2nd D-Day for Snooker

[ADR147]

Barry Hearn?

correct - not gentle with his words is he!

[PhoebeDisco]

"The BBC has also given this game a huge kick in the butt with them basically telling The WPBSA when the televised events should start and finish, I am sure it should be the other way round, imagine the phone call from The BBC to Bernie Eccleston - BBC - Hi Bernie, any chance you start the Australian Grand Prix to 11pm local time so it can be shown at midday in the UK ? Bernie - Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Boooooooooooooo........................."

Well, Ferret - this almost already happens - the Australian GP starts at a time where it is more convenient for British and European audiences (6am, rather than the 3am one that would have it starting at the best time for Australian audiences, and indeed the race itself) not to mention the Singaporean race being a night race so that it fits in better for European TV.

"The recommended proposal is simple:-

1. A new company would be set up to acquire World Snooker Limited for £1.
2. This company would have issued share capital of £500,000 (necessary to cover future losses while we build).
3. The shares in the new company would be allocated 51% to Matchroom Sport, a company controlled by me, 24% to other commercial partners and 25% to the Players who are voting members of the WPBSA at the time of acceptance of this proposal.
4. The Players 25% would be allocated on the basis of one point for each voting member, an additional point for players for each ranking event win or a Masters victory and a further additional point for any World Championship win i.e. two points."

A majority interest straight to one promoter, and the manager of some, but not all of the top professionals? Considering the way that Hearn has run Leyton Orient for his professional interests, way over that of the sporting interests of the club, I'd be very vary of effectively handing a majority share of the sports business to him (or in fact any single promoter).

[goldengirl]

Only had a quick look again - no time - but the entry fees quoted for some of the events - are these in place of the membership fee the players have to pay before the start of the season or in addition? Does anyone know?
I think when Jamie was on MT is was something like £2000 membership but did hear it had gone up to £3000 - but not certain.
I agree with Healthcare etc. being scrapped - the more we can get to the position of a fair salary being paid for a decent job instead of unknown & unpalnned expenses the better.

[ferret]

The other posts from this thread have been moved to - http://www.thesnookerforum.com/board...ad.php?t=23868

[Odrl]

Now that I've got a bit of time, I'd like to comment on some of the things in Hearn's plan...

The first important thing he talks about is how players owning commercial rights doesn't work. And I completely agree. In the current system, World Snooker is responsible for organizing and promoting events. WS is run by whoever the players elect, which ultimately means that it's the players who are responsible for organizing events for themselves to play in. These are people who have dedicated their lives to playing snooker, so what qualifications do they have to make decisions that affect the business side of the game? And some of them are still teenagers...

Hearn makes comparisons with sports like F1, like that would be a great example to follow... It may be a step forward, but then you get problems like the ones winmark is talking about. Is it really a good idea to have a governing body that only takes care of the professional game? And what is even worse, it's the current professionals' decision how the promotion and relegation system works. That's not how sports should be organized. And by having a British chairman and four British directors on the board, WS has absolutely no legitimacy as the official international governing body of snooker.

In my opinion, if you're going to organize what you call the "World Championship", you should be an international body. And that's achieved by having people form associations wherever snooker is played, first locally, then regionally and nationally. And finally an international governing body is formed, by having members from every national body, kind of like amateur snooker is currently organized. And then you have tournaments organized by people with local business connections wherever there is interest, not like it is now when one tournament is moved around the UK without a traditional home. Great examples of how (and by whom) tournaments should be organized are the China Open and the Shanghai Masters, in my opinion.

The role of the governing body should then be to decide what criteria tournaments should meet to be awarded ranking status, maintaining ranking lists, handling disciplinary matters, deciding upon ways of promotion and relegation between amateur and professional tours, and things like that.

But it is obviously a waste of my time to write all of this, because it would be hard to change how snooker is run after all this time. And it can't really be international when such a large percentage of amateur and professional players are British.

So let's move on to what is, in my opinion, the worst part of this proposal - the cancellation of the Grand Prix... I say "cancellation", because that's effectively what it is. Grand Prix was one of the six proper ranking events, so we are now left with five, plus an event that awards ranking points for a best-of-five format, which is something that should never happen! People always say that these new formats are not here to replace the traditional events, but that's exactly what is happening here. We are getting a short format tournament in place of what was arguably the fourth most prestigious tournament on the calendar. And what is it really going to achieve? The random draw in the early rounds will be happening "under the radar", and by the time it hits the TV stages, it will be exactly the same as it currently is, only less of it.

Hopefully Barry Hearn and the people who are in a position to advise him will realize, from the negative feedback that this has already got on this forum for example, and from the negative feedback that it's bound to get when it happens, that this was a bad idea and should be reconsidered. I don't easily except change, but what I would do with the draw is this: I would have every player start in the same round, but I would let the first seed choose his 1st round opponent. It would be up to the player if he chose someone like O'Sullivan or someone like Ian Preece. I would just follow the rankings and have players pick whichever opponent they like (obviously skipping the players that were already chosen by higher ranked player). It would also remove the controversy of having ranking points awarded for a random draw event, because players would now benefit from being high in the rankings by having an earlier choice.

