Every spring Sheffield is transformed as the daffodils, crocuses and bluebells come into bloom. Nestled within the Peak District and sitting at the confluence of five rivers — the Don, the Sheaf, the Rivelin, the Loxley and the Porter — the industrial hub formerly known as the Steel City now sells itself as the Outdoor City, the greenest in the UK, boasting more trees than people, where walkers, runners, mountain bikers and climbers come for thrills, views and solace.
For many, however, the main draw is indoors. For 17 days at the end of April and the start of May, the Outdoor City becomes the Snooker City, as more than 40,000 fans travel from across the world to pack into the city’s Crucible Theatre and witness the magic on the green baize up close.
The Crucible has been the home of snooker ever since the World Championship, which began in 1927, found a permanent base there in 1977. It has been the scene of the sport’s most dramatic moments — Alex “Hurricane” Higgins’s vodka and orange-fuelled victory in 1982; Dennis Taylor beating Steve Davis on the last black — the tightest final ever — in 1985; Ronnie O’Sullivan potting the fastest 147 break in history (5 minutes and 8 seconds) in 1997…
Today the Crucible’s capacity of just 980 spectators per session means the sums no longer add up. Last year the sports promoter Barry Hearn was confronted by fans outside the Crucible begging him not to take the World Championship to China or Saudi Arabia. “Listen,” Hearn said, “I’ll go wherever I like.”
Snooker is now a global sport. Many of the rising stars come from China, where the appetite for the game is huge. There are 1,200 snooker clubs in Beijing and a further 1,500 in Shanghai, compared with about 700 in England. In Sheffield the Ding Junhui Academy, an 18-table club where professional and amateur players can practise, is named after the 38-year-old Chinese current world No 9 — the first Asian player ever to reach the finals of the World Championship and one of the sport’s most famous figures. Junhui’s 2016 final was watched by 210 million people in China — he lost to England’s Mark Selby.
Some of the sport’s biggest names are critical of the Crucible. Last year the seven-times world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, 49, said the tournament would be “done properly” if it moved to China or Saudi Arabia. “I know at the Crucible you get nice tea there, you might get lasagne… But that’s about it,” he told The Sun. The 30-year-old Hossein Vafaei of Iran, ranked 24 in the world, was more scathing: “History is very important but nobody invests any money in this historical venue,” he said. “If you walk around the Crucible it smells really bad. I’m honest. Everything is so bad.”
Has the Crucible really had its day? What will it mean for snooker, and for Sheffield, to move the Worlds elsewhere? Hearn, 76, admits it would be like “moving the tennis out of Wimbledon”. For Sheffield the tournament brings in about £3 million a year to the local economy. Yet Hearn is not in the market for nostalgia. He is president of Matchroom Sport, which owns a controlling stake in the World Snooker Tour (WST), the company responsible for hosting the tournament. WST’s deal with the Crucible ends in 2027 — the 100th anniversary of the championship. What happens after that is uncertain.
A venue born out of chance
Built in 1971 with Arts Council funding, the Crucible was created not with snooker in mind but to replace the ageing Sheffield Playhouse. In 1977 it was simply good luck that a woman named Carole Watterson saw a play there and mentioned to her husband, Mike, an amateur snooker star who later turned professional, that it would be a perfect venue to stage the sport. The theatre’s “thrust stage”, flanked by the audience on three sides, meant spectators could watch from all angles, up close.
Mike Watterson saw an opportunity. He asked the theatre’s manager if he could rent the space for £6,600 for two weeks, and made a bid to the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) to host that year’s World Championship there, guaranteeing them £17,000 from the tournament. Prior to that the championship was nomadic, first held in 1927 at Thurston’s Hall in Leicester Square, central London. The year before the move to the Crucible it was held across two venues — Middlesbrough Town Hall and Wythenshawe Forum in Manchester.
For some, the start of the modern era of snooker was the switch to the Crucible. For others it was the reintroduction of knockout rounds in the 1969 World Championship. While there was little TV coverage of that event, snooker’s popularity got a boost the same year from Pot Black, a televised tournament commissioned by David Attenborough, then the controller of BBC2, to showcase the new colour TV technology.
