A new snooker season starts tomorrow with the sport in its worst commercial position since becoming mainstream TV entertainment more than 30 years ago. The BBC's seminal decision to cover the 1978 World Championship inspired a tournament circuit from which players were able to earn fortunes but this campaign, which begins with the Shanghai Masters, will feature a lack of sponsors, fewer ranking events and lower prize money.
Only six ranking events (plus the Masters) will take place compared with last season's eight, while prize money has fallen by £435,500 to £3,063,600. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association have secured a title sponsor for only one of the four events televised under its contract with the BBC.
Betfred is in the second year of its £2.6m, four-year deal for the World Championship but there is no sponsor for next month's Grand Prix, December's UK Championship or January's Masters, at Wembley. The Welsh Open, which is covered by BBC Wales, the Shanghai Masters and the China Open complete the ranking circuit. Funding issues have led to the disappearance of the Northern Ireland Trophy and the Bahrain Open.
Players are growing increasingly restive over the large gaps between substantial tournaments and the low level of prize money. Only 43 of the 96 players on the professional circuit earned more than £27,000 from it last season.
Last April, the WPBSA chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, outlined a series of planned minor ranking events with scaled-down prize money and ranking point tariffs. Instead, the WPBSA have merely announced six non-ranking events in low-key venues in Britain with aggregate prize money of £90,000. Only 40 of the WPBSA's 96 players entered the first tournament. The world No8, Mark Selby, recently blogged: "I remember Sir Rodney Walker talking to me a while back. He had all these ideas and plans for the future and was really positive but none of them have come to fruition."
Selby is among those who have played exhibitions to packed houses on the continent. "The last couple I've done have been in Germany and the amount of people who came to watch was fantastic. Imagine what it would be like if we had even a minor ranking tournament there. And not just in Germany. Countries like Poland and the Czech Republic are snooker mad. It would certainly make more sense to tap into Europe than have another tournament somewhere like Bahrain."
Last November's Bahrain Open cost the WPBSA £250,000 in prize money and about the same in staging and other costs. The largest attendance was 150. One session started with no spectators at all.
In a recent BBC Radio 5 Live broadcast, The State of Snooker, Steve Davis raised the inherent conflict of interest between the WPBSA as governing body and their wholly owned commercial subsidiary, World Snooker, "promoting events and not allowing outside promoters to breathe".
In theory, the WPBSA also remain the players' trade union, their original purpose, but this function may soon be taken over by the Snooker Players' Association chiefly through the efforts of John Higgins, the world champion, and his manager, Pat Mooney.
"Just over 100 registrations have been received, including 35 of the top 64," says Mooney, who emphasises that evolution is preferred to revolution and that a meeting with WPBSA is desired.
The SPA's first objective would be the co-ordination of a schedule incorporating independently promoted events with ranking points awarded on a scale appropriate to prize funds and other conditions – a recognisable variant of the scheme outlined by Walker last April.
Various independents are breaking new ground for tournaments. For instance, the World Series co-promoted by Mooney and Higgins staged events last season in Jersey, Poland, Russia and Portugal, and before Christmas will stage them in Prague, Warsaw and Jeddah. Yet the WPBSA do not carry information about any tournaments other than their own on worldsnooker.com. Unless the elite game flourishes in the form of more tournaments and more stories worth reporting, snooker's profile could swirl into a vortex of decline.
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