{"id":929831,"date":"2026-05-01T02:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/929831\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T02:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:54:23","slug":"broadcaster-forced-to-apologise-as-world-snooker-championship-coverage-unexpectedly-stopped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/929831\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadcaster forced to apologise as World Snooker Championship coverage unexpectedly stopped"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coverage of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible was stopped after an unexpected power outage at the Sheffield venue on Thursday night. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The BBC, one of the broadcasters showing the tournament, was forced to cut its live feed from the theatre during Mark Allen and Chinese Wu Yize’s semi-final clash. <\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Allen was 31-0 up in the third frame when the picture suddenly cut outCredit: Getty<\/p>\n

Fans lost the pictures at 7:51pm and didn’t get it back for 12 minutes, by which time Allen had wrapped up the third frame to get off the mark in the match.<\/p>\n

Fans watching the coverage on BBC Two were greeted with a re-run of BBC programme Wild Isles while the problem was being rectified.<\/p>\n

Coverage eventually came back on BBC iPlayer and TNT, though BBC Two viewers had to wait a bit longer before their screens flickered back to life.<\/p>\n

While it was not an issue at the end of the BBC or TNT Sports, presenter Hazel Irvine issued an apology to frustrated viewers.<\/p>\n

READ MORE ON SNOOKER<\/p>\n

“Welcome back to Sheffield and our apologies for the interruption to our evening at the Crucible in this second semi-final,” she said. “We had a rather unexpected power issue. Nothing to do with not feeding the meter I assure you.”<\/p>\n

She added: “So we lost power but Mark Allen did not. He took frame three to get his semi-final campaign under way.”<\/p>\n

Irvine added that the players had retired for their interval break, saying: \u201cThere was a big crash bang wallop in there and that led to the power surge which we think has led to the power going off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Davis, a six-time champion who is working as a pundit for the BBC, said: \u201cIt was obvious in the room here, when the screens went blank at home, that something had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cLights went off. The cameras stopped filming players.<\/p>\n

\u201cMark Allen was aware something weird had happened and how good a performance to keep his standard up without getting confused by what was going on.<\/p>\n

\"General<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Fans were deprived of their coverage for approximately 12 minutesCredit: Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were people going, \u2018what\u2019s going on, where are we with it?\u2019 Nobody knew what to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen amazingly, it happened again. We heard it in the last frame. And he still kept his composure. That is somebody who is on point at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

2026 World Championship<\/p>\n

We’re in the business end of the Crucible competition with just four names in with a chance of winning this year with the final commencing on Sunday and continuing into Monday. <\/p>\n

The other semi-final sees 2005 winner Shaun Murphy take on four-time world champion John Higgins with Murphy arguably in the better form of the two<\/a> having got past 2025 champion Zhao Xintong<\/a> in the last round.<\/p>\n

Higgins, whose most recent World Championship came in 2011, has enjoyed wins against Neil Robertson, Ali Carter and seven-time champ Ronnie O’Sullivan at the Crucible. <\/p>\n

The 13-12 win over O’Sullivan went to a decisive frame in what was described as one of the most high quality frames ever seen at the World Snooker Championship<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"Shaun<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Murphy has only won the World Championship onceCredit: Getty\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

At fifth in the world, Higgins is the highest ranked player left in the tournamentCredit: Getty<\/p>\n

And O’Sullivan<\/a>, who was forced to wait for a record-breaking eighth world title has back Higgins to go all the way. <\/p>\n

“John played well and deserved his win,” O’Sullivan said immediately after his second round defeat to Higgins<\/a>. <\/p>\n

“He’s got a chance of winning the championship if he keeps playing like he did in that session.<\/p>\n

“I went into the pack and left myself a difficult red in that final frame, but I probably wasn’t the best player over the match anyway.<\/p>\n

“I feel like I am enjoying my game and in a better place this month than I have been for a few years but I just missed too many key balls.<\/p>\n

Read More on talkSPORT<\/p>\n

“There was pressure out there and I got a big tight and maybe that was because I haven’t won a tournament in two and a half years or competed in those types of matches for a while.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a bit of new territory for me and I just have to be grateful for what I’ve got and build on it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coverage of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible was stopped after an unexpected power outage at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8817],"tags":[192,748,15201,53369,393,4884,221419,23767,1620,10380,22043,39887,16,15,255561],"class_list":["post-929831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sheffield","tag-bbc","tag-britain","tag-crucible","tag-crucible-theatre","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-hazel-irvine","tag-mark-allen","tag-sheffield","tag-snooker","tag-snooker-news","tag-tnt-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wu-yize"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929831","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=929831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}