Snooker boss Barry Hearn promises not to make changes in World Snooker Championship
After making a lot of changes in many snooker tournaments even the UK Championship, the World Snooker Chairman, Barry Hearn has promised that he will never make any change in the game’s most prestigious tournament, the World Snooker Championship. The snooker
chief faced a lot of resistance from several top potters on making alterations in the playing formats and structures of many snooker tournaments.
Hearn joined World Snooker as chairman in 2009 with the hopes to make the game one of the most watched sports. He already had his recognition in darts because of his drastic steps in the sport which made it the second most watched sport after football on
national TV, Sky. Hearn entered the world of snooker with the same ambitions and has succeeded so far in fulfilling his purpose.
After Hearn occupied the seat as the chief, he introduced more snooker tournaments in the annual calendar of the sport. He initiated the Players Tour Championship (PTC), Championship League Snooker, Snooker Shootout and Power Snooker. Along with that, he
changed the playing format and the basic structure of several snooker events to make them interesting.
Snooker was believed to be the game for the oldies because of its longer formats and slow nature. Hearn changed that idea by putting some fast formatted snooker tournaments and by changing the internal structure and rules of some certain tournaments. However,
to keep the game’s richness alive, he has promised not to change the World Snooker Championship.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Hearn said, “The Worlds are the pinnacle of our sport and has history. That I will not touch. It is so amazingly eccentric and British - what other event could have a semi-final that lasts three days? It's weird and wonderful, it goes
beyond change.”
He added, “Give me a frame leniency either way, but that event is such a big event in the worldwide calendar now, only a braver man than me would change it. A few years ago, even with my snooker background, I began to find snooker boring. I thought it was
all very samey - it's never going to be samey again, trust me on that.”
Last year when he changed the UK Championship format, he faced a lot of criticism from many snooker players. He even had a verbal brawl with the 2012 Haikou World Open winner, Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen.
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