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Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby RunningSide

Pretty sure all top sports are paid similar to snooker, top 10% make good money, probably 25% make a living and the rest hope for a good run once a season.Think Barry Hearn said, it's a game for winners,the incentive to play better and win.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby HappyCamper

RunningSide wrote:Pretty sure all top sports are paid similar to snooker, top 10% make good money, probably 25% make a living and the rest hope for a good run once a season.Think Barry Hearn said, it's a game for winners,the incentive to play better and win.


looking at percentage numbers would be highly misleading.

even an average tennis player ranked around 100-200 in the world is making a six figure sum just from winnings. the equivalent in snooker would be lucky to have 10 grand.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby lhpirnie

SnookerEd25 wrote:TBF, Hearn has a calculator where his heart should be. :sad:

Hearn has an ego. If, when people write up snooker history in 20 years from now, they say that snooker was best during the Hearn era, he will be well satisfied with that.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dragonfly

Very average or even downright terrible footballers make plenty of money. But I guess that's not a fair comparison as there's so much money in football it's obscene.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Granite

Snooker is a workman like sport where money matters, it's not tennis where you can be ranked in the hundreds and still become a millionaire simply by playing.

The sooner people realize this the better.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Cloud Strife

I can see where Maguire is coming from tbh.

The sport certainly doesn’t seem as vibrant as it did a few years ago when Hearn first took over.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

Cloud Strife wrote:I can see where Maguire is coming from tbh.

The sport certainly doesn’t seem as vibrant as it did a few years ago when Hearn first took over.

Pssst.

That was way more than a few years ago!

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dannyboy

There seems to be three different threads on this subject, but this would be my proposal to get the players "up for it" again.

Remember players a few years ago were saying, that there were too many tournaments! I will do this across two posts...

As I said elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be any let-up in fan interest. TV ratings appear stable, certainly in Europe and crowds at events look like they're doing well. That said, there needs to be a minor rebalancing between invitational events for those at the top end and equalising earning opportunities at the bottom end. The principle of meritocracy should still remain however, so I wouldn't propose a vast shift in prize money just for turning up.

Without stating the obvious, there needs to be a commercial focus on these events - lets be clear, no one is interested in Andy Hicks v David Grace in a bottom 64 only tournament.

The sport needs to do more to encourage younger players into the sport. Without looking too much into the detail of individual ages, if I look at the current ranking list, there are very few players in the top 32 that were not on the tour 4-5 years ago. That isn't good enough and probably a victim of the flat seeded 128 structure. What chance has player 128 got against player 1 over Bo11 in the UK Championship. Invitational wildcards should be removed and players earn their way there.

The calendar also needs an overhaul. Again, players need opportunity to earn, but also the ability for those at the top end to pick and choose which events they travel to.

Events should be spaced out - some major events in recent years in the same territory have been too bunched together, which doesn't allow for probably the most committed of snooker fan to follow religiously. There also needs to be a purpose and identity to such events - not meaningless snooker played over the same format.

The qualifying structure and timings also don't promote a balanced calendar. Get into 6-8 table venues and get the qualifiers done asap in a handful of days per tournament. People don't care! If there's streaming earning potential, get many cameras into the venue and stream all of them and get them online. The earnings for WST will be minimal.

Get Q School done quickly too - get it done. Players earning nothing cannot keep shelling out for huge hotel bills. Perhaps use the first 6 days playing the first 2 rounds of 3 events and then the last 3 days playing off from the L16 onwards down to a final. Points accumulated would decide final tour cards. There should also be a European Q School played in Germany.

The tour card system seems to work well and allows players for a number of countries to get on tour. But players need to use them and they should be removed after 1 year if they don't play a minimum number of events.

This could go one of two ways. It all depends on China. I find it hard to see how the full "China Tour" will return in full next season, however the local governments will want to get back to normal asap for many political and economic reasons. I suspect some tournaments will return next season which will bump up the prize money somewhat automatically. Clearly the match fixing situation is a huge problem, but the sport shouldn't stop because of these individuals.

Remember prize money this season is around £11M across 21 senior tournaments. When Rodney Walker left, it was £3.5M across 6 tournaments. Lets not pretend that things are rosey, but also things are as desperate as they were before.

If the Chinese competitions don't return, WST need to use it's European fanbase to encourage more playing opportunities. Get European events back on the calendar - Covid is not an issue any more. It is shocking that there are is only snooker in 3 European countries outside the UK. Why!?

