World Snooker takes different route

Well before I start I wanted to say that I'm one of those many who used to disagree with everything Barry Hearn did in charge of World Snooker until 2013 but after seeing Snooker getting popular world widely with tournaments being played all around the World, prize money increasing, standard rising, audiences growing massively and TV Channels battling for the sport's rights, I changed my opinion and became someone who was very thankful to Barry Hearn, a man who helped a lot to make Snooker the most popular sport in the United Kingdom in the 80's and now has turned it into a global sport.

Hearn obviously is a master of marketing and after all he did to Snooker I used to say I trusted him blindly, and so I did during the World Championship last season when Barry Hearn announced he had signed a 10-year contract with Eurosport, European's biggest pay-per-view channel which does an amazing job with Snooker.
But in fact the season have started and the renewed partnership with Eurosport has been a nightmare so far. In fact it has given them the rights of the online service as well, and it's not available anywhere outside Europe. Also, several tournaments haven't been shown on their TV screens in some countries recently.
With World Snooker itself losing it's right for the coverage of their own events online, fans outside Europe have no way to watch the game and the Globalization of the sport that they worked so hard to achieve seems to have been thrown away. As a South American who works hard to let Brazilians know about the international events I can tell it's really annoying, just imagine how hard they worked to get Snooker popular world widely and reach a 1.5 Billion audience last season, with viewing figures at the Crucible being 350 million to just give it up now! I hardly think these numbers will be repeated or got close to this season, as several people have lost their contact with the game. Australians for example, they ran a tournament there for many years and now simply they don't have that tournament anymore and are not allowed to watch the game.

In the start of the season World Snooker said they would provide live coverage for outside Europe soon, but 6 events have gone now and nothing has been said on it. Even worse, I've tried to get in touch with them by all ways asking about it just to get informed if there's something being made on it or if we simply won't watch Snooker this season definitely but I've got no reply. That includes emails sent to tournament directors and to WPBSA's chairman Jason Ferguson, someone who've been very important for the Globalization of Snooker in recent years, and have featured here in the Blog a couple times in the past.
That just makes me even more angry on it, the least we'd expect is World Snooker saying anything on it, but it seems like they've made it an exclusive sport for Europe and China and instead of doing what's better for the game they're signing the contracts that seem better for them financially and a proof of it is the new tournament they've announced that'll be launching in China in November.

Don't get me wrong, it's great to have another tournament and to have more money up for the players to earn, but they're spending £600k on it, the winner should take £200k and that's not just the biggest prize ever to be given outside the UK, but that's bigger than the UK Championship's prize and as big as The Masters' prize, Triple Crown events those.
However I hardly believe this money is coming out of World Snooker's vault, it's more likely to be coming from China as we know they're up to do anything to stage a tournament with the same prestige as a Triple Crown event, they've even built their own Crucible in a failed attempt to steal the World Championship from Sheffield and a few years ago they launched the International Championship giving away the same number of Ranking Points that the UK Championship used to do when the Rankings were based on points. Anyway it was another failed attempt because some fans didn't like this idea and rejected the event, also money is not everything, it helps a lot but you can't buy history and tradition so players never saw the International Championship with such importance really.
And to be honest I think the "Evergrande China Championship" as it will be named, will be another failed attempt because I've said you cannot buy history and also the schedule will be very busy by the time it will be played, players will have played the International Championship a couple weeks before it and right after it they'd be going to the UK to play the Champion of Champions, the Northern Ireland Open, the UK Championship and the Scottish Open; I don't think anyone would miss those and so this Chinese Championship might be the chosen one... to be missed!
I just think that if they have all this money to spend in China they should invest it on the Shanghai Masters or the China Open, tournaments that have been there for a decade and have a bit of history, or maybe the World Cup - an event that was first played back in the 70's and was a great success in Wuxi last year. Crowd uses to attend events well in Wuxi and the event had a great acception from the fans with 23 countries proving they can compete playing Snooker at the highest level. Also having teams coming from all around the World increases the interest in the event, one that if received the investment that they put in the International Championship and will be putting in this new Chinese event would surely incentive people to play Snooker in many countries and help Snooker to grow even more world widely.

Another consequence of Snooker stopping it's coverage for outside Europe are the illegal livestreams availabe all around internet. In fact they've always been a problem for World Snooker because they've always worked better then their own livestream. Anyway now if you don't live in Europe and want to watch the game you've only got two options: Watch it on illegal websites that cost World Snooker some pounds, or simply not watch it.
So they've got two problems there, some watch it on illegal livestreams and most don't even watch it anymore.

Of course what I wish is  that Snooker keeps growing world widely, but unfortunately they seem to be stepping back this season and World Snooker not being very transparent on that gets me frustrated because I've always been a fan of the current World Snooker's government.
Not just World Snooker's main man, but one of the World's most renowned promoters, Barry Hearn was interviewed by SportsPro last week where he proudly speaks about how Snooker have grown around the World in recent years, principally in China and Europe. But he's also got a sensible "money can't buy everything" speech, the question is if that's been World Snooker's real slogan this season. They're not showing Snooker anywhere apart from Europe and China and I think after reading this text you would agree that they should be working on it. Instead, nothing seems to be on the making and, well, surely they don't earn more selling Eurosport some exclusive rights do they?


Well critics aside, Ding Junhui beat Mark Selby today 10-6 to become the first player to win the Shanghai Masters twice, just in it's 10th year celebration. By the way it couldn't have finished any better for the local public that packed every session of the event this week seeing Stephen Maguire making a 147 and Ronnie O`Sullivan coming back to action, a bit rusty indeed after 5 months out.
It means back-to-back titles for Ding Junhui who two weeks ago became World 6Reds Champion and now gets his revenge against Mark Selby for the World Championship Final from 5 months ago.
Next week we'll see the European Masters Qualifiers (from Monday 26th to Wednesday 28th) and the International Championship Qualifiers (from Thursday 29th to Saturday 1st October) taking place in England, and then off we go to Romania for the European Masters (from Monday 3rd to Sunday 9th October).
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Thanks for reading, see you soon 😉