The strange success of snooker

Mint

01-07-2025

Snooker has been dying for decades. 'It just feels boring," said Ronnie O'Sullivan, the most talented man to play the game, in 2009—the equivalent of Roger Federer opening a press conference with 'Tennis sucks." The days of the 1980s, when one in three Britons would watch the final of its world championship, are gone. By the 2000s a cottage industry lamenting its demise had emerged. In 2010 the Guardian predicted snooker would be an amateur sport by 2020.
Five years beyond that cut-off, on a sunny Friday afternoon in 2025, every seat is taken at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, which has hosted the Halo World Championships for almost five decades. Zhao Xintong, a Chinese hope for the title, strides out to soul music and takes a seat beside the 12ft-by-6ft table that will be his focus for the next eight hours. His opponent is a countryman, Lei Peifan. Forget the sport's inveterate declinism. Snooker is a strange, and very British, story of success.
True, the audience in Sheffield is hardly a picture of youth. ('We've got a birthday," says the compere whipping up the spectators. 'Tony is eighty-four today.") But viewing figures are growing again, particularly when international audiences are included. Anywhere between 3m and 4m tune in for the final. If a Chinese player features, the numbers multiply. TikTok views for the sport have gone from tens to hundreds of millions this year.
There is, after all, nothing else like it. As a spectacle, snooker is akin to being locked in a sensory deprivation tank. Each frame lasts about 30 minutes; come the final, up to 35 of them will be played. The world is reduced to two men in waistcoats circling a green table, while a referee-cum-butler replaces balls and keeps score. The only noise is the gentle collision of balls, applause, groans, the odd titter, and commentators whispering hyperbolic criticism ('It's early days, but he will be disgusted"). It offers asmr in a world of adhd.
Each of the Chinese players on show honed his craft in Sheffield. There may be more snooker halls in Beijing than in all of England; yet the best China has to offer end up in the city. Mr Lei plays out of the Ding Junhui Snooker Academy in central Sheffield, just above a b&m, a chain of discount stores. Mr Ding, a Chinese former world number one, opened it in 2020. Victoria's Snooker Academy, where Mr Zhao trains alongside another stable of Chinese players, is a ten-minute walk away. Hidden in the knackered centre of a declining manufacturing city, an elite service economy thrives.
Agglomeration is a strange thing. Alfred Marshall, a Victorian economist, focused on Sheffield's steel industry when writing about the topic. 'The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries, but are as it were in the air," he wrote. What was true for steel is true for snooker. 'Go on, Zhao," cheered one man, in thick south Yorkshire. A local hero is still a local hero, even if he is Chinese.
And even if, like Mr Zhao, he is coming back from a 20-month suspension after a betting scandal. Ever since its invention by bored colonial soldiers in British India, snooker has been associated with gambling. After tobacco sponsorship was banned, it should be no surprise the sport turned to gambling companies and, now, crypto-hawkers for funding. In Britain, vice finds a way. The country's tobacco, booze and gambling companies are among the world's largest. Puritanism has a cost. It is one Britain as a whole can barely afford—and one snooker refuses to pay.
Jacking up the prize money is the best way to keep the sport clean and its quality high. When snooker was in the doldrums, total prize money was £3.5m ($4.7m). This year professional players compete for £19m. The world championships alone dish out £2.4m, including £500,000 for the winner. Judd Trump, the world number one, drives a Lamborghini, notes Simon Brownell, the chief executive of the World Snooker Tour, which runs the tournaments. There has to be an upside. Otherwise why spend all day above a B&M?
If snooker only follows the money, then the sport will slowly leave Britain's shores. Saudi Arabia pays a premium for any sport to visit the kingdom, whether boxing, golf, football or snooker. The players are happy to take it. Mr O'Sullivan is setting up an academy in the country. They are professional sportsmen and the first word comes before the second. If BAE Systems, a British arms manufacturer, can offer its services in Saudi Arabia, so can a few men in waistcoats.
To compete, Britain must offer more than money. Tennis provides a blueprint for how a sport can thrive, even without infinite wealth. Wimbledon offers a fairytale of English life—of immaculate lawns and staff in neat uniforms. The Crucible offers humdrum reality. Hospitality may cost £400 a ticket, but no amount of champagne stops it from resembling a regional theatre. Because it is. Negotiations are going on with Sheffield City Council to keep the competition in the city beyond 2027, when the current contract ends. 'I'm too old for brinkmanship," says Barry Hearn, the sport's impresario, engaging in brinkmanship.
A certain romance
Only a strange, almost irrational romance can keep the sport in the city in the long term. Mr Zhao cruised into the semi-finals on April 30th, taking another step to becoming the first Chinese men's world champion. If Sheffield retains its place as the heart of snooker, it will be in part due to Chinese players who are Sheffield-based rather than Sheffield-bred. Another peculiar quirk of a peculiar sport. Most likely, though, Sheffield will have to share the title. Those who love the game face the same question that comes up repeatedly in British society: would they rather be a big part of something small, or a small part of something big?
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