The BBC began broadcasting full daily coverage of the championship at the Crucible in 1978. But as snooker grew in popularity, it outgrew Watterson. In 1983 the WPBSA told him they’d no longer need his services as a promoter — he described the loss of the tournament as like losing a child. He died of pneumonia, aged 76, in 2019.
In the meantime, new gods of snooker were emerging. Hearn was 27 years old when, in 1975, he met an 18-year-old snooker prodigy called Steve Davis. Davis spent his weekends playing on the tables of Hearn’s snooker halls in Romford, Essex. Recognising his talent, Hearn became the teenager’s friend, then his manager. He paid Davis £25 a game and nicknamed him “the Nugget”, because “you could put your case of money on him and you knew you were going to get paid”. Within six years Davis was world champion. When he first lifted the trophy at the Crucible in 1981, beating Doug Mountjoy of Wales, Hearn was by his side.
Born on a council estate in 1948 in Dagenham, Hearn made his early fortune through property development and buying up snooker halls like the one Davis played in. After founding his promotions company, Matchroom Sport, in 1982, Hearn worked with some of the sport’s biggest stars — Davis, Terry Griffiths, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Neal Foulds, Jimmy White, Cliff Thorburn and Ronnie O’Sullivan — and appeared in the video for the Chas & Dave song Snooker Loopy in 1986. In 2021 he was awarded an OBE for his services to sport.
“The Crucible has been such an important part of my personal life,” Hearn says. “Steve winning the World Championship there in 1981 changed my life. I feel I owe the sport something because of that. And it is an amazing venue for atmosphere. But it’s too bloody small and it’s out of date.”
It’s easy to feel charmed by Hearn, who tells me to ring him any time I want and calls me “darling”. In another conversation he’s hoarse and coughing — worrying, given he has survived two heart attacks, the latest in 2020. But he’s fine — I’ve caught him, he explains, in the middle of an impromptu sing-song. He jokes about not being able to grow old gracefully.
He tells me Matchroom can only sell about 800 seats a session at the Crucible after looking after sponsors, media and friends and family passes for the players. Last year the venue sold 42,000 tickets over the course of the championship. Worldwide, 500 million people watched it on TV. “Frankly,” Hearn says, “I could sell thousands more per session.” Over the 17 days of the championship, which this year takes place from April 19 to May 5, there are three sessions a day; two on final day. Spectators pay between £49.50 and £126.50 for tickets, with front row hospitality tickets starting at £401.50.
“I think the Crucible as it stands is dead in the water,” Hearn says. He wants dramatic changes from the city council — perhaps a new venue that can seat up to 3,000 people — and has given them an ultimatum to resolve the situation or lose the competition after 2027. “Because you can’t make it any bigger,” he says of the venue. “You can’t get any more seats in. And, although the facilities could be improved backstage, you’re not going to start adding proper hospitality suites because there just isn’t the space. Never mind it could do with a coat of paint and some electrical work ”
Last year the Telegraph reported that plans were in place between Hearn and the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, the government department that regulates entertainment in Saudi Arabia, to create a purpose-built “Billardrome” arena in Sheffield to keep the World Championship there beyond 2027. Hearn told a podcast that he’d be happy if the Crucible was knocked down and replaced with the “state of the art” venue he had in mind.
Snooker, steel and panto dames
When I visited the theatre on a slate grey morning last September, it seemed a far more industrious place than Hearn would have us believe. The venue is a functioning theatre — part of the biggest theatrical complex outside London. It is flanked by two other venues, the Playhouse and the Lyceum, which together make up Sheffield Theatres.
On my visit the set for Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was being built, followed by Heathers: The Musical. Christmas panto season is the busiest period — Snow White was the 2024 offering at the Lyceum, starring Coronation Street’s Catherine Tyldesley as the Wicked Queen.
“We have two anchors — Christmas and snooker,” says Bookey Oshin, deputy chief executive of Sheffield Theatres. Losing one of those anchors would destabilise not just the theatre but the equilibrium of the city. The World Championship “transforms the city”, she says. “When I started working here people were, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s where snooker happens.’ It is a massive thing for Sheffield, but also for the country.”