Moving on, there is the event in Germany that is also supposed to be a ranking event... I am skeptical about this one, because the dates suggest that it's only a four-day event. I don't know why that is, but it can't be anything positive. To run a ranking event in four days, you would either only play it at the venue from the last16 onwards, or have preposterously short matches again. If it's a choice between these two, I'd rather have the former.

Then there is the "Shoot Out" tournament... Little to do with snooker. The concept of having a one-frame knockout competition for 64 players is not that bad an idea, as long as it doesn't replace any traditional events, or reward ranking points. And to be fair, it doesn't. The problem is that it's not played under snooker rules. If you take a slow-paced game and play it under a shot-clock and a frame time limit, what you're doing is emphasizing its weaknesses rather than its strengths. It's a shame really, because there could have been a nice contrast between what snooker is really about and all the show that is planned to go along with this event.

Now, let's talk about the PTC... In my opinion, this is by far the most positive proposal in this document. Especially the part about eight tournaments in Europe. With the growing TV figures, there is an opportunity to stage "official" tournaments that count towards the rankings, and thus guarantee the top players' participation. But the interest may be slightly misleading. The overall numbers of potential viewers may be pretty big, but they are scattered all across Europe, and it may be hard to find places where large groups of fans are concentrated. The World Series event in Prague was a good example of the problems organizers will face. And it's all being organized from Britain again, which means by people who have questionable knowledge of the environment they are trying to work in.

Still, this can only be good in the long-term. These event may have trouble in gaining prestige at first, but the ones that do succeed can then be developed into proper ranking events. But one thing that is crucial here, is that these events are played in front of spectators, and televised, at least locally, if not across Europe. And if that can't be achieved, there should at least be streaming available. There is one thing that worries me though... If these events are supposed to be played in three days, and there are potentially 96 players entering, how are you going to squeeze six rounds or so into three days? I don't need to tell you again what I think of short matches...

The four events to be staged in the UK are somewhat less important in this scheme, but I still think it's a waste of time if they are played at the academy. There is no point in having events if there is no atmosphere and people can't go and see them live. It may be convenient financially and organizationally, but hopefully in time, these events can move to different parts of the UK. It's also a shame that no additional events are planned in Asia, where there is clearly interest to support more than the current two events.

Then there is the finale to this whole system of tournaments, and that promises to be a great event in its own right. It should help fill a bit of the void that is left with the cancellation of the Grand Prix.

About the Q School... I think this is a great idea. As Hearn says, it's much more convenient for players to make one trip and try their luck, rather than having to stay in the UK for months. Of course 14 days is not a lot of time, so it could happen that a good player was prevented from playing in these event, either through injury, or other personal issues. We have to remember that these players are amateurs after all. But I still think it's a fairly good system. Will the tour cards be given to players who are the best over four events, or will each event stand on its own? If it's the latter, it would be even more fair if one of the events was held in China. Of the current 96 Main Tour professionals, just short of 20% were born closer to Beijing than Sheffield, and two out of seven (28%) big MT tournament are held in China. Make that three out of eight if you also count the Jiangsu Classic. Those percentages suggest that Asia would be entitled to one of these four events.

And finally, let's discuss the changes to the ranking system... I have always believed that the current ranking system is the fairest system available to snooker at this point in time. A lot of people suggest that we should only take a number of the most recent tournaments into account, and the rankings should be updated after every tournament. I'm not a fan of this myself. Let's say there is a player who reaches the final of the World Championship, and then mostly the 2nd round for a number of tournaments after that. He is ranked somewhere around 11th or 12th. He reaches the semi-final of the next WC, which is a better result than his ranking suggests, but his ranking actually goes down because the previous WC results are no longer relevant. It would be even tougher for people to follow, if a good result wouldn't necessarily mean going up in the rankings.

Now, you might say that the current system is even worse in this respect, because it cuts off an entire season. That's true of course, but the fact that it doesn't apply immediately makes it less bad. The provisional rankings on the other hand are updated after every tournament, and they make sense because the players with the best results get the most points. They change gradually throughout the season, so there are no sudden changes to confuse people.

As for the same match-ups in every event, statistically they are already unlikely to happen under the current system, so it's more to do with there being so few tournaments that the luck can't even itself out. And this is not a particularly bad thing in my opinion. You need some players meeting each other a lot, because that builds up rivalries and grudges.

And then there is also the problem of having qualifiers for one event played before the TV stages of another, which is something that happens in Hearn's calendar as well. It's not a big deal, but if you want more current rankings, this can't be happening.

One thing that I like about all of this is the general slogan that "the only thing that matters is ability", which is something I fully agree with. Hopefully this will be the general policy from now on, and not just words. After all, the first decision of this board was to give Jimmy White the Masters wildcard, which is exactly the opposite of what they are saying here. If I was a player, I would absolutely accept this proposal. As a fan though, I just hope that all of these new tournaments are just the stepping stone to more of the kind of snooker we have now.

So there... I realize that the discussion on this has already dried up a bit, but I just wanted to have my say.