Filed under: Other Sports, Snooker
There's a determined sporting renaissance underway in Sheffield, though sadly for the steel city's two main tribes, it's taking place on the snooker table rather than on the football pitch.While United and Wednesday continue their headlong plummet down their respective league standings, there is at least one sport that will be thriving in this particular corner of South Yorkshire when it rolls back into town for its annual 17-day residence next month.
Tickets for the 2011 World Championship, hosted as ever by the inimitable Crucible Theatre, have been selling at record levels, further evidence, if any was needed, that snooker remains very much in rude health. To talk of it being in terminal decline has in recent times been to use one of the easiest, though clearly out-dated and in plain terms simply wrong cliches in sport.
There will remain those who forever use the huge viewing figures, and in particular the 18.5 million who remained glued to their sets into the small hours to see Dennis Taylor's thrilling final ball victory over Steve Davis to lift the Crucible crown in 1985 as a stick with which to hit snooker.
They will point to the bottom falling out of the sport's audience in the subsequent 26 years, but in snooker's defence, with the growing prevalence of multi-channel TV over the last quarter of a century, which sports or, for that matter, entertainment programme has managed to maintain such impressive numbers?
It is perhaps only football, which in the mid-80s was at its hooligan-ravaged nadir with armchair figures well below those boasted by the major snooker finals, that has put on viewing figures in that time, largely thanks to the billions poured into the game by Sky.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Ernie Els Fabio Cannavaro Fabio Quagliarella Feliciano Lopez Fernando Torres
No comments:
Post a Comment