Snooker: Matchroom Launches New Tournament

The original article can be found here. I've also copied the original article into this post and I've discussed the new venture below the article.


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MATCHROOM Sport and the recently merged Premium TV / Inform Group have launched a new snooker event - The Championship League Snooker.

Staged over 20 days between February and May, 2008, the competition will be a league for some of the world's best players, solely broadcast on and funded by internet distribution.

There is a massive incentive as the eventual winner will take the seventh and final place for the 2008 Premier League Snooker tournament, which will be played out in front of packed crowds (pictured above) across the country and shown live on Sky Sports.

The Championship League Snooker will also have a total prize fund of £200,000 with money awarded for every frame won as well as substantial sums for reaching the latter stages.

In a world first, all aspects of the Championship League Snooker will be optimised specifically for an internet audience, with matches scheduled between Monday and Thursday so not to coincide with major football competitions.

All sessions will play between 2pm and 10pm to maximise both workplace and home viewing in Europe and Asia, snooker's biggest two regions in terms of fan base. Live coverage will be exclusively for the Internet.

Premium TV / Inform have already started distribution discussions and expect The Championship to be distributed by a variety of major portals, internet service providers, web TV and betting websites globally.

The competition will originally feature seven of the top players from the World Rankings who may not be picked automatically for the 2008 Premier League Snooker.

These seven men will then play each other in a round-robin basis and the top four players will play in semi-finals, then finals with the winner qualifying for the final phase.

However, the competitors finishing in the bottom two spots of the league will be eliminated but those who have not advanced to the final or been knocked out will move into the second group. They will then be joined by a further three players for another league phase.

The process is repeated until seven qualifying groups, featuring a total of 25 players, have been played. Only the winners of each group will advance to the last round.

This final phase will also be played in a league basis with the overall champion clinching a spot in the main 2008 Premier League Snooker competition.

Matchroom Sport chairman Barry Hearn said: "This will be a very exciting Championship.

"The players, venue, staging, cameras and production will all be of the usual highest quality but the distribution will be a completely new phenomenon for sport.

"We are delighted to be partners in such a forward-thinking initiative that could help fund all sorts of new sports leagues around the world."

Simon Denyer, Joint CEO of Premium TV/Inform Group, said: "The launch of Championship League Snooker illustrates how far the internet and our company have come. We have spent recent years helping major rights holders monetise digital rights that have been seen as marginal.

"This shows that the internet can now be the lead medium for some sports and we look forward to a great working relationship with Matchroom and the players."

Matchroom Sport will stage the event to its usual exceptionally high standards while Premium TV/Inform Group will produce all coverage using purpose built internet-based delivery broadcasting equipment.

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Additional points/discussion

Here and here is a bit more information on Premium TV and Inform Group's merger.
Here's Premium TV's take on the new snooker tournament (similar to Matchroom's obviously).

This has to be good news for snooker and snooker professionals who want to play top quality snooker against top professionals and also gives them the ability to earn good money.

I have to say that press release doesn't really explain the format very well. Yes I understand that there will be a qualifying league of 7 players that will presumably be played under shot clock conditions (and this is only a presumption) like the main Premier League tournament. The winner will be entered into the Premier League tournament along with 6 invitees. Then a new qualifying league is created from next 4 highest ranked players from the qualifying tournament plus what I guess would be 3 wildcards as the bottom 2 players are ejected from the league.

What I don't fully understand is how the tournament ends up with 25 players and 7 qualifying groups. I guess this will become clearer as time goes on. I'll try to get some more information from matchroom.

Another interesting development is that the tournament will be shown exclusively live on the internet!! This may well be done through Premium TV/Inform Group's proprietary channels watchandbet.tv, mobilesport.tv and ipsport.tv. So it looks like this could essentially be pay per view snooker via the internet.