Snooker isn't far away from getting back to it's peak of pre-Covid. How this is implemented, is going to be difficult. For me, Steve Dawson is failing as WST Chairman and should be replaced. He has been fairly anonymous and rarely gives interviews. It hasn't gone unnoticed for me that the stagnation came about as soon as Barry Hearn retired. It isn't necessarily for Jason Ferguson to be getting involved in the commercial aspects, but he should forget about the vanity project of snooker in the Olympics and get back to basis of the Main Tour.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Prop

Dannyboy wrote:There seems to be three different threads on this subject, but this would be my proposal to get the players "up for it" again.

Remember players a few years ago were saying, that there were too many tournaments! I will do this across two posts...

As I said elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be any let-up in fan interest. TV ratings appear stable, certainly in Europe and crowds at events look like they're doing well. That said, there needs to be a minor rebalancing between invitational events for those at the top end and equalising earning opportunities at the bottom end. The principle of meritocracy should still remain however, so I wouldn't propose a vast shift in prize money just for turning up.

Without stating the obvious, there needs to be a commercial focus on these events - lets be clear, no one is interested in Andy Hicks v David Grace in a bottom 64 only tournament.

The sport needs to do more to encourage younger players into the sport. Without looking too much into the detail of individual ages, if I look at the current ranking list, there are very few players in the top 32 that were not on the tour 4-5 years ago. That isn't good enough and probably a victim of the flat seeded 128 structure. What chance has player 128 got against player 1 over Bo11 in the UK Championship. Invitational wildcards should be removed and players earn their way there.

The calendar also needs an overhaul. Again, players need opportunity to earn, but also the ability for those at the top end to pick and choose which events they travel to.

Events should be spaced out - some major events in recent years in the same territory have been too bunched together, which doesn't allow for probably the most committed of snooker fan to follow religiously. There also needs to be a purpose and identity to such events - not meaningless snooker played over the same format.

The qualifying structure and timings also don't promote a balanced calendar. Get into 6-8 table venues and get the qualifiers done asap in a handful of days per tournament. People don't care! If there's streaming earning potential, get many cameras into the venue and stream all of them and get them online. The earnings for WST will be minimal.

Get Q School done quickly too - get it done. Players earning nothing cannot keep shelling out for huge hotel bills. Perhaps use the first 6 days playing the first 2 rounds of 3 events and then the last 3 days playing off from the L16 onwards down to a final. Points accumulated would decide final tour cards. There should also be a European Q School played in Germany.

The tour card system seems to work well and allows players for a number of countries to get on tour. But players need to use them and they should be removed after 1 year if they don't play a minimum number of events.

This could go one of two ways. It all depends on China. I find it hard to see how the full "China Tour" will return in full next season, however the local governments will want to get back to normal asap for many political and economic reasons. I suspect some tournaments will return next season which will bump up the prize money somewhat automatically. Clearly the match fixing situation is a huge problem, but the sport shouldn't stop because of these individuals.

Remember prize money this season is around £11M across 21 senior tournaments. When Rodney Walker left, it was £3.5M across 6 tournaments. Lets not pretend that things are rosey, but also things are as desperate as they were before.

If the Chinese competitions don't return, WST need to use it's European fanbase to encourage more playing opportunities. Get European events back on the calendar - Covid is not an issue any more. It is shocking that there are is only snooker in 3 European countries outside the UK. Why!?

Snooker isn't far away from getting back to it's peak of pre-Covid. How this is implemented, is going to be difficult. For me, Steve Dawson is failing as WST Chairman and should be replaced. He has been fairly anonymous and rarely gives interviews. It hasn't gone unnoticed for me that the stagnation came about as soon as Barry Hearn retired. It isn't necessarily for Jason Ferguson to be getting involved in the commercial aspects, but he should forget about the vanity project of snooker in the Olympics and get back to basis of the Main Tour.


A good read :hatoff:

Re Hearn, for everything he did there was always one thing that nagged me - he made things very black and white. Like you mention with the no1 v no128 situation, any counter from Hearn to its criticism would be something like “Well if you’re good enough, you’re good enough”.

You could argue he had something of a point, but it got lost in the contrived reality of a situation where players were onto a hiding before they’d got their cue out.

There should be some degree of reward for being in the top 16. But players at the other end of the scale shouldn’t be punished simply because they’re there.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dannyboy

Second part of my post above. The logistics involved and how it would be implemented...

The current tour is worth £11M - the below is a total prize fund of £15M, which with the re-inclusion of Chinese events, this should be achiveable by 2025.

