Hong Kong Masters: All-star weekend ahead!
The Hong Kong Masters is a short event with the top 8 in the World (except Ding, plus O`Sullivan) battling for the main title, as 2x Ladies' World Champion Ng On Yee, from Hong Kong, takes on the 90's legends Jimmy White and Stephen Hendry in exhibitions on the final day.
The arena supporting 3,500 people has been packed out for every single session (tickets were sold out days after opening sales), and unlike most of China's venues they know to watch the game - we haven't seen people wandering around or mobile phones going off all the time, but we've seen an electric atmosphere with crowd getting involved in the important moments and putting pressure on the players. Also the reaction from all players, fans and staff involved in the event has been fantastic, the feedback is great and I'm sure Eurosport will regret not to have coveraged it.
I was afraid that this tournament would get "too friendly" and lack the competitiveness that makes the game so exciting, but all the structure around it and the fact you enter the arena to see yourself in the middle of 3,500 fans hungry for good Snooker up against a world class player has made it feel like a major tournament.
This is an one-off event, the Hong Kong Masters is only one of the events to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Hong Kong's official region establishment and World Snooker didn't begin it with the intention of making it a regular stop in the main tour (unlike the Evergrande China Championship). Anyway, the way Hong Kong took it has clearly shown us that we need an established event in there - even though I knew Snooker is very big in Hong Kong I was astonished when I watched it, as we didn't know what to expect this being the first time a World Snooker event is played in Hong Kong since Barry Hearn took command of World Snooker in 2010 bringing the sport to a global level.
Naturally, the event we're seeing this year requires some minor changes to establish on the calendar. I do not mean it needs Ranking status (I'm not sure whether the arena can hold a 64-men event and to make that "standard World Snooker tournament" for 128 players with pre-qualifiers in England would be a waste of arena), but even though we have huge classics in every match in an 8-men event, to make it annual it'd better have at least 16 players - Ding Junhui, Stuart Bingham, Ali Carter, Mark Williams and Liang Wenbo are some of the names we missed in Hong Kong this year. I also see no reason why such a short event couldn't have a Final longer than best of 11 (even though I understand it's like this this year because there'll also be exhibition with some legends on Sunday as well as the Final itself).
I know that the fact there's only 7 matches and that it's part of a celebrating event in Hong Kong has helped ticket sales, but considering viewing figures we get there and how fast tickets were sold I'm sure that having a longer event would be no problem. As for the issue that the only broadcaster is local's NowTV, that's not a problem: I'm sure Eurosport will coverage it if it happens again next year and principally if it becomes an established main tour event.
You can also give Hong Kong some event like the World Grand Prix or the Players Championship (there are far too many Snooker tournaments in England in my opinion), but I rather the idea of making it an original championship in the first half of the season.
There's no doubt Hong Kong is willing to be an annual spot on the calendar, it's up to World Snooker from here.
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