Not everybody likes watching TV through the internet and most people's attention span for this kind of viewing is for only the short clips, the kind you would see on YouTube. I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a 50" plasma TV, so I know I can get a pretty good viewing experience through the internet. I dare say most people don't have this kind of set-up yet and watching TV through the internet can still be a bit complicated for the layman which essentially cuts off a huge market for companies that are trying to utilise it. Content I watch is free content in the form of podcasts and up to now I've never considered paying for live streaming content through the internet. I'm still not sure whether or not I'll do it for this new snooker tournament even though I'm a huge snooker fan. It should be interesting to see how successful the concept is. I'm clearly going to have to do some more research! But well done to Barry Hearn for seeing through this new, innovative, and possibly risky concept.

Snooker: Ronnie Wins Again!

Once again Ronnie O'Sullivan has proved to be the Premier League king after defeating John Higgins 7-4 in the final of the PartyBets.com Premier League. He didn't have it so easy this year, his 24 match unbeaten run was broken in the league stages and he conceded 4 frames in the final. This is Ronnie's 4th successive victory in this tournament and looks as unbeatable as Hendry did in the Masters in the 90's.

Ronnie took home £83,000, consisting of a £50,000 winners cheque, £24,000 for frames won in the league stages and £9,000 for 9 centuries. When asked about his lack of tournament victories over the last couple of years, he replied that a "win is a win", and this tournament now ranks as one of the biggest on the snooker circuit. He said that he would rather win this one than the Northern Ireland Trophy or the Malta Cup. It certainly suits his game and temperament.

Ronnie played pretty solidly as did John Higgins, but John's ultimate downfall was the shot clock. He had trouble with it all the way through the tournament but no doubt he will be playing in the premier league next year and should be more accustomed to the format.

Ronnie disposed of an under performing Stephen Hendry in the semi-final and said after the match that he would have to play much better in the final to beat Higgins. Overall, Hendry had a reasonably good Premier League showing that his game is beginning to come back after deserting him for a few years. He could be a force to reckon with in the remaining ranking events this year, ...although at the time of writing he has just been beaten 9-4 by Mark Allen in the UK championships.

Ding had been playing so well that I thought he would overcome Higgins in the semi-final, but Ding didn't show the form he had in the league stages. Higgins' win wasn't just down to Ding playing badly though, it was Higgins' strongest performance under the shot clock which shows his champion qualities in pulling his best snooker out of the bag when it's required the most.

But congratulations to Ronnie, his first tournament victory in 9 months.

Snooker: Premier League

If you've been watching the premier league snooker, you will have seen some really great stuff over the last 10 weeks or so. As it stands now, the group phase is complete with Ding Junhui, Stephen Hendry, Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins going through to the semi-final stage in Aberdeen on the 1st of December. The final is the following day and both the semis and the final will be televised live on Sky Sports. Here's how the table ended up.

Pos	Name	P	W	D	L	Frames W	Frames L	100+	Pts	Money won
1	Ding Junhui	6	4	1	1	25	11	12	9	£37,000
2	Stephen Hendry	6	4	1	1	20	16	3	9	£23,000
3	R. O'Sullivan	6	4	0	2	24	12	9	8	£33,000
4	John Higgins	6	2	2	2	17	19	3	6	£20,000
5	Steve Davis	6	2	1	3	15	21	1	5	£16,000
6	Jimmy White	6	0	3	3	13	23	0	3	£13,000
7	Neil Robertson	6	0	2	4	12	24	2	2	£14,000

In the final matches last night, Robertson played White to see who would come bottom of the group, Ding played Hendry to see who would come top of the group and Higgins played Davis to see who would take the final knockout place.

The Robertson White was a fairly average affair that finished 3-3. Both players were disappointed with their form in the groups stages. White thought he could have won a couple of previous matches when in good positions and Robertson simply never got to grips with the shot clock stating, "I definitely know how long 25 seconds are now!".

Then came the match of the evening, Ding versus Hendry. Ding was absolutely awesome, I think this is the best I've seen him play, and quite possibly just as good as I've ever seen Ronnie O'Sullivan play. Now all he needs to do is to learn how to play left handed! :o)

Ding opened the first 4 frames with breaks of 133, 87 (could easily have been a century), 136 and 138. During these first 4 frames Hendry didn't score a single point and Ding eventually amassed 495 points without a reply. This is a new record beating the old record 494 set by John Higgins against Ronnie O'Sullivan in the 2005 Grand Prix final.

