The 2024/25 snooker season has already commenced with Ali Carter rising with the primary title final week in Leicester.
The Captain triumphed within the rating occasion model of Championship League Snooker with a 3-1 defeat of Jackson Web page within the last.
It was Carter’s sixth profession rating success, taking him into equal fifteenth on the all-time winners checklist alongside the likes of reigning world champion Kyren Wilson.
Whereas it was a superb achievement and a superb begin to the brand new time period, there will likely be a giant part of snooker followers who wouldn’t have paid a lot discover.
With a monotonous, repetitive, and albeit boring format, Championship League Snooker took 21 days to finish (over a 24-day interval).
There have been moments of pleasure, together with David Gilbert’s magnificent escape from his group in Stage One.
However by and enormous, the event doesn’t supply a lot in the way in which of leisure and is an uninspiring strategy to begin a contemporary marketing campaign.
It’s curious that it has successfully change into a convention to launch a brand new season with this occasion, given the way it hardly generates any publicity in any respect.
Okay, there’s a hole in the summertime schedule and the Championship League can simply fill that void – particularly when it’s so tough to organise venues and broadcasters.
But it appears unusual {that a} sport would readily select to start issues with a whimper, reasonably than with a bang.
Right here then, in no specific order, are 5 potential tournaments that may very well be higher suited to stirring up a right away frenzy with followers.
Champion of Champions
Maybe the obvious higher choice to launch a brand new snooker season is the Champion of Champions.
The Champion of Champions has been a terrific event on the annual schedule since 2013, with Ronnie O’Sullivan a report four-time champion.
The invitation occasion boasts all the most important trophy winners from the earlier 12 months on the calendar.
Staging it initially of the season, reasonably than in its standard mid-campaign slot round November, would assure a lineup of the entire prior season’s extra essential winners.
The lineup would comprise many of the finest gamers on the planet, which is likely to be a simpler strategy to entice supporters again following the post-World Championship break.
Tour Championship
As issues stand, the Tour Championship has change into the common penultimate rating occasion on the schedule.
Nonetheless, the truth that it’s staged simply earlier than the World Championship does depart it open to an anomaly of types.
The Tour Championship’s lineup relies on the one-year rankings, with the highest 12 from that checklist having certified for an absorbing version in Manchester in early-April.
However with the one-year rankings commencing initially of a season, it implies that the large factors which are on supply in Sheffield for the World Championship by no means rely.
One potential strategy to repair this difficulty is to maneuver the Tour Championship to after the World Championship, the place it may act as an ideal strategy to begin a brand new season.
Just like the Champion of Champions, it additionally ensures the involvement of a number of marquee names.
Shanghai Masters
This season, the Shanghai Masters has been moved from its acquainted slot in September to the center of July.
That makes it the second event of the 2024/25 snooker season, and there will likely be many supporters who ignored Championship League Snooker however will likely be returning to observe this competitors.
The Chinese language non-ranking occasion options the highest 16 from the official two-year world rankings checklist, plus the subsequent 4 highest-ranked Chinese language gamers and 4 extra wildcards.
The Shanghai Masters is arguably China’s most interesting event – boasting a hefty prize fund, a superb ambiance, and all the time a superb lineup.
British Open
One constructive side of Championship League Snooker is it ensures that each participant on the World Snooker Tour has the chance to enter.
That, in fact, is the case with all rating occasions, however with the reintroduction of the tiered qualifying system at numerous tournaments this season, the chance for these additional down the rankings to function on the venue phases has probably change into much more restricted.
That doesn’t essentially should be the case with the British Open.
This event is certainly one of solely two on the calendar – the opposite being the Shoot Out – that includes a random, FA Cup-style, draw for every spherical.
An occasion that doesn’t depend on rating lists and which most gamers and followers already take pleasure in, this may very well be an attractive opener.
A global workforce occasion
There hasn’t been a World Cup in snooker since 2019, when the Scottish pairing of John Higgins and Stephen Maguire secured glory in Wuxi.
The reality is that the newer codecs for the World Cup weren’t significantly satisfying, however that doesn’t imply {that a} new association couldn’t be.
The prospect of gamers representing their international locations is usually passion-inducing, and that is an occasion that may very well be staged in several international locations with quite a few choices in mainland Europe particularly.
Don’t desire a World Cup yearly? No downside. Flip it right into a biennial event with a distinct worldwide occasion within the alternating years.
How about including a Ryder Cup impressed occasion between the UK and the Remainder of the World?
That actually can be a extra exhilarating strategy to a begin a brand new snooker season.
Featured picture credit score: WST