The World Snooker Championship at the Crucible was for years one of the highlights of the British sporting calendar.
The legendary “Black Ball Final” between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor in 1985 drew 18 million viewers after midnight, a record that still stands.
But the historic venue is under threat after a player backlash over facilities and repeated, so far unheeded, requests from snooker authorities for the theatre to be modernised.
Pressure is growing from the Middle and Far East to make the World Snooker Championship a truly global event – which would mean abandoning the theatre, host since 1977. Replacements in China and Saudi Arabia are already being mooted.
The current contract will keep the tournament in Sheffield until 2027, and talks are under way to extend, but without obvious progress.
Sources involved in negotiations say the relationship between the sport and local authorities is “really healthy and really strong”, although the battle lines have been drawn in public.
“The facilities where the Crucible is are no longer fit for purpose, that’s the key issue,” Matchroom Sport president Barry Hearn told the BBC. He has been running snooker venues since the 1970s, and Matchroom ultimately owns the professional snooker tour.
“The Crucible’s been a big part of my life and a big part of snooker’s life. But it has to move with the times and someone, whether it’s government or Sheffield, have to come up with a way of showing us that they’re going to treat us with respect and give us the type of facilities we require.
“It’s as simple as that. It’s not complicated.”
‘It smells really bad’
Ronnie O’Sullivan has been one of Sheffield’s more vocal critics (Photo: Getty)
It is not the first time Hearn has criticised the Crucible, which has just 980 seats.
“I don’t like the Crucible,” Ronnie O’Sullivan said last year, adding it would be a “wise decision” to take the Worlds elsewhere.
Iranian snooker player Hossein Vafaei complained that the venue “smells really bad” and was becoming dated.
“Everything’s so bad – if you ask me if I want to come back here, I would tell you no way,” Vafaei said.
“Forget the history, you want to go somewhere really nice as a player. You walk round the Crucible and it smells really bad.
“You go to other countries, and everything is shiny. But here it’s completely different.”
Sacrilege and madness
They do not speak for the entire player body: Shaun Murphy called it “almost sacrilege for a professional snooker player to be so openly critical of our home”.
TNT Sports pundit Alan McManus told The i Paper it would be “madness” to move away from Sheffield.
”I loved every part of it,” he said.
“I was one of those old-school players where I am not remotely interested in the fixtures and fittings or whether the dressing room is nice, or is there a nice players room, or are there nice curtains on the wall? I couldn’t give a monkey’s about all that.
“There’s a charm about the Crucible that is all part of it. It’s the only tournament where every player, when they walk in there to play over the next few days, will be feeling really, really nervous.”
Sheffield is desperate to keep the Worlds
But probably not as nervous as those for whom the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield is iconic – and valuable.
“As someone who was born and raised in Sheffield, snooker has been a part of my life, for all of my life,” Oliver Coppard, Mayor of South Yorkshire, told The i Paper.
“I’m absolutely determined to make sure that South Yorkshire and Sheffield remains the home of snooker going forward.
“It’s a fundamental part of our identity, our heritage, and will be a fundamental part of our future.”
Local representatives are desperate to keep snooker in its ‘home’ (Photo: PA)
His views were echoed by the city’s Members of Parliament when contacted by The i Paper.
Gill Furness, MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, called Sheffield “the undisputed home of snooker” and insisted “moving the World Championship from the Crucible would be bad for snooker and bad for Sheffield”.
Abtisam Mohamed, in whose constituency the tournament is held, said: “People have been coming to Sheffield for almost 50 years for the snooker, and I hope they will be returning for much longer.
“The Championship not only puts our thriving sports community on the map, it showcases our wonderful theatres, our world-class universities, and the cultural and social diversity at the heart of Sheffield.”
Saudi events already popular with players
But it is those very benefits that make the event so threatened. There are plenty of political figures who would like to say the same of their city or country, not least those in Saudi Arabia who have already made a significant land grab within snooker.
“Snooker historically hasn’t been a big sport in Saudi Arabia,” a well-placed source in snooker with knowledge of the deals done in Saudi Arabia tells The i Paper.
“But there is an interest in growing it following the link via Matchroom and their boxing business.
“The format also generally lends itself well to streaming in terms of filling hours on broadcast.”
Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of the Kingdom’s General Entertainment Authority, had barely even heard of snooker before establishing two World Snooker Tour events in the country, both of which were inaugurated last year.
But Rakan Al-Harthy, the founder and chief executive of Newcastle United shirt sponsor Sela, is a big snooker fan and is believed to have played an influential role in pushing Al-Sheikh to establish the events, the Saudi Arabia Masters and the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship.
“It’s all about timing. If you’re in the right place, and the right time, when a decision-maker is engaged, you might do a deal within 10 minutes, verbally,” another source tells The i Paper.
“And once it’s done verbally, it’s kind of done, even though the contract process can drag out and take time.
“That personal relationship, showing up and being there, face to face is usually quite important.”
And that probably explains why O’Sullivan spent at least some of his time preparing for this World Championship by visiting Riyadh.
The seven-time world champion last year launched an academy in his name in the Saudi capital and visited earlier this month, at which point he was still on the fence about going to Sheffield at all. But he made two 147 breaks in practice while he was in Saudi Arabia, and seemed to rediscover a little of the old magic in the state-of-the-art surroundings.
It is understood that Al-Sheikh relishes the more relaxed atmosphere of the non-ranking tournament where they introduced the “gold ball” to facilitate a 167 maximum break last year, but it seems unlikely that he would say no to the biggest tournament in snooker, if offered.
“I think Saudi Arabia would be great. They’ve got the resources and would do it great,” O’Sullivan said last year.
But they are yet to be convinced that hosting a World Snooker Championship is within their remit.
If not Saudi, then China?
“It is a long-term play for them to commit to snooker but that [the Worlds] would be a different level,” a source says.
“In China in theory, you could see it more because they’re such big snooker fans.”
O’Sullivan has been singing the praises of what a Worlds in China would look like: courtesy cars, great food, posh hotels, “astronomical” paydays. And for a number of players, it would be those benefits that would swing the pendulum away from Sheffield.
“At some UK tournaments, players have criticised the facilities and the treatment of the players, compared to China,” the source adds.
“The experience in Saudi Arabia has been similar in a positive way. So the players tend to view it through that lens and how the sport can keep growing.”
McManus is just one of a number of traditionalists who see beyond that.
“If it moved to somewhere, let’s say Asia, or the Middle East or something, I don’t even think I would watch it, because it wouldn’t be the World Championship for me,” he says.