Pool franchise is fun for owners - Military Careers, Second Careers - Navy Times

Pool franchise is fun for owners

How would you like to sell fun for a living? While most of the masses try to balance work with play, the American Poolplayers Association offers both — through pool-league franchise opportunities. The idea of enjoying a successful career that mixes business with pleasure appeals to some transitioning service members, who are choosing to leave the base for the billiard hall.

“We’ve found that it’s a natural fit for service members,” said Terry Bell, who co-founded the American Poolplayers Association in 1979 after serving four years in the Army. “There are 40-year-old NCOs leaving the service with military pay and the time to think about what they want to do. And service members in general are young and vigorous. They’re sports-minded, disciplined and understand teamwork. Most of them also play a little pool.”

Army Sgt. Shane Valverde started his pool-league franchise after visiting a pool hall near Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2006. The special operations civil affairs team member was recovering from injuries he received while deployed to Afghanistan.

“One night I saw a league playing,” he said. “They pointed to a poster that said a franchise was available. I needed a new career, so I called them. Two months later, I owned a franchise.”

Now, after serving more than 10 years in the Marine Corps and three more in the Army, Valverde is a business owner, running a pool league in five counties in the Corpus Christi, Texas, region.

“I’m still awaiting separation, so I’m doing this part time,” he said. “Later, I’ll go to full time, and then the sky’s the limit as far as how much you want to make. I’m building my business like a recruiter. So far, I have one active billiard hall and am talking to two others interested in a league.”

How the franchise works

Before Bell and his partner, Larry Hubbart, founded the American Poolplayers Association, they realized that unlike other sports, pool didn’t have a recreational league system. Today, about 260,000 people play in APA leagues, and there are about 250 franchises around the U.S.

The APA began working with the Veterans Transition Franchise Initiative, known as VetFran, in 2005, and since then, four service members have bought franchises.

Pool-league franchising offers one of the least expensive franchising ventures, Bell said.

Through VetFran, APA offers service members a 25 percent discount on the franchise fee, which generally comes out to a startup investment of between $10,000 and $12,000.

Franchisees buy the right to operate leagues in a particular area. They’re assigned territories with populations of about 1 million people. New franchisees either start new leagues within their territories or take over existing ones. They receive proprietary software and a week of training on how to run a successful pool league.

“We get a lot of computer training on the proprietary software, sales training, all the necessary information about the leagues and the sport — an introduction to the association and the business models,” Valverde said. “I was impressed with how comprehensive it was.”

Building the business

Once initial training is complete, it’s up to the owners to build and market the pool leagues.

“There’s a lot of freedom in it,” Bell said. “Service members bring a great deal of discipline and strength from their military service, too, so it’s an opportunity to work and make money without being under anyone’s thumb. You don’t need an office or equipment. You need a computer, a place to live and a car. As the owner, you set up new leagues anywhere there’s a pool table. This means you can start leagues at a university campus, a firehouse, a military installation or a billiard hall.”

Rob Laws got his start in the pool-league business as a player. A Navy engineman first class serving as an instructor at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois, he moved from playing the game to running a business when he decided to take on a franchise in the area where he played.

He bought an existing American Poolplayers Association territory. Now, along with his wife, Laws is running the pool leagues part time until he finishes his military service and separates in November.

“I’ve been doing it just over a year,” he said. “I currently have 30 teams and put in about five to six hours a week.”

The bulk of the work is managing weekly tournaments. Laws said his administrative duties include collecting score sheets, checking wins and losses, tracking points and entering data into APA’s tracking software.

Building new leagues is as easy as walking into a bar or pool hall and asking the owners if they’re interested in starting leagues in their establishments, Laws said. He can recruit players at all skill levels into leagues because of a handicapping system the APA created.

Making money

Pool-league franchisees make their money by building teams whose members pay to play.

“The goal is for them to make it to the national championships held every year in Las Vegas,” Laws said.

Players join the league for a $20 annual membership fee. They compete on teams of five to eight players, and team members pitch in to pay the weekly tournament fee of about $30, depending on the location. Owners pay 20 percent to the APA and put away a little more in a players’ fund for things like trophies and trips to the playoffs and national championships.

“The rest is mine,” Laws said. “Because it was an existing franchise, I was making money from Day One.”

Bell said it’s the royalties system that makes American Poolplayers Association franchises so successful. “It can cost thousands to get into franchising,” he said. “Any prospective franchisee should look at whether the franchise is in it for the fee or the royalties. Our franchisees have a minimal fee, and they send us a royalty of 20 percent. With the royalty system, the only way the franchise makes money is if the franchisee is successful. So we work to support them in every way to make that happen.”

The numbers are telling. According to Bell, a full-time franchisee can make about $40,000 a year with 100 teams. So far, the largest franchisee in the Baltimore area has 1,700 teams and four or five employees.

“What a rough job,” Laws said. “You go to bars and play pool and make money.”