After the first century, Hendry got out of his chair to congratulate Ding, I've never seen this before from Hendry. And after the third frame (I think it was the 3rd frame), Hendry was overheard by the commentary team mentioning that he hadn't potted a ball yet!! After the fourth frame, the cameras caught Hendry staring at the table with a rye smile on his face, shaking his head in disbelief. I caught myself doing the same but I was staring at my 50 inch telly! :o)

In the 5th and 6th frames Ding only managed a 40+ and 50+ break. I don't know, I was expecting greater things! When Hendry finally did manage to pot a ball in the 5th frame, the Scottish crowd went wild, but it didn't last long and Ding eventually won 6-0. Hendry only managed 41 points in the whole match, and many of those points were fouls that Ding had conceded. Not too surprisingly Hendry didn't stick around for an interview after the match. This result is quite important for snooker fans as it means Ding won't face Ronnie in the semi-final. If we get a Ding Ronnie final and they both play to the top of their game, ...it could be absolute cracker!


Top billing was Higgins versus Davis. This was a very important match as it was a fight for the last qualification spot. Higgins has had a very slow start to the premier league and has really struggled adjusting his rhythm to the shot clock. On the other hand, Davis seems to cope with it very well, has had much more experience with it, and generally seems to enjoy the up tempo format. Higgins was one point ahead in the table before the match so only needed a draw to qualify. Davis mention how only needing a draw to qualify should be piece of cake for Higgins, providing no silly mistakes are made and the manager doesn't use a rookie goal keeper... :o) The Scottish crowd certainly enjoyed Davis' remarks, ...obviously referring to England's disastrous match against Croatia in the final group match of England's Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. But back to the snooker, ...it wasn't a great match. Davis made some mistakes which allowed Higgins to stumble to a 3-0 lead. This meant Higgins had qualified. When at 3-0, Higgins seemed to lose concentration and Davis won the next 3 to draw the match.

After a couple of matches, I didn't think Higgins was going to qualify for the knockout phase. But like a true world champion, he managed to pull himself together and drag himself through. Higgins said the public will see a different Higgins in the knockout phase and I think we will too. One thing is for sure, he will have to play much better to beat the likes of Ding, Ronnie and Hendry. His semi final match will be against Ding.

Hendry came third in the group and looks a better player this year with his new cue. However, Ronnie absolutely loves this event and has thrashed Hendry before. I really think it's going to be Ding vs Ronnie final, and with all respect to Hendry and Higgins, I'm kind of hoping so too.

It's worth pointing out that so far Ding has had 12 centuries, 3 more than Ronnie, the next highest number of centuries in the competition is only 3 by Hendry and Higgins!!! I think it was mentioned that there was only 13 in total for the whole competition last year which means Ding has almost single handedly matched that number before playing in the knockout phase. The highest break so far was a magnificent 143 by Steve Davis in Derby, a record with the shot clock. Ding's total prize money so far is £37,000, more than what Maguire took home for winning the Northern Ireland Trophy, a ranking event. Come on WPBSA (or the WSA), pull your finger out!! The matchroom crowd certainly know how to stage a snooker event.

I'm really looking forward to the final weekend, I just know we're going to see some more great snooker!

Snooker: Premier League, The Dolphins

We now finally know who are sponsoring the premier league this year. It looks like partybets.com! It was great to see it under way again, I love the format and the whole feel of the tournament, I find it really refreshing when compared with the traditional tournaments, although don't get me wrong, I love the traditional tournaments too!

Jimmy White and Ding Junhui were the first match of this years partybets.com premier leauge. And it was an excellent match. Ding kept his cool, as did Jimmy and they both performed well. White had breaks 87, 70 and 66 and Ding knocked in two centuries, one of which was a 138, the highest break ever achieved with the shot clock! The match finished 3-3 and I would say Jimmy was the happier of the two. Currently though, Jimmy is really struggling in the qualifying rounds of the major tournaments and this might be our only opportunity to see him on TV. There is a chance that he will get a wildcard at the Masters, I've suggested he shouldn't in the comments for this post here, but on this performance maybe I was wrong.

