Where's the cue ball going—Sheffield or Saudi Arabia?

Talk of moving away from Sheffield's Crucible theatre has dominated the conversation at this year's World Championship.

The 2024 Snooker World Championships is in full flow, but for the competition that has graced Sheffield’s Crucible theatre since 1977, the chatter about moving it to pastures new has been dominating the discussion over the past few weeks.

Like other sports it wants to sink its claws into, Saudi Arabia have taken an interest in snooker and are keen to bring the world championship to the Kingdom. The Crucible, the Mecca of the sport and its spiritual home, beloved by worshippers every April, is beginning to show its age. Attendees and onlookers will be well aware of the limitations of the small-sized arena, which is split in two for the early rounds, making it a cramped space for the competitors, while noise and hustle and bustle at the beginning and end of each session is an ongoing issue. Hardly a prime sporting environment for the top players in the game. The attendance is also capped at about under 1,000 patrons, with the later rounds selling out quickly every year.

In a 2017 documentary, snooker boss Barry Hearn spoke of how the tournament would never leave the Crucible “on my tombstone it won't be written: 'This is the man who took the world championship from the Crucible.”

“It's staying and it doesn't matter how much (money) is involved”.

With dollar bills being flashed in front of Hearn’s eyes, that tone has shifted majorly now that interest from Saudi Arabia and China is ramping up to bring the tournament elsewhere after Sheffield’s deal is up in 2027, telling Hazel Irvine last week on BBC that “money has the edge every time” over history and nostalgia.

When probed by Ken Doherty that there are more to things in life that money can’t buy, Hearn says it is his fiduciary duty to the players to expand the prize money on offer. “It’s all about money—get used to it!”. At least, for once, the droll message of “growing the game” wasn’t doled out and Hearn was honest about why the likes of Saudi Arabia can purchase the sport, looking for a shortcut to the top of the snooker calendar without building up their own tournaments.

China, at least, has a history with the sport and is one of the most popular games in the country, with as many as 60 million people who actively participate in snooker. They already host numerous tournaments and have had Ding Junhui represent the country as a successful player and former Masters winner, with a handful of other names in the top 50 rankings. Saudi, however, have no history with the sport and the argument of bringing the tournament there is solely on “growing the game”, like it has argued for golf, football and tennis. The mantra uttered by sports people and executives is running more and more hollow, at least its somewhat refreshing that Hearn has admitted that it’s purely about the money.

But why snooker? To many, snooker is on its deathbed. One of the few sports still clinging onto terrestrial television with BBC a noble backer, the crowds are noticeably ageing. Darts has been revitalized for the modern audience and is more popular than ever before but snooker has struggled to stay relevant. Why would the Saudis have any interest in a sport that if taken away from free TV airwaves and away from the Crucible, may just hammer the final nail in the coffin of any meaningful relevancy?

According to Karim Zidan of the excellent Sports Politika newsletter, it’s all about the soft power Saudi Arabia can amass, regardless of the size of reach of the sport. “Saudi Arabia is currently in the stage where it wants to be seen as a global powerhouse in sports. That means securing some of the biggest events like the 2034 World Cup,” according to Zidan.

“It also means testing the waters with a variety of niche sports like snooker, weightlifting, yoga, handball etc. to determine which will garner the sort of soft power that they are seeking.”

“With each sport, Saudi has the opportunity to present itself to new audiences and to hone its fabricated image of peace and prosperity.”

Rather than killing the sport, however, Saudi Arabia would likely frame their investment as an opportunity to revitalize the sport, according to Karim, but not exactly out of the goodness of their own hearts.

“But if you ask me whether they "care," I would say they likely do not. It is not a sport with a great tradition in Saudi Arabia—where there is no bar culture—so if they do not yield any advantages from it, they will just drop it.”

The Saudis have already connected with the World Snooker Tour by adding the World Masters of Snooker, complete with the golden ball idea. But one stop on the calendar isn’t enough for them and the world championship finale would be a massive coup for their plans of collecting sports events.

It won’t help matters that the game’s biggest attraction, Ronnie O’Sullivan, has already connected with Saudi Arabia on a three-year sponsorship deal, as well as representing a newly-founded academy over there, teasing that he would be all in favour of a LIV-style breakaway tour: “I would love to see a LIV-style breakaway, gosh! I wouldn’t mind getting a phone call saying, ‘Here, do you want 600 million to play for three years?”

A breakaway tour would be devastating to Hearn and the establishment, but as Hearn has argued, money talks, so it’s entirely in his best interests to keep the game under the World Snooker Association umbrella, even if that means getting into bed with Saudi Arabian interests. Any talk of breakaway tours have reportedly been borne out of China, so the fact O’Sullivan is already connected with Saudi is good news in terms of avoiding a golf-like schism in the sport. Judd Trump, too, has insisted he’d have no interest in joining an alternative tour. All signs lead to Riyadh.

On Monday night, John Higgins and Mark Allen played out a stunning session of snooker which saw some of the shots of the tournament thus far. Heading into a deciding frame to progress to the quarter-finals, Higgins needed a near-perfect clearance to get the better of the Northern Irish man, and he did so in breathtaking fashion, hailed by some as one of the most clutch clearances in the history of the Crucible.

The atmosphere was electric. Higgins, potting only the eight black ball match winner in Crucible history, was overcome with emotion in the aftermath, extolling to Hazel Irvine in the interview aftewards that nowhere can match the atmosphere of the Crucible.

Money talks but so do the fans that prop up the sport. A match-winning John Higgins clearance in front of a hollow audience who couldn’t care less about the sport isn’t the same as one in the Crucible, with tension on a knife edge. Nor is the appreciation for world class snookers and recoveries, or the applaud at a 100 point break. Taking the world championship to Saudi Arabia would be a death knell for the sport and after 50 years of memories and moments built up in the baize of the Crucible theatre, irrecoverably so.