There might be snooker without the Crucible, in other words, but Sheffield would not be the same without snooker.
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John Bates, 50, the Crucible’s operations director, likes to watch as fans stop in front of the arena and take photographs. “You can see they’re on a bit of a pilgrimage. And when they come in, it’s a wow moment,” he says. Up-and-coming players are also in awe of the place. “I’ve seen them walking around just gazing. It’s breathtaking.”
During the tournament up to 200 contractors from 30 companies will be on site every day. “Everything’s done here,” says Bates, who has worked on the World Championship for 14 years. The “everything” he’s talking about includes hundreds of miles of cables, 1,250kg snooker tables and a live commentary box that’s constructed especially for the event. This is a labour of love for him. He remembers watching as a child when Higgins triumphed in 1982, and how the Belfast-born star took his daughter into his arms and wept. He tells me how the Crucible’s first artistic director, Colin George, had wanted the thrust stage, which had been pioneered by the designer Sir Tyrone Guthrie in the late 1940s, to create intimacy between the audience and actor.
It’s the same intimacy that Hearn says renders the venue obsolete. The adaptable stage descends and creates what Bates calls a “cauldron effect”, with a 3D sound system for the World Championship. The supposedly outdated space heats from below and above, allowing the team precise control of the temperature during matches.
“The team works incredibly hard because they love it,” Bates says. “It’s a passion thing. You can go into the sandwich shops down here and they’ll ask, ‘John, when does it start?’ as they’re wrapping up my order. And it’s the time of year when they can really make their money as well.”
Who will save the city?
Brent Higginbottom runs Allied Snooker Club, above a Sainsbury’s in Sheffield city centre. It has been open for 30 years but membership has never recovered from the hit it took during the pandemic, when members dwindled from 2,000 to just 500. Some of those playing on his ten tables are club members but others are guests (or, Higginbottom says, just people who want to drink at the bar after the pubs close). On Tuesday and Thursday mornings there are special pensioner days, with reduced fees and free tea and coffee.
“We don’t seem to get any younger players at all, really,” Higginbottom says, adding that other clubs have had the same experience. When the club does thrive, however, is during the two weeks of the World Championship, when visitors from Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere pop in to play. In 2024 the tournament’s winner, the English player Kyren Wilson, was filmed by a TV crew at the club the week before play started.
Research from Sheffield Hallam University published in 2017 found that hosting the World Championship had boosted the city’s economy by £100 million in the 40 years since 1977. “It goes beyond the building and the local cafés or bars,” says Tom Bird, the chief executive of Sheffield Theatres. “We think it’s a local issue but it’s a national issue too.”
• Rod Liddle: Crucible has faults but moving snooker would be blow to UK and north
The steel industry has, since the 14th century, defined the area and is still worth £7 billion a year to the local economy, employing more than 39,000 people. But steel production has become, like all industries, more automated. Jobs are declining and employment opportunities have moved away from manual labour and towards engineering. The history of the city is rich, but its future is less certain.
In September last year the council received a grant of £65,000 from Historic England to help preserve Sheffield’s heritage with a number of regeneration projects. The money will go towards six “conservation areas” deemed culturally important across the city — but the Crucible is not mentioned specifically.
Nor is it clear if the theatre will benefit from Sheffield city council’s Heart of the City programme, which has earmarked £470 million to regenerate the city. Since 2017 it has been focused on flexible co-working spaces, “pocket parks” and bringing in new retailers.
The local council is tight-lipped on the future of the snooker. “Sheffield city council and World Snooker Tour are longstanding partners,” says the council in a statement. “We are in regular dialogue about the World Snooker Championship beyond 2027. As this is a commercial arrangement, neither party are able to comment further on ongoing working discussions.”
Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, also declined to comment.
