{"id":49930,"date":"2025-04-25T17:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T17:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49930\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T17:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T17:27:08","slug":"sheffields-battle-to-keep-snooker-out-of-saudi-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49930\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheffield’s battle to keep snooker out of Saudi hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Snooker Championship<\/a> at the Crucible was for years one of the highlights of the British sporting calendar.<\/p>\n

The legendary \u201cBlack Ball Final\u201d between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor in 1985 drew 18 million viewers after midnight, a record that still stands.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Pressure is growing from the Middle and Far East to make the World Snooker Championship a truly global event \u2013 which would mean abandoning the theatre, host since 1977. Replacements in China and Saudi Arabia are already being mooted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The current contract will keep the tournament in Sheffield until 2027, and talks are under way to extend, but without obvious progress. <\/p>\n

Sources involved in negotiations say the relationship between the sport and local authorities is \u201creally healthy and really strong\u201d, although the battle lines have been drawn in public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facilities where the Crucible is are no longer fit for purpose, that\u2019s the key issue,\u201d Matchroom Sport president Barry Hearn<\/a> told the BBC. He has been running snooker venues since the 1970s, and Matchroom ultimately owns the professional snooker tour. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Crucible\u2019s been a big part of my life and a big part of snooker\u2019s life. But it has to move with the times and someone, whether it\u2019s government or Sheffield, have to come up with a way of showing us that they\u2019re going to treat us with respect and give us the type of facilities we require.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that. It\u2019s not complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It smells really bad\u2019\"SHEFFIELD,Ronnie O\u2019Sullivan has been one of Sheffield\u2019s more vocal critics (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

It is not the first time Hearn has criticised the Crucible, which has just 980 seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the Crucible,\u201d Ronnie O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> said last year, adding it would be a \u201cwise decision\u201d to take the Worlds elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Iranian snooker player Hossein Vafaei complained that the venue \u201csmells really bad\u201d and was becoming dated.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything\u2019s so bad \u2013 if you ask me if I want to come back here, I would tell you no way,\u201d Vafaei said.<\/p>\n

\u201cForget the history, you want to go somewhere really nice as a player. You walk round the Crucible and it smells really bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go to other countries, and everything is shiny. But here it\u2019s completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacrilege and madness<\/p>\n

They do not speak for the entire player body: Shaun Murphy called it \u201calmost sacrilege for a professional snooker player to be so openly critical of our home\u201d.<\/p>\n

TNT Sports pundit Alan McManus told The i Paper it would be \u201cmadness\u201d to move away from Sheffield.<\/p>\n

\u201dI loved every part of it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019t give a monkey\u2019s about all that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a charm about the Crucible that is all part of it. It\u2019s the only tournament where every player, when they walk in there to play over the next few days, will be feeling really, really nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheffield is desperate to keep the Worlds<\/p>\n

But probably not as nervous as those for whom the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield is iconic \u2013 and valuable.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who was born and raised in Sheffield, snooker has been a part of my life, for all of my life,\u201d Oliver Coppard, Mayor of South Yorkshire, told The i Paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m absolutely determined to make sure that South Yorkshire and Sheffield remains the home of snooker going forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fundamental part of our identity, our heritage, and will be a fundamental part of our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ALocal representatives are desperate to keep snooker in its \u2018home\u2019 (Photo: PA)<\/p>\n

His views were echoed by the city\u2019s Members of Parliament when contacted by The i Paper. <\/p>\n

Gill Furness, MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, called Sheffield \u201cthe undisputed home of snooker\u201d and insisted \u201cmoving the World Championship from the Crucible would be bad for snooker and bad for Sheffield\u201d.<\/p>\n

Abtisam Mohamed, in whose constituency the tournament is held, said: \u201cPeople have been coming to Sheffield for almost 50 years for the snooker, and I hope they will be returning for much longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saudi events already popular with players<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSnooker historically hasn\u2019t been a big sport in Saudi Arabia,\u201d a well-placed source in snooker with knowledge of the deals done in Saudi Arabia tells The i Paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is an interest in growing it following the link via Matchroom and their boxing business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe format also generally lends itself well to streaming in terms of filling hours on broadcast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of the Kingdom\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about timing. If you\u2019re in the right place, and the right time, when a decision-maker is engaged, you might do a deal within 10 minutes, verbally,\u201d another source tells The i Paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd once it\u2019s done verbally, it\u2019s kind of done, even though the contract process can drag out and take time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat personal relationship, showing up and being there, face to face is usually quite important.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that probably explains why O\u2019Sullivan spent at least some of his time preparing for this World Championship by visiting Riyadh. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It is understood that Al-Sheikh relishes the more relaxed atmosphere of the non-ranking tournament where they introduced the \u201cgold ball\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Saudi Arabia would be great. They\u2019ve got the resources and would do it great,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan said last year.<\/p>\n

But they are yet to be convinced that hosting a World Snooker Championship is within their remit.<\/p>\n

If not Saudi, then China?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a long-term play for them to commit to snooker but that [the Worlds] would be a different level,\u201d a source says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn China in theory, you could see it more because they\u2019re such big snooker fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan has been singing the praises of what a Worlds in China would look like: courtesy cars, great food, posh hotels, \u201castronomical\u201d paydays. And for a number of players, it would be those benefits that would swing the pendulum away from Sheffield.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some UK tournaments, players have criticised the facilities and the treatment of the players, compared to China,\u201d the source adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

McManus is just one of a number of traditionalists who see beyond that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it moved to somewhere, let\u2019s say Asia, or the Middle East or something, I don\u2019t even think I would watch it, because it wouldn\u2019t be the World Championship for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Snooker Championship at the Crucible was for years one of the highlights of the British sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,18515,6506,1620,26899,16,15,18411],"class_list":{"0":"post-49930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-ronnie-osullivan","12":"tag-saudi-arabia","13":"tag-sheffield","14":"tag-sports-interview","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-world-snooker-championship"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114399782338645064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}