Events:
4 x Major Ranking Events: World Championship (16 direct to finals, 32 in finals, 128 in qualifying) - over £875,000, UK Championship (16D, 32F, 128Q), China Open (64F, 12 heldover, 128Q), China Championship (32F, 8H, 128Q)
4 x Major Invitationals - over £350,000: The Masters (16D), World Cup (32Fx2) played biannually, Tour Championship (16D), Champion of Champions (16D)
2 x Chinese Regular Ranking Events - £750,000: International Championship (64F, 12H, 128Q), Shanghai Masters (64F, 12H, 128Q)
9 x UK & Europe Ranking Events - pver £400,000: European Championships (128F), British Open (128F), NI Open (128F), England Open (128F), Scottish Open (128F), German Masters (128F), Welsh Open (128F), World Grand Prix (32F), Players Tour Championship (16F)
1 x Short-Form Ranking - £180,000: Shootout (128F)
4 x European Long Weekend Events - £200,000: Austria (128F), Latvia (128F), Germany (128F), Belgium (128F) - (examples only)
7 x Challenge Tour Events: 6 x regular events (96F) + finals (32F), total tour worth £300,000
2 x Other Invitationals: Hong Kong Masters (16F), World Seniors Championship (16F)
1 x Womens World Championship
1 x World Youth Championship for players under the age of 23.

So that is 36 events, giving a good mix of invitationals, big events, but also playing opportunities for those lower down the ranking list to get good match practice. All European ranking events bar the Worlds and UK would be direct to the venue, to save on travel costs. All Chinese events would be L64 to the venue bar the China Championship.

The International, Shanghai Masters and China Open would have a L96 round, whilst all other events would be flat knockouts bar the UK and Worlds which would be played in the same format as now.

Events encouraged to offer "hospitality" and ground transport where possible. Players to offer more time for media and sponsorship commitments in return.

First round losers money for all the major ranking events plus the Shootout. All Challenge Tour events would be 96 players, but can include all first year tour card holders and players outside the top 96 for additional earning opportunities (cannot qualify for CT Finals). Also offers a bit of an off-season for the busiest players.

Events Removed: Championship League(s), World Mixed Doubles

Proposed Calendar: based on 2023-24 dates
May
29 Apr-7 May - Q School UK, Asia & Europe (seperate events)
25-28 May - Euro Tour 1
June
2-4 Jun - Challenge Tour 1
15-18 Jun - Euro Tour 2
23-25 Jun - Challenge Tour 2
July
3-9 Jul - World Cup
20-23 Jul - Euro Tour 3
28-30 Jul - Challenge Tour 3
August
31 Jul-6 Aug - NI Open
14-20 Aug - European Championships (rebranded from Euro Masters)
22-27 Aug - Champion of Champions
29-31 Aug - International Championship Qualifiers
September
4-10 Sep - British Open
15-17 Sep - Challenge Tour 4
18-24 Sep - English Open
26 Sep-3 Oct - Shanghai Masters & China Championships Qualifiers
October
9-15 Oct - International Championship
19-22 Oct - Hong Kong Masters
23-29 Oct - Shanghai Masters
November
3-5 Nov - Challenge Tour 5
13-19 Nov - China Championship
22-29 Nov - UK Championship Qualifiers
December
2-10 Dec - UK Championship
17-23 Dec - Scottish Open
January
2-4 Jan - China Open Qualifiers
6-14 Jan - Masters
18-21 Jan - Euro Tour 4
25-27 Jan - Shootout
29 Jan-4 Feb - German Masters
February
9-11 Feb - Challenge Tour 6
14-18 Feb - World Grand Prix
27 Feb-2 Mar - Players Championship
March
4-10 Mar - Welsh Open
15-17 Mar - Challenge Tour Finals, QFs offered WCQ places
18-23 Mar - Six Reds World Championship
25-31 Mar - China Open
April
1-10 Apr - World Championship Qualifiers
10-14 Apr - Tour Championship
20 Apr-6 May - World Championship
26-28 Apr - World Youth Championship, final to be played morning of the Crucible Final
May
8-10 May - World Seniors Championship
8-12 May - Women's World Championship

Rankings:
A 2-year money list to be retained.
Not all ranking events countable - all major events, plus best result from 10 out of 16 of the remaining events. Encourages players to pick and choose events.
First year tour card holders retain their place for a minimum of a second year.
Players 97 and below able to enter CT events plus top-up players from Q Schools.

Tour Cards
Assigned as it is now, maybe a few tweaks to include more from the Challenge Tour and maybe more from overseas.
NGB wildcards removed, plus WST discretionary wildcards removed unless exceptional circumstances (travel restrictions, illness or injury).
64 Challenge Tour card holders assigned in a similar way to the Main Tour.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

I’ve never been convinced that Steve Dawson is a big downgrade on Hearn, at least apart from that uninspiring interview he did with Hendon. And it’s too early to say he’s failing.

