How Live Streaming Made Me A 10x Better Pool Player
When you think of live streaming sports, you probably only think about professional athletes with amazing skills that everyone in the world wants to watch. Who would want to watch a bunch of amateur and recreational sports players duke it out in some random league or tournament, right?
Wrong.
I started live streaming my pool matches back in August when we launched our live streaming feature in ZenSports, thinking that pretty much no one in the world cared about watching me play. I’m certainly a halfway decent player, but nothing anywhere close to pro or semi-pro. Who would want to see me try and fumble my way through running out a 9-ball rack or playing a safety when I should be more aggressive?
Turns out, a lot of people.
Since I started live streaming my pool matches a few months ago, I’ve had anywhere from 100 to 1,000 people watch me play on any given day. At first, it was kind of nerve-racking. Were people going to rake me over the coals for every missed shot, or make fun of the way I went about thinking through my progressions? But as more time went on, not only was it not nerve-racking, I actually began thoroughly enjoying performing in front of a camera (no no, not inthat way).
I found myself focusing more, concentrating harder, and not letting up like I was prone to do before I started live streaming. I began to play 10x better when I was live streaming vs when I wasn’t because I knew that every shot I took, someone was out there watching. I began to feel like I didn’t want to let my viewers down. If those people were using up their most precious commodity (time) to watch me play, I was going to do my damnedest to make it worthwhile.
Plus, the outpouring of encouragement coming from people across the country that I don’t even know has been nothing short of awesome. Sure, there has been the occasional snickering from the peanut gallery at some of my play, but 95% of the comments have been overwhelmingly positive — congratulating me on a win, telling me nice shot, being supportive when things didn’t look good, etc.
What’s even cooler is that since all of the live streams in ZenSports are recorded and have the ability to rewind, fast forward, pause, etc, I can go back and re-watch myself play at any moment and see what I did well, what could have used improvement, etc. I almost feel like a professional athlete that can go back and watch a DVR of his/her performance on ESPN, even though I know I’m far from that caliber.
Have you given ZenSports’ live streaming feature a try? If you haven’t because you’re feeling unsure or intimidated about what people will think or say, I would encourage you to put those feelings aside for even just one outing, and give it a try. Show the world what you’ve got. You’re probably better than you’re giving yourself credit for. And the rest of the world wants to not only watch you play, but also root for you to succeed.
Here’s a link to one of my recent live streams of me playing in a pool tournament. Nothing amazing — just me being my typical amateur self:
https://zensports.app.link/tZsZzXNhuI (only viewable on mobile)
Mark Thomas
Co-Founder & CEO
ZenSports
p.s: We’re hosting webinar demos over the next week on how to use our live streaming feature. Click the link below to register for one!
