Televised Snooker Bias?

[Amill64]

this might be a tad controversial but here goes 😂

So I watched the televised snooker all day today and here’s the realisation I had.....I watched Ronnie O’ Sullivan play twice and I seen Judd Trump play twice, both against opponents they were likely to beat (Walden beat Ronnie I know haha). Is this much exposure placed on these two damaging the sport, I understand they are crowd favourites and that’s going to get more casual viewers watching, but in my opinion there were far more competitive matches they could have shown instead, I can’t see how new talent will break through with it being this way.....Ronnie, Trump, Selby, Robertson and Higgins all need to be knocked out of the tournament before we get to see the future stars like Zhou Xintong, Luca Brecel and Thepchia Un nooh Etc.

would a better approach be:

seed #7 vs seed #11.
is prioritised over
seed #2 vs seed #21
as the accumulation of the seed numbers is lower in the former

To sum this up is variety of players on the match table better than just the usual names week in and week out?

look forward to hearing your opinions...

[cueman]

This has been discussed before. The problem you have when they put the likes of Ronnie and other popular players on an outside table, because the match arena has more seating, the fans will flock to watch Ronnie and end up with hardly any fans watching the TV and can also cause problems controlling atmosphere.

The likes of brecel and xintong despite their recent success is not continued success. You could have an argument to put any player who's won a title this season as priority, over say trump, but then trump's success over the past few seasons cannot be ignored so would be unfair on him. It's a balancing act but also based on TV audience. If you don't put trump or O'Sullivan on, TV ratings will go down a lot, especially as they are the biggest draw in the game right now.

As for mention of thepchaya, he may be entertaining to watch but he's hardly a future star. He's also very unlikely to stop on tour at present unless he qualifies for the crucible or finishes the season strongly.

[Odrl]

I definitely think more common sense decisions should be made, rather than sticking to the highest ranked players all the time. I don't mind them showing Trump vs Slessor, or whatever, if there is no other great choice, but not when there is a more interesting match available.

For instance, the one extreme I always remember is the 2015 German Masters. Somehow Mark Allen and Mark Williams got paired in the 1st round, just months after playing arguably the match of the season in the SF of the International Championship. But it wasn't televised because it absolutely had to be O'Sullivan vs Mark Davis instead. It's ridiculous.

[DeanH]

... common sense decisions ...

!LOL LOL LOL!

thanks for that Odrl - I need a laugh today

[trains]

Yes i’d like to see the known snooker broadcasters become more and more obsolete thanks to bet365 and other companies that make available live streams , i think some viewers and the less initiated can get lulled into thinking there’s something overly worthwhile about what most of these broadcasters and commentators say , there isn’t , just enjoy it yourself on betting sites where the choice is often unlimited with no bias.

[Amill64]

Some good responses with valid points like the audience wanting to see the big names, welsh open just finished and yet again another non top16 player won it with little coverage of how he managed it (not that I go out of my way to watch Joe Perry play), personally I prefer the masters and tournaments like that where there is one match on at a time for this reason, think I’m just gonna stick to the advice from trains and stick to watching matches through betfair, can’t stand the same forced conversations in the studio anymore where it’s always the go to speech like “he will be disappointed being 3-1 down going into the interval.......the interval has come at the right time for him to reset his concentration and get his cueing arm going on the practice table blah blah blah....”


anyway thanks guys this thread was alittle rant I needed to get off my chest 😂

[vmax]

This has been discussed before. The problem you have when they put the likes of Ronnie and other popular players on an outside table, because the match arena has more seating, the fans will flock to watch Ronnie and end up with hardly any fans watching the TV and can also cause problems controlling atmosphere..

Also the likes of Ronnie & co will have to put up with slower cloths and tighter pockets than the main table which has been set up for big breaks for the tv audience to seduce them into thinking that snooker today is so much better than it was in the past.
I go back to Ronnie's last world title played in humid august when the tables were slow and balls were kicking and matches were close and exciting because players were dragged down by the conditions.

That's my rant and glad to have gotten it off my chest.

[DeanH]

Also the likes of Ronnie & co will have to put up with slower cloths and tighter pockets than the main table which has been set up for big breaks for the tv audience to seduce them into thinking that snooker today is so much better than it was in the past.
I go back to Ronnie's last world title played in humid august when the tables were slow and balls were kicking and matches were close and exciting because players were dragged down by the conditions.

That's my rant and glad to have gotten it off my chest.

[mikee]

Also the likes of Ronnie & co will have to put up with slower cloths and tighter pockets than the main table which has been set up for big breaks for the tv audience to seduce them into thinking that snooker today is so much better than it was in the past.
I go back to Ronnie's last world title played in humid august when the tables were slow and balls were kicking and matches were close and exciting because players were dragged down by the conditions.

That's my rant and glad to have gotten it off my chest.

I’m pretty sure the match table is set up to standard template ,it’s just looked after better ,newer cloth etc .The 80’s up to the start of the 91/92 season the pockets were huge compared to today , differant shape too , they have remained pretty consistent for 30 years but anything cut by hand will have slight variations ..Ultra fast thin cloths and table heaters have made the game easier .

[Amill64]

will have to put up with slower cloths and tighter pockets than the main table which has been set up for big breaks for the tv audience to seduce them into thinking that snooker today is so much better than it was in the past.

I would be interested to know if this is something that could be verified, could be some statistics about number of century breaks/average frame time etc compared to the other tables

In my opinion the overall standard of snooker has improved but the atmosphere has vanished a fair bit, there’s a tournament starting practically every Monday so would be surprised to know if the players are even keeping up to date with what tournament they are playing in especially when they were at Milton Keynes last year lol