I reckon a lot of Hearn’s ventures were in the name of short term gain, which was fine until he retired but now Dawson is having to piece together some continuity.

I also think a lot of the problems are more logistical and structural than anything else - week-long qualifiers, poor tournament spacing etc - rather than anything major, and shouldn’t be impossible to fix.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerFan

Iranu wrote:I’ve never been convinced that Steve Dawson is a big downgrade on Hearn, at least apart from that uninspiring interview he did with Hendon. And it’s too early to say he’s failing.

I reckon a lot of Hearn’s ventures were in the name of short term gain, which was fine until he retired but now Dawson is having to piece together some continuity.

I also think a lot of the problems are more logistical and structural than anything else - week-long qualifiers, poor tournament spacing etc - rather than anything major, and shouldn’t be impossible to fix.


Yeah.

You do wonder if Hearn deliberately got out at a smart time.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Holden Chinaski

SnookerFan wrote:You do wonder if Hearn deliberately got out at a smart time.

That would be a very Barry Hearn thing to do.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

Holden Chinaski wrote:
SnookerFan wrote:You do wonder if Hearn deliberately got out at a smart time.

That would be a very Barry Hearn thing to do.

I think it’s giving him too much credit . Tbh.

I just think he had a heart attack and finally decided to slow down. But because he was a bit of a short term thinker - and because of circumstances beyond his control - some cracks started appearing after he did.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby LDS

Hearn was always going to retire at some point, I mean it's amazing he kept going as long as he did, he's 74 at the moment for heaven's sake.

There are a lot of different things going on out there that all have direct and indirect influence on the snooker scene and it would be near impossible to nail down just one issue that could be said to be causing snooker to die back.

But it is dying back a bit, that's for sure. The question is more by how much rather than suggesting actual death.

But, again, it's also growing. It's just a matter of by how much it's growing and whether the new growth matches the comparative decline in other areas.

For example, there's a dearth of home (uk) talent, but this is varied by area, it's not entirely UK wide, but there are some obvious gaps, such as new Scottish talent and new English talent while Wales continues to produce interesting new talent every other year as it always has.

But other parts of the world are showing much greater interest than ever before, the roster of player nationalities ever increasing, most of whom are younger talent.

However, most of the tour is played in the UK, and is payed in UK sized prize money. The most prestigious tournaments of which are broadcast by primarily tv-tax related traditional media tv stations.

And the prize money has stagnated somewhat, relative to some other sports or professions. Enough so that a top 50 player could easily have a season where they earn about the same as an average milkman or whatever.

Of course, the milkman isn't always competing for a potential big lump sum every month though, it's more a matter of what happens if someone used to 60k a year suddenly only wins 30k in a year.

But that is the nature of sport, of course, but it would still be the nature of sport if only 10 people made a living out of it and the no.10 just earned 30k in one year.

So the question is, is it just the same as ever, it's just been spoiled by a boom at one point that over-extended expectations beyond a realistic future or is it that opportunities are being missed on a daily basis to expand further to meet that grown expectation or was the mistake made historically in not simply trying to focus on the core rather than expand too much in the first place.

Should we spend more time protecting and promoting the obviously very talented or should we dilute the system a bit in order to allow more fluidity to entry.

I'm not sure there's a correct answer here, but there's obviously a situation currently that is generating a lot of questions.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby KrazeeEyezKilla

I've just looked at the ATP Tour on wikipedia since people always talk about it as the model for Snooker and there's a couple of things I noticed. The bigger the tournament the more players there are. Grand Slams have 128 players but the tier below have 56/96 players. Below that there are only 28-32 in the majority of tour events. This is the opposite of how Snooker does things. Another thing is that every tournament is an invitational by Snooker standards. Most of the draw comes straight from the rankings with a small number of qualifiers and wildcards which allow local players to compete.

The cost of organising Snooker tournaments is another issue. PDC Darts has almost 60 tour events with about half of them being one day tournaments played in double or triple headers on weekends. Below that there's a Women's Series, a secondary Challenge Tour, a Development Tour for young players and regional circuits in Germany, Scandanavia, China etc. They can do this as it's relatively cheap to set up. Snooker tables are more awkward and expensive and the matches are much longer too.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby gninnur karona

KrazeeEyezKilla wrote:I've just looked at the ATP Tour on wikipedia since people always talk about it as the model for Snooker and there's a couple of things I noticed. The bigger the tournament the more players there are. Grand Slams have 128 players but the tier below have 56/96 players. Below that there are only 28-32 in the majority of tour events. This is the opposite of how Snooker does things. Another thing is that every tournament is an invitational by Snooker standards. Most of the draw comes straight from the rankings with a small number of qualifiers and wildcards which allow local players to compete.


