Fans will have noticed something a little different about this year’s World Snooker Championship at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre.
For the first time at the most prestigious event of the snooker calendar, players emerged to the sound of walk-on music. Not such a massive change, you might think – and you would be right.
Watching Mark Selby come out from backstage to the pounding bass of Kasabian, or Ding Junhui to the slightly less stirring Lady Gaga for that matter, may have irked some of the traditionalists out there but scarcely detracted from the quality of snooker on display.
Nor did it reduce the unique charm of the only sport I can think of that requires players to don a waistcoat and tie.
The introduction of music to the scene carries a far more symbolic significance, however, for it was the brainchild of a man making waves in the running of the sport. Snooker is – whisper it to the purists – in the midst of a revolution, and the person largely responsible for it is charismatic boxing promoter-turned-snooker boss Barry Hearn.
Hearn, who is also the current chairman of Leyton Orient F.C. as well as the Professional Darts Corporation, became the head of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association in December last year, and brought with him a whole host of ideas to boost the flagging popularity of the game.
Chief among these is an increase in the number of tournaments that the top players compete in. At present, there are pitifully few ranking tournaments, with the World Championship being one of just six.
Because of this, Selby has labelled himself a ‘part-time professional’ and Ronnie O’Sullivan has voiced his disillusionment with the sport on a number of occasions.
Snooker simply cannot afford to lose O’Sullivan, who has threatened to quit before. No man is bigger than the sport, but O’Sullivan is not far off. The most talented player of our generation, arguably of all time, is key to Hearn’s plans to enhance snooker’s marketability.
O’Sullivan lived up to his in many ways undeserved bad-boy reputation at the Crucible when he gave the finger to a troublesome red that he failed to pocket.
As far as sporting outbursts go it hardly compares to Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick, but was still pretty rock’n’roll for a sport which has an audience with an average age that must be close to ninety-four.
If Hearn can harness the marketing potential of O’Sullivan, and indeed some of the rising young stars, such as Jamie Cope and Judd Trump, then he will do no harm to a game that has been hit particularly hard by the recession and one which has struggled to find sponsorship in the recent past.
Under Hearn’s proposals, there is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone if the planned seventh ranking event in Berlin goes ahead.
Not only will it keep onboard disgruntled players like O’Sullivan, who has enthusiastically backed Hearn’s appointment, but it could also crack the European market. If a Pro Tour of up to twenty events is then added, snooker may be able to replicate the miraculous resurgence of darts.
That revival was masterminded by Hearn, too. Top darts matches are now played in front of crowds reaching 9,000 and the prize money for the last PDC World Championship totalled £1 million for the first time.
Parallels may be drawn with cricket, especially since Hearn has also mooted shorter snooker matches and more ‘razzmatazz’ – walk-on music, for example – much like in Twenty20.
Just as cricket’s purists struggled to stomach this addition to their beloved sport, so will snooker’s anoraks. It may be seen by some as shameless commercialisation or, if you like, Americanisation, but it is nevertheless a necessary sacrifice to make.
There is no doubt that snooker has shown signs of fading away in recent years. Dwindling television audiences have reflecting a huge loss of interest in a sport that, during the 1985 World Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor, had an incredible 18.5 million viewers on the edge of their seats into the early hours of the morning.
A repeat of this is unlikely to ever happen again in an age of hundreds of television channels, as opposed to the three that audiences could choose from back then.
If Barry Hearn delivers on his promise to bring snooker to the masses again though, like he has done with darts, we may at least come close to seeing something similar to snooker’s golden era.