World Snooker Tour


The World Snooker Tour is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, first formed in 1982 as the commercial arm of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. It is also the organiser of most of the events throughout the professional circuit, including the prestigious World Snooker Championship.
As more professional tournaments were held outside the British Isles since the 1970s, the "World Snooker" banner was increasingly being used for different tournaments along with the growth of the sport to other countries. The establishment of the World Snooker Association in 1997 introduced a unified branding for the professional game, and it was further revised to its current form in 2020.
Since 2010, the principal stakeholder in World Snooker Ltd is Matchroom Sport, which owns 51 percent of the company; WPBSA, the sport's governing body, owns 26 percent. To compete on the World Snooker Tour, players must be WPBSA members.

Background

The current incarnation of the World Snooker Tour was created in the early 1970s when the WPBSA took over the running of the professional game. At the time of the takeover, in 1971, there were only a handful of professional events to play in, but further events were gradually added throughout the 1970s, and by the end of the decade there were over twenty events on the calendar and snooker was a regular televised fixture. This period in the professional game, since 1969, has come to be known as the "modern era"—when the BBC commissioned Pot Black and the modern-day knock-out format for the World Snooker Championship was introduced.
Outside of the British Isles, Commonwealth nations such as Australia, Canada and South Africa were the only major host countries for snooker tournaments before the 1980s; In a bid to boost popularity in snooker globally, the tournament was extended to the Far East with the likes of China, Thailand and Japan. It would prove to be a success, and Asian countries have been an integral part of the snooker calendar since.

Participation

Historically a player just needed to become a professional member of the governing body to participate in events, which was attained by formal invitation by an existing current member, and this system was eventually replaced by the Pro-Ticket series. The game went open for the 1991–92 season, whereby anyone could apply for professional membership and enter the tournaments. Due to over-subscription, a two-tiered tour structure was adopted for the 1997–98 season: the primary tour—officially now known as the World Snooker Tour but previously known as the Main Tour—with a limited membership, and a secondary tour was established for the rest of the professional membership.

Tournaments and structure

The World Snooker Tour consists of ranking tournaments that contribute to a player's ranking, and invitational events that do not. All players on the tour can enter a ranking event, whereas the entry criteria for an invitational event is often set by the sponsor or broadcaster, and usually excludes many players on the tour. The list of ranking tournaments have expanded throughout the years; there are now around 20 ranking tournaments regularly showing up on the snooker calendar each season.
Ranking tournaments are often played in two stages—a qualification stage and the main draw, usually at different locations. The main draw is most likely to be held at a prestigious venue where audiences can purchase a ticket and watch the players compete. Typically only the main draw is televised, and therefore often carries considerably higher prize money than the qualifiers. Some ranking tournaments also feature amateur players as wildcards in qualifiers, usually through nomination from the regional snooker governing bodies. Examples include the English Partnership for Snooker and Billiards nominating wildcard amateurs to compete in the English Open, Welsh Snooker for Welsh Open, the Saudi Arabian Billiard and Snooker Federation for Saudi Arabian Masters and the WPBSA for the Shoot Out, UK Championship and World Championship.
The current three of the most long-standing and prestigious events are collectively known as the Triple Crown, which have defined the careers of many professional snooker players. Most tournaments are mainly being held in the home nations, whereas tournaments in mainland Europe, China and the Middle East has also gained traction in the past decade. Notable events include:
Blue-filled: Nations that hosted a World Snooker Tour event in 2023-24

The Triple Crown">Triple Crown (snooker)">Triple Crown

  • World Snooker Championship, first held in 1927
  • Masters, first held in 1975
  • UK Championship, first held in 1977

    [Home Nations Series]

  • English Open
  • Welsh Open, first held in 1980 as the Classic
  • Scottish Open, first held in 1981 as the International Open
  • Northern Ireland Open, first held in 1981 as the Northern Ireland Classic
European events
Other countries that have organised world snooker tournaments include Monaco, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Africa, Poland, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and India.
Some events like the Championship League, Champion of Champions and the defunct Premier League are not directly sanctioned by the Tour but still constitute as a part of the professional snooker calendar due to historical reasons.

Change in format

Players traditionally come into ranking events in different rounds based on their world ranking, and the top players in the sport—often the top 16 ranked players—are usually seeded through to the venue stage and do not have to play a qualification match; however, from the 2013–14 season the circuit began to transition to a flat format structure, with all the players starting in the first round. Some tournaments also have an amateur leg that makes it possible for non-members to enter WPBSA events.
Starting from the 2021-22 snooker season, the tour began to transition some of its events back to a seeded format using qualifying rounds. The Home Nations Series was the first set of events to follow this change, where the first round was played as a qualifying round for all non-Top 16 players, with those in the Top 16 — plus local nation wildcards — having their matches held over to the final venue. The UK Championship followed suit from the 2022 edition, which effectively turned the tournament into a near-identical copy of the World Snooker Championship, with the exception being frame length. While some of these changes have been criticised by lower ranked players due to qualifiers often being played without crowds and in cubicles, a reminder to some of the pre-Barry Hearn era, others have praised them, especially the format change for the UK Championship which reverted the tournament to the prestige that it had before the flat-128 draw was imposed upon it.

Qualification

To compete as a professional on the World Snooker Tour, a player must qualify for a place on the tour. At the end of each season, a pre-determined number of players are relegated from the tour based on their performance in ranking tournaments, making way for new professionals to join the tour. Players who retain their place on the tour through their world rankings are only guaranteed a place for one further season.
New professionals join the World Snooker Tour by holding a tour card that guarantees their place on the tour for two consecutive seasons, regardless of ranking. Tour cards can be obtained through various events, such as the tour's own Q School which is held immediately before the start of the new professional season, the second-tier WPBSA Q Tour, and competitions from other affiliated organisations. A limited number of places are also made available to players at the discretion of the governing body through invitational tour cards, first introduced in 2015.
The main tour now regularly takes on around 128 players, with those outside the top 64 on a two-year tour card from either the previous year or the current year. In the 202425 season, four players were granted a tour card from rankings on the one-year list, seven from winning regional competitions, four from the Q Tour, two from the CBSA China Tour, two from the World Women's Snooker Tour, 12 from Q School, and one being granted an invitational tour card—making up the 32 places to join the main tour each season.

PIOS and Q Tour

Following the tour structure revamp from the 199798 season, the top ranked professionals were qualified automatically for the main tour whilst the rest of the membership had to undergo a series of qualifying events. These were only held once per season, and thereafter the main qualification route was via the secondary professional tour. Following the discontinuation of the secondary tour, the promotion places were allocated to the International Open Series —an amateur open tour organised by Pontins—for the 200506 season.
The amateur status of the PIOS event meant that players who had been relegated from the main tour and wished to compete on PIOS had to relinquish their professional membership. This was unpopular because players who relinquished their professional membership would be ineligible to enter the World Snooker Championship, previously open to all professional members including those not competing on the main tour. Another issue was that players could not compete on PIOS whilst also competing on the main tour, meaning that they were unable to safeguard their membership on the main tour by immediately re-qualifying via PIOS. This unpopular contest was discontinued after the 200910 season, with a new secondary tour being brought back in 2018 whom renamed as the Q Tour in 2021.