I think tennis is a good sustainable model.

At the top of the pyramid the Grand Slams are already the biggest tests because of the number of matches, but for the men even more so as they are the only tournaments on the calendar played over best-of-5 sets. Each Grand Slam uses the same template. Two weeks for the main event immediately preceded by around a week of qualifiers which means 240 players play in each of the singles events. Roughly speaking the top 104 on the rankings list are accepted into the main draw directly - there are rules on protected rankings so it might work out as, for example, the top 102 + two whose ranking has fallen below due to having missed events through injury. Eight wildcards are, as you write, mainly attributed to local players but that is by choice and it's far from unknown for a wildcard to be given to an ex-member of the world elite who has been out injured a little too long to retain their protected ranking. Entry to the qualifiers is also based on ranking with again a number of wildcards. Three qualifying rounds cut the 128 starters to provide 16 entrants to the main draw. So that's the top level. The most prestigious events. The most demanding. Universally recognised. Appealing to both seasoned tennis enthusiasts and casual followers of the sport.

That's the pinnacle. If snooker's annual prize money could match those events alone the players would be delighted but there's so much more. Around 30 other events on the main tour (ATP 1000, 500 and 250 events) are scheduled to take place in Europe alone during 2023. That's a healthy sport, one for which the pandemic is rapidly fading from memory.

Note that the calendar is coherent, built around the Grand Slams. There's a clay court 'season' leading up to Roland Garros, grass court tournaments before Wimbledon. It's like a completed jigsaw, all the pieces fit together.

How much is transportable to snooker? To discuss.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby lhpirnie

These are all great contributions. We need to keep this debate going, and uncover some new ideas and canvas everyone's views.

To answer some of LDS's points, yes we do see some new young players from new places: for example the performances of Julien Leclercq and Vladislav Gradineri in the Shoot-out. But these are isolated rich kids with parents (or a sponsor) prepared to back them. It doesn't necessarily lead to much unless one of them turns out to be exceptional.

As for snooker's potential, I think that it is definitely there. I would say that if snooker fizzles out in the next 20 years, the major beneficiary will be US 8-ball Pool. Certainly there are people in that sport who have that ambition. So definitely there is room in the world for a major cue-sport, and I think snooker is the king of cue-sports (naturally!). Is the cost of maintenance for snooker tables higher than tennis or golf facilities? Perhaps we should look into things like everlasting cloths...

I just think that people involved in snooker just lack imagination, vision, courage and also technical knowledge of how to expand (globally). These were the qualities shown by Mike Watterson, WPBSA and the BBC in the 1970's. Unfortunately we've been rather resting on those laurels too much for over 40 years.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dannyboy

This is where Judd has been right - for too long, the likes of the BBC have been talking about the “glory years” of the 1980s and 1990s. Heck some of the players from that era are still around! The recent commentary shake up has been a good thing in that respect.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby lhpirnie

Dan-cat wrote:I think snooker’s in pretty great shape to say we had nearly two years of Lockdowns, no China (which was 4 big tournaments.)

I agree that snooker did very well during the pandemic. The problem is that things have started to fall apart now, and the future is extremely worrying.


Where will snooker be in 10 years' time when O'Sullivan, Higgins, Williams, Selby, Robertson, etc. are no longer there? We need to prepare for that now.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dan-cat

lhpirnie wrote:
Dan-cat wrote:I think snooker’s in pretty great shape to say we had nearly two years of Lockdowns, no China (which was 4 big tournaments.)

I agree that snooker did very well during the pandemic. The problem is that things have started to fall apart now, and the future is extremely worrying.


Where will snooker be in 10 years' time when O'Sullivan, Higgins, Williams, Selby, Robertson, etc. are no longer there? We need to prepare for that now.


How?

There are a raft of exciting young players, I think we'll be fine, people will be happy to see new faces on the TV.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby RunningSide

I think the next year determine snookers future. Resolving enquiry and any possible bans could be detrimental to fans and possible sponsors of the game.I hope we come through strong, feeling 50 50 to me,would like to see stronger leadership from WST.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Cloud Strife

SnookerFan wrote:https://twitter.com/BarryHearn/status/1619653974000553986

Well, this reassures me.


Typical Barry Hearn response that.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

SnookerFan wrote:https://twitter.com/BarryHearn/status/1619653974000553986

Well, this reassures me.

Half truth, half bull

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Prop

Iranu wrote:
SnookerFan wrote:https://twitter.com/BarryHearn/status/1619653974000553986

Well, this reassures me.

Half truth, half bull


A turd in a fig leaf.