Ownership of League Tables

[Sir Chancelot]

Just wondering - are there any leagues in England that insist that acceptable tables (with registered teams) must be owned by the league committee or any other body ?
There has been some talk in Guernsey prior to the AGM that only league owned tables will be permitted to enter teams.
Several years ago the same scenario was implemented with the local Pool league, which resulted in the break up of the league and many teams left.
If a Landlord or Landlady wishes to purchase and maintain a table, a group of players, or a particular team for example, surely that would be better than having no team at all ?

[Chris_Sav]

A few leagues developed syndicates and bought their tables when Bar Billiards Ltd went tits up. My league, Tunbridge Wells and Redhill were examples.

We prefer to use our own tables as the quality is normally better. There is hardly anybody out there who can recover a table to top playability. Having said that we have allowed one privately owned table into our league.

The main advantage of league owned tables is purchasing power once tables are paid for. In our league everything is paid for out of table take, landlords get a rent free cut so they like it as no payouts or maintenance. We have no entry fees and our presentation dinner is heavily subsidised. We were major contributors to the AEBBA van. We also have tables in a couple of non league pubs. We have our own finals night tables.

League ownership of tables is the way forward for me where tables are not rentable from outside sources.

Having said that our league is still slowly contracting the same as most of bar billiards so it's no magic bullet.