I still think snooker is poorly served by the internet in comparison to many other sports.
Yes, there’s the excellent global-snooker.com and the WPBSA’s site is better now than it’s been for a long time, there are snooker forums and blogs and various other sites as well but why don’t the top players have decent websites?
It seems to me to be a missed opportunity to project their personalities and, in doing so, further promote the sport.
Ten years ago, CueMasters – which were to become TSN and then 110sport – set up an all singing, all dancing website.
It was an excellent concept (although I’m biased because I worked on it) but they over-reached by trying to launch a rival tour and the original idea was overtaken and eventually scrapped.
Now, 110sport have re-hired the energetic Stewart Weir, the man behind the original site, in an attempt to launch a better, more interactive portal which will not only show live action but also give snooker fans the chance to interact with their favourite players.
“Having been asked back, I’d be a hypocrite to knock back the chance to do the sort of things online that I publicly said 110sport needed to be doing when I left two years ago. For me, it’s a great opportunity – not everyone is fortunate enough to get another crack at a project they believe in,” Weir told allscotlandmedia.com.
If he’s allowed to do the things that are needed, 110sport.tv will be a success and a significant step forward for the game on the internet, even if it’s come ten years after it should have.
Hopefully it will lead to a greater online presence for snooker, which in itself will give the sport a higher profile.
10 comments:
Obviously reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated …
Speaking of internet sites, the live scoring has frozen again barely 5 minutes into this afternoons play. I've done what you said Dave, I rang World Snooker and the nice lady said she would email her collegues in Shanghai to hopefully get it sorted. I also mentioned that it's not a one off and that I use the service a lot and would really like it to be more reliable in future. Let's see what happens from here.
Snooker The Fine Art Method
A secret is wasted if not shared
Dear Dave
Please refrain Dave from discusing the privacies of clandestine issues.
Mr hey you
Snooker The Fine Art(Copyright) method
A secret is wasted if not shared
Dear Dave
As you probable know lad, that post of 1:29PM above is a nice peace of merriment by one of snookers many copycats.
The Fine Art has no objections or hard feelings to copycats, only to the "Snooker Bandits" that steal from the "snooker mad" youngsters for pesonal gain.
I wont go into any detail Dave on what the game is missing and has missed for Eighty years. Amazingly Dave snooker is actually taught backwards. There should be almost as many youngsters (Boys and Girls) playing snooker at advance level as there is footballers.
Mr hey you
PS Thanks lad for the plug. Please try the Fine Art quize. DM
On a point of clarification, it wasn't me who suggested phoning World Snooker
dave please have a word with world snooker or something about the live scoring freezing it is ridiculous happens ever session for about an hour
You're absolutely right, Dave. Snooker is appallingly served in comparison with other sports.
That's why I set up SupremeSnooker.com, along with Rob our professional web designer.
The trouble is that from a journalistic point of view we are pretty much a one-man band and if I have other paid work on the go, I'm forced to put the site on the back burner.
I'm currently in the process of moving house and my access to the internet is greatly restricted, so I've been unable to put up anything at all from Shanghai.
That said, I have big plans for the website in the long term and would welcome any assistance from trained journalists or talented writers who have something interesting to contribute.
Best wishes,
Marcus
Marcus - real life and work gets in the way of keeping up with the website - jack in the work and get on with the snooker!!
The first and very best snooker website from the earliest days of the net was www snooker - Hermund - god of the net!!
I'd love to get much more content onto Global Snooker, but even after 12 years of doing the site, I still haven't mastered the art of being in 3 places at once, nor got over the human fraility of needing to sleep occasionally!
I can reveal that EBSA have a new website designer on board and an eager team ready to put a lot of content on from all over Europe as soon as the new layout is in place. Meanwhile we apologise for the dog's dinner that is the current EBSA site!
Spot-on Dave, there is a real lack of variety of website out there. And as far as the players sites are concerned, there are not many decent ones at all, of those who have them. Mark Selby's is the standout site by a long way.
Designing, developing and maintaining websites is not as easy as people think and definitely gets in the way of full time jobs and your social life. My site (greenbaize.blogspot.com) also suffers because of these reasons, even though it's only a very basic blog where I can voice my very opinionated opinions. In my opinion :o), the problem is the same-old-same-old, ....money!
For people like us who have snooker sites (barely) on the go, it truly does become a labour of love. You can't expect to make any money from it. I mean, if the players are struggling to make money then there's definitely not going to be much left for the foot soldiers!
One of the biggest things about the downturn in the economy is the downturn in the IT sector. 10 years ago, I could earn at least double what I earn now, and one of the biggest areas that has suffered in the IT downturn/globalisation story is web development. An awful lot of web development is now offshored to areas of the world where the work can be done for a much smaller per-man-cost that what we would charge in the west. This doesn't necessarily mean it will be cheaper (because multiple people end up doing a job 1 man might do), and can normally take longer due to various reasons that I won't go into on a snooker blog.
This is IT globalisation trying to find its feet and the best solution. The unhealthy side effect of this is great web developers in the west change careers and move to higher paying IT jobs that cannot yet be outsourced leaving the more "challenged" western web developers to do the work. This isn't true in all cases but I see these things happening in my industry. Globalisation is not that great until economies around the world settle after the phenomenon.
If you pay very good money to very talented people for online snooker content, the results will be spectacular. You see a direct correlation between the financial strength of a sport and online content when you go to various different sporting websites, especially sports that are a huge success like tennis and football. The people at the top have more than enough money not to have to think about offshoring and pay solid western developers and artists well.
That's why we should have a lot of admiration, patience and respect for people like Hermund, Dave, Janie, and now Pete Williams who are producing first class online content for the sport we love. Believe me, for these people, it's a labour of love!
Andy
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