| World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association WPBSA |
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| Sport | Snooker and English billiards (professional) |
| Area of jurisdiction | International |
| Formation date | 1968 |
| Headquarters | Bristol, England, Great Britain, United Kingdom |
| President | Jason Ferguson |
| Official website | |
| www.worldsnooker.com | |
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, often abbreviated to the WPBSA, founded in 1968 and based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom is the governing body of professional snooker and English billiards. It sets the sports' rules, organises tournaments and the pro-am and pro tours, and engages in various promotional activities.
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The WPBSA operates as both the professional governing body of the two cue sports, alongside its amateur counterpart in the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF), as well as a trade association promoting snooker and billiards more generally generally.
Its subsidiary, the World Snooker Association, is responsible for running and administering snooker's main ranking circuit events. These include the Shanghai Masters, World Open, UK Championship, Welsh Open, China Open and the World Snooker Championship. The latter is one of the most famous and popular events on the sporting calendar, with a global audience which runs into hundreds of millions. Staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield since 1977, it is the richest, most prestigious and most important tournament in snooker. The subsidiary is often referred to informally as simply World Snooker, although this is more properly the title of its website.
The WPBSA is also responsible for organising invitational events such as the Masters. The head office is based in Bristol, England. Now Jason Ferguson appointed WPBSA Chairman.[1] The organisation also determines the rules and regulations of snooker, including disciplinary matters.
The organisation was founded in 1968.[2] Prior to the formation of the WPBSA, the world governing body of both snooker and English billiards was the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC).[3]
In recent years, World Snooker has been successful in promoting the sport in China, snooker's biggest growth area. Both the Shanghai Masters and China Open (in Beijing) are fully funded by promoters in China; likewise the Jiangsu Classic, an invitation event. Further tournaments are expected to be established as the sport continues to thrive in the Far East. In 2008, World Snooker made inroads into the Middle East by staging the first ever ranking event in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
World Snooker owns and runs a snooker training academy in Sheffield, which is a coaching centre for talented players from the UK and overseas. Top professionals such as Ding Junhui and Peter Ebdon use it as a base, and it also houses the Paul Hunter Scholarship, which is awarded annually to a promising junior player.
In 2008, World Snooker launched the HotShots campaign, which is aimed at boosting the popularity of the sport among a younger audience, by raising the profiles of emerging talents such as Mark Selby, Mark Allen and Jamie Cope.
World Snooker also has a charitable arm to help players who have fallen on hard times. In 2008 this was investigated for accounting irregularities and the apparent involvement in the decision-making process of World Snooker officials.[4] The decision to decline an application for a grant from Chris Small, a former player who retired due to Ankylosing spondylitis, was also criticised by several of the game's leading figures.[5] World Snooker's commercial interests are managed by IMG, who also own Transworld International, who produce the game's coverage for the BBC.
The body has received much criticism in the late 2000s. John Higgins has been particularly vocal in his opinion that World Snooker has not done enough to promote the game in new territories, particularly in Eastern Europe. The rival World Series of Snooker was launched by a consortium including Higgins in 2008.[6]
Controversy also occurred when World Snooker scheduled the 2008 Bahrain Championship on dates which clashed with Premier League Snooker matches scheduled five months earlier with World Snooker approval. This causes four leading players (coincidentally including Higgins) to miss the Bahrain event and consequently lose ranking points - Higgins called the clash "laughable"[7] Premier League organiser Barry Hearn commented that "I am very disappointed and I can't understand why World Snooker hasn't discussed dates with us", while Higgins and his manager Pat Mooney threatened legal action over the ranking points situation.[8] In response, World Snooker referred to the Premier League being a 'Third-party promoter', noted that they run events on 11 out of 13 weeks between September and November, and (ignoring the threat of legal action if the players involved broke their Premier League contract) declared that "our members have the freedom of choice to pick which tournaments to participate in". The idea of scheduling the event in free time in January or March, or arranging it in advance of Premier League scheduling, was not mentioned.[9]