The draw of Saudi Arabia
If the UK government seems unable or unwilling to intervene, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport has no such qualms. As with boxing and increasingly darts — the other key sports promoted by Matchroom — the allure of Riyadh’s glitz, glamour and prize money is enticing. Tyson Fury reportedly earned £78 million from the heavyweight boxing match he lost in Riyadh against Oleksandr Usyk last May, while Anthony Joshua is said to have made £39 million in his March 2024 bout against Francis Ngannou. The explosion of darts, meanwhile, is considered peculiarly British, yet Saudi Arabia wants to host the sport’s main event. The problem? The World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace is a boozy affair and Saudi Arabia has an alcohol ban. In December Hearn gave the Saudis an ultimatum. “I asked them a simple question,” he told TalkSport. “Can we have alcohol? And they said no. I said, well, then you can’t have the darts.”
Snooker, however, is less raucous — it has certainly changed since its hard-drinking, chain-smoking 1980s heyday.
Speaking on the eve of the inaugural Saudi Masters snooker event last August, Hearn tells me that when all the seats sold out, the minister for sport simply added more. Players competed in the Green Halls, a 4,500-seat arena within a huge complex in Riyadh. Prize money was set at nearly £2.5 million — about the same as the World Championship. O’Sullivan and Judd Trump, currently ranked fourth and first in the world respectively, appeared in a joint press conference, saying the facilities were the best they had seen.
“That’s the quandary we’re in,” Hearn says. “The players on one hand love the Crucible, although some are very critical about the facilities. But a lot of them are always wanting increased prize money — and that has to come from somewhere.”
Today O’Sullivan spends much of his time not in the UK but in China and Saudi Arabia. He runs a snooker academy in Riyadh as well as offering online courses in English and Chinese. “I think the tournaments we travel to in Asia and Saudi Arabia are different,” he told the Daily Mail last year, after signing a three-year ambassadorial deal with Riyadh Season, an annual festival of culture and sport held in the city, and promoted by Matchroom’s chairman, Eddie Hearn, Barry’s 45-year-old son. “A lot more things are laid on for you,” O’Sullivan said. “You don’t have to worry about food because there is a banquet in the afternoon and the evening.”
“The way you get treated as a snooker player in China and Saudi is completely different from the way you’re treated back in the UK,” agrees Gary Wilson, 39, a previous winner of the Scottish and Welsh Opens, currently ranked 18th in the world. “You’re more like a footballer.” He says the Crucible is still “the dream arena for a lot of players”, but his gut feeling is that live snooker will eventually leave the UK. The popularity of snooker in China is already well established, with the China Open and the most recent World Women’s Championship being held there (the current women’s champ is 21-year-old Bai Yulu, from Shaanxi). Riyadh’s interest in the sport, comparatively, is less established — but newer, shinier and more lucrative.
Show me the money
“It all comes down to money,” Hearn says. “It’s a horrible word, money, isn’t it? But we have to live in the real world. The players want more prize money, the sport’s in a good place and we have competition to stage the World Championship.”
Another solution Hearn presents is for the championship to be held in different countries, akin to the Olympics. “Are we really a global sport or not?” he asks. “I can think of at least eight cities in China that would mortgage their back teeth to get it. And I know Saudi and Qatar, the Bahrainis — they’d all be bidding.” For Hearn, Qatari and Saudi interest means prize money could rise to as much as £10 million for the world champion. “Saudi haven’t written me an offer or anything like that,” he adds. “But we’ll be ready to talk if Sheffield can’t come up with a definitive plan.”
When it comes to accusations of “sports washing” — autocratic regimes hosting glitzy sporting events to divert attention from their human rights records — Hearn says it’s not a priority for him. “I don’t think it’s a role of mine in sport while our government continually trades with these entities. I can’t see why sportsmen and women can’t improve their lives by similarly trading. I’m not defending anything, but I also think it’s not really my business.”
Whose business is it then? The WPBSA, of which Hearn was chairman in 2009-10, declined to comment. As did the World Snooker Tour, which sets ticket prices for tournaments and counts Hearn as a majority stakeholder.
In late March, Hearn tells me he hasn’t yet had a proposal from Sheffield council. “We know they’re not awash with money, so it’s going to be very tough for them. But I’ve given up trying to predict politicians. I don’t see too much common sense in anything at the moment.” He adds: “Only an idiot keeps his head in the sand and carries on doing what he’s always done because he’s always done it.”