Ronnie looked his relaxed usual self when playing in the premier league. This format seems to suit him more than most. He only has to play 6 frames and the tournament moves from location to location on a weekly basis. These factors and the shot clock might jazz the tournament up for Ronnie and stop him from losing interest during the matches. At one point Ronnie looked on course to beat Ding's earlier 138 but either didn't know what the highest break was or didn't care. John Higgins didn't look too pleased about losing and didn't give an interview after the match. He seemed to play reasonable well though, just running out of position at important times during the match. In the end, Ronnie took a comfortable 5-1 victory.

Snooker: Premier League Snooker Kicks-Off on Thursday

This years Premier League Snooker starts on Thursday the 6th September. The first matches will be Jimmy White vs Ding Jun Hui and Ronnie O'Sullivan vs John Higgins in Haywards Heath.

It looks as if Betfred are not sponsoring the event this season, contrary to what I suggested in this earlier post. There was someone who suggested this would be the case by commenting on my post, unfortunately he/she commented anonymously so I can't credit him/her with a name! :-) After I saw this comment back at the end of May I contacted Matchroom for the official line on who would be the sponsors. They sent me an email back stating that they were still in negotiations with Betfred, ...but at this point in time, it looks like no agreement was finalised.

I've updated the Snooker Season 2007/2008 calendar with the Premier League dates, venues and who will be playing. Subscribe by clicking here or you can always subscribe at a later date using the Google calendar link in the right hand column at the top of the page.

It looks like all the matches will be broadcast live on Sky Sports!! Great news!!

Snooker: 2007 BetFred Premier League

One of the 8 players featuring in this season's BetFred premier league will be current World Champion, John Higgins. Higgins hasn't played in the premier league for the last 3 seasons, but let's face it, BetFred can't really do without the World Champion!

Ronnie will be returning to defend his title after winning the last 3 leagues. This tournament really suits him and who says he can't win it again. But there are some great quality players there this year, with Higgins, Ronnie, Neil Robertson, Ding Junhui, Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis and Jimmy White.

With the 25 second shot clock, you would think the tournament would favour the naturally flowing players like Ronnie, Robertson, Ding and White. But as shown last year, pretty much all the players can play under this kind of time pressure, ...including Graeme Dott, who has a more measured approach.

For the players that are invited, this tournament can be quite lucrative. In the league stage players will receive £1,000 per frame and £1,000 per century break. The total prize money is a minimum of £226,000.

In the initial league stage, everybody plays everybody with the winner in each match receiving 2 points, and 1 point is awarded to both players in the event of a draw. The top 4 in the league will move into the knockout stage.

All the matches will be played on various nights from September through to December with the knockout stages taking place on the 1st and 2nd of December.

I look forward to this event every year, it really is a refreshing change from snooker-as-we-know-it! Last year Jimmy White threw his cue to the other side of the arena on national TV and we didn't see anything about in the press the next day. And it was the first time the world saw Ding Junhui completely lose it against Jimmy White, throwing his head back against the advertising hoardings and smashing the balls each time he got back to the table. This was a long time before he lost it at the Masters in London earlier this year.

Also, last year, even though Ding qualified to get to the knockout stage he had to pull out because he had committed himself to the Asian Games. Let's hope nothing like that happens this year.

I'll be watching all the matches and commenting on them when I have time, the earliest something will be up will be the following day. All the matches will be shown on Sky as well as other selected channels around the world. If you know of any other channels the league will be shown, please post a comment.

Here's the line-up with their World Rankings:

John Higgins – Scotland (1)
Ronnie O’Sullivan – England (5)
Neil Robertson – Australia (7)
Stephen Hendry – Scotland (8)
Ding Jun-hui – China (9)
Steve Davis – England (15)
Jimmy White – England (60)