29.1.09

SELBY'S VIEW

My idea to revitalise the rankings has received support from Mark Selby.

The 'Jester from Leicester' agrees that awarding points to the many pro-ams, particularly those staged in Europe, would shake things up for the better.

Lamenting the loss of the Malta Cup, he wrote on his Eurosport blog:

"One option is to award ranking points for some of the tournaments that we already play which are not on television: this might be a good idea.

"I know that they do it in darts - they have ranking events throughout the season - and if you look at some of the tournaments we play in mainland Europe, for example, the standard is still very high and you get lots of the top players competing.

"I think such an idea could work."

As Mark says, this does already happen in darts.

Speaking of which, further proof of the way the game has overtaken snooker comes with the Players Championship, which is receiving something like 30 hours live coverage on ITV4 over the next three days, starting tomorrow.

And although the global economic position will doubtless be blamed by some for the fact that snooker is struggling for sponsorship, PDC boss Barry Hearn has signed a deal with Coral to back the tournament.

So darts has a bigger total prize fund this year than in snooker, new TV deals and new sponsors.

They must be doing something right and, rather than dismiss Hearn and his ideas, snooker would do well to take note.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The most concurable post this year to date.

Keep it up Dave ;o)

jamie brannon said...

I think Hearn should be listened to but Dave would you be in favour of taking the snooker to Sky which would leave it with less of an audience?

Anonymous said...

it seems such as shame that there is now no British Open, Irish Masters and other older tournaments, surely even with the credit crisis there can be ways of creating more tournaments?

Anonymous said...

jamie - given the excellent wall to wall coverage you get on sky tv I am praying they get more tournaments. Not the 4 BBC events, they should be kept on the beeb for as long as possible, hopefully for the rest of our lifetimes but snooker is missing out big time by not having sky host ranking events.

Dave - I like the ranking idea too as part of a 2 year rolling rankings set up.

:-)

oneball2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A46525250

Anonymous said...

I'm of a different take on this. I think Selby, quite rightly by the way, may be expressing a view that a lot of people feel at the moment. They have jobs that they have worked hard to get, careers that they have strived for, but the rewards for this are going down. Snooker needs to reconnect with people like this.

I think that following the razzamatazz of darts would be a hugely bad PR move for snooker. The key is to connect with the audience, a young audience now that struggles to see a future, but needs an outlet. People who love snooker and people who love darts are very very different animals.

I believe that the time has come for snooker to go back to its roots, following darts will turn it into a circus, something that no true lover of the game would want or enjoy 'I created a monster'

People who love the game, not people who made money out of it in the 80's should be running the sport.

snookerbacker

Anonymous said...

What's wrong with the TV audience? If you've seen one Darts game, you'v seen 'em all. There is SO much more variety with snooker - how could it be possible to sign better sponsor deals with Darts? Why doesn't the TV audience realize that there is so much more to snooker?

Anonymous said...

It would be great to see snooker events back on Sky, if not the big three then other events like the British Open used to be.

I guess then though it might be at the expense of Eurosport who do such a great job of broadcasting the event outside of the UK. Is the Premier League screened TV outside of the UK at the moment actually?

Anonymous said...

@Matt Not in Germany. The channel DSF has the rights for broadcasting but did not show a minute since september 2007. :(

Dave H said...

You don't have to copy darts to learn from the way they've marketed their sport. That's all that's changed - not the game or the rules.

Jamie - I'd like to see snooker on Sky, the BBC, ITV and every available TV channel!

Anonymous said...

would it be an idea to film players doing exhibitions to show them in a relaxed way and having fun then people could relate to them maybe show as a prelude to comp on tv

Anonymous said...

would it be an idea to film players doing exhibitions to show them in a relaxed way and having fun then people could relate to them maybe show as a prelude to comp on tv

andy lomax said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I think Selby not only loves to play in Europe but would be equally enthusiastic about being awarded ranking points for the effort. It won't be on BBC of course but is that really important? Eurosport have been tremendous and have to get major credit for the popularity of the sport in countries like Denmark and Germany.

Anonymous said...

Lets have it right, snooker is a wash-out. The fools in office have raped this sport for many years, and nobody is going to take you seriously.

Get this trash off TV, and lets see Mr Hearn - who it could be said would welcome the demise of snooker - and see various forms of pool (particularly 9-Ball) marketed professionally as with darts.

Last one to leave please turn the lights off.