Wildey wrote:Theres a difference between no streaming and Streaming everything.
Qualifiers in the main should be for the fans going to the venue and the choice of matches to watch and if someone is desparatee to watch Rory McLeoad vs Rod Lawler put your hands in your pocket and go there.
These Days, if there's 8 or 6 Tables, 4 would be streaming anyway
What I'm saying is don't limit the experience for people that goes to watch at the venue just so every match is streamed only 2 matches a session is pretty flat.
This Week in Fuerth only 4 out of 6 is on Eurosport Player in that instance why limit the event to 6 days there is a total imbalance to what's happening it seems Streaming every Qualifier is more important than Main Events
Not everybody can just decide to take time out of their lives/job, to travel to another part of the country at short notice just because they fancy going to a match. And what about travel costs/hotels bills? Everybody can afford to do that whenever they want, can they?
It's okay to say people should attend, if you're assuming the person lives in Wigan (in this instance) and can just wonder along whenever they feel like it. But snooker is becoming a global sport. It's not safe to assume that fans live in the UK any more, let alone Wigan. Should we tell people in Germany or China to "put their hands in their pockets" and travel here, just so they can have match choice?
Besides, I don't see how much it'll affect people's attendances. Sure, there might be a few that don't go if they can just watch on Discovery+ instead. But, let's face it, you can say that about all snooker/sport. Will people stop going to The Crucible because all matches are on the BBC? Should we not put snooker TV or streams at all, to encourage even more people to go?
One time, when you could sign up for a year to watch snooker qualifiers on the World Snooker website, I watched a couple of matches in Crawley on it. As Crawley is local to me, I decided to go up for a day. I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't been streaming the matches that week, because I wouldn't have known the qualifiers were in Crawley. So, though televising or streaming matches does give people the opportunity to watches matches on their screens rather than attend live, it also makes it more visible and advertises the sport more. The more people are aware that the qualifiers are being held, the more chance you'll attend live. So it's swings and roundabouts with that. Snooker isn't like Premier League football, where there is already a high awareness of matches. We're still relatively minor in terms of mainstream interest. So I'd say the pros of raising awareness outweighs the cons of losing a few fans because they can watch by other means.
And don't forget as well, we're talking about streams being on Discovery+ / Eurosport Player here. Only the hardcore nutters like us are going to have that. It's not like we're talking about live snooker qualifiers being shown on prime time TV here. So not everybody will have full access to these qualifiers anyway.
Also, remember, that attending live matches is a completely different experience to watching at home. I've attended loads of snooker matches that I could sit and watch at home if I wanted to. I imagine more people want to go for the experience rather than because they're pysched about watching Rory McLeoad vs Rod Lawler.