Kozoom and IBP End Their Relationship

Dear players, partners and friends,

We're very sorry to announce the end of Kozoom's involvement in the Eurotour series. When we first introduced the EPBF/IBP to Eurosport in december 2005, the goal for us was to help them bring the series to pan-European broadcasting. We had high hopes.

For the last two years, we have been producing hundreds of hours of high quality livestream, many TV programs and DVDs that have brought visibility to the sponsors, the organizers and the players.

Because we believe a professional sport can't grow without quality media coverage, we invested a lot of time and effort to improve these events. For us, this is the only way to make our sport reach the mainstream audience it deserves and it took a lot of efforts on our side to keep this partnership alive both for the television and the livestream.

Recently, because we didn't want to get involved in the poolmatch.tv project (a monocamera livestream VOD), relations started to get tense. Two days ago, without any warning, our logos and brand names were removed from both the Eurotour official site and the TV arena before the tournament started. This was another sign for us that the partnership was about to end.

Without any form of a legal contract which we asked for several times, the relations were based on trust... And we tried in last resort to make our «partners» sign an order form of our regular invoice but they declined. Therefore, we had no guarantees regarding any payment for this event.

Then, they told us they wouldn't care to see us go! So that's what we did: we packed the cameras and the broadcasting equipment after the first day of competition and we went back home. The official event photographer JP Parmentier, choosing his long-term partnership with Kozoom over what had became a difficult relationship with the IBP, chose to leave and was banned from coming back to the venue with his cameras!

Therefore, we won't be able to produce the Eurosport program, the remaining matches in high quality livestream and JP won't be able to shoot pictures of the event.

We're sad for the people who worked so hard to organize this tournament, the team of the Leader Club Billard in Sucy-en-Brie. After successfully helping to bring this Eurotour to France, it's a major disappointment for us to end this story without even the chance to say goodbye.

So, to all of you pool lovers we say goodbye, and don't worry, we will see you soon!