Britain doesn't deserve to host the World Snooker Championships

Telegraph

26-04-2025

Whoever wins snooker's coveted 2025 Halo World Championship on May 5, there is one clear loser. And that's Sheffield.
I caught some of the early rounds this week, charmed as ever by the commentary team of Davis and Parrot, Hendry and Doherty and mesmerised by the skill, focus and bravura of the players. But I was also struck by the sight on TV of the best players in the world cueing in a single arena that is Sheffield's Crucible Theatre, where they, when seated between bouts, are within breathing space of each other, where a single audience sits around two tables and with what looks like a cardboard divide between match play.
I could swear I saw it wobble at one point, maybe as a late-coming spectator entered the room and the draught of a windy afternoon in Sheffield blew in.
Then, as play ensues, in some vital moment – Judd Trump eyeing up a crafty cannon to dispatch the hopes of Zhou Yuelong perhaps – the still of concentration is shattered by an outbreak of applause. From the crowd at the next-door table.
The only advantage of this being, surely, for the lucky sods who have seats in the middle and can watch both games.
Otherwise, it strikes me as an absolute shambles. Organising body World Snooker Ltd is treating this modern, international sport, with a global audience, like a match between two non-league clubs in Deptford.
It's barely a step forward from the 1970s when we watched the game in our cottage in Oxfordshire in black and white with the sound turned down because we'd lost the volume knob on the TV set.
As seven-times winner Ronnie O'Sullivan himself said in an interview before last year's tournament: 'I know at the Crucible you get nice tea there, you might get lasagne if the guys are cooking. But that's about it.'
And this was just a few months after he lashed out at that other famous snooker venue, Alexandra Palace, saying: 'I find it disgusting. Everywhere is dirty. It's cold. It's freezing. I have to wear my coat everywhere. You go through car parks. There are bins. Honestly, it just makes me feel ill.'
Imagine Andy Murray saying such things about the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club or Joe Root of Lords.
Yet this is the state of our snooker venues. And from an international observer, it might feel par for the course. If there are rats festering amongst the uncollected bins of Birmingham, it's completely rational that the only thing that separates the tables of two major, international snooker games is a sliver of cardboard.
No wonder Saudi Arabia is sniffing around the game. It wants the golf, it has a bit of tennis, it gets some major bouts of boxing, and it has the FIFA 2034 World Cup in the bag, so why not some proper snooker? The TV rights would give the country the cosy PR it craves. And to sweeten the deal, it can be held in the Green Halls in the capital Riyadh where it already holds the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, a venue described by former Irish pro Ken Doherty as 'fantastic, nicely spaced out, with plenty of room to practice'.
'The facilities are quite amazing and to hear that this place is purpose-built just for snooker alone is quite incredible,' he adds.
Which begs the question as to why the powers-that-be appear to be doing nothing to revamp The Crucible and prevent Barry Hearn – whose company, Matchroom Sport, runs darts and snooker events – from taking the World Snooker Championship to the UAE when the Crucible's rights to hold the tournament expire in 2027.
'The clock is ticking,' Hearne said this week. And with just two years to go, it doesn't look like Sheffield Council, who provide additional funding to the Crucible's owners, Sheffield Theatres, has ambitions to improve the venue aside from adding a few urinals.
The theatre can only hold 980 fans, so revenue opportunities from ticket sales are limited, and while Hearne, like so many snooker fans, would like to retain the heritage of snooker in Sheffield, he wants a slicker venue.
To which those council members will say, 'Of course, Barry, but who's going to pay for it?' For that is the gloomy malaise of Britain. Crumbling, unambitious and with that shrug of the shoulders that says, 'How can we build fancy stadiums when we can't even fill our potholes?'
This is a long-term malady, not just the fault of Labour, but acutely worse now as the Government tries to force out the non-doms who might have been willing to put their names to a new venue and bends over backwards to deter risky entrepreneurs. The Prime Minister revels, even, in the idea that things are going to get worse.
We may not have the weather, but we need to be a little more cocksure about the utter fabulousness of the ingenuity, culture and history of our green and pleasant land.