WPBSA chairman admits concerns as players complain about World Snooker Tour events

A number of players have spoken out against the tiered format of many tournaments on the World Snooker Tour this season, and World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) chairman Jason Ferguson admits he does have concerns.

Snooker’s biggest tournament, the World Championship, has long been a tiered system as the top 16 in the rankings go straight to the Crucible and 16 more players come through qualifying to join them.

When Barry Hearn took charge of the game in 2010, most of the other tournaments reverted to flat draws, which see all 128 professionals come in at round one.

Since then, and with Hearn retiring from his position as WST chairman, more and more tournaments have reverted to the tiered draws, largely for commercial reasons as broadcasters and promoters know they will have the biggest names at the main venues and TV stages of events.

It has caused everyone outside of the top 16 to spend a lot of the season playing behind-closed-doors qualifiers at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester and those failing to make it through qualifying then have periods of inactivity as the main stages are played, sometimes weeks or months after the qualifiers are held.

Amateur player Peter Devlin, who is looking to return to the professional circuit, sparked some debate on the matter as he also pointed out the issue it creates with the ranking system.

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A top 16 player can win one match at the venue and earn more money and ranking points than a player who has won three games to make it to that stage.

Devlin posted on social media: ‘Having to win 3-4 matches to get to the big names, then lose to them and they earn more points than you is crazy in my book.

‘People give the argument that if you win multiple matches to qualify, then you are sharp and ready to take on the bigger names. That might be the case, but for some reason they decide to play the main event months after the qualifiers have finished, so all momentum is completely squashed.’

Former world champion Shaun Murphy replied and agreed that tiered draws are unfair, writing: ‘Anything but a flat draw isn’t fair in my opinion. Everyone in at round one is of course how it should be. However, 128 players in at round one in every event causes a logistical nightmare for WST.

‘What’s the answer? Possible solutions could include less players on tour or shorter matches. Word on the grapevine is that the players want a return to a flat draw and a points based ranking list.’

Three-time world champion Mark Williams added: ‘They tried the flat draw system for years, it obviously don’t work. I actually agree with you, get the number of players (whatever number they can do) flat draw everyone at the venue, tour will have to be cut to accommodate it. Whichever system they do players will moan.

Three-time ranking event winner Gary Wilson suggested some tiered draws are fine, but not for the majority of events, saying: ‘Even a few seasons ago with just the big events being tiered as your “reward” if you like, for all the matches won in the other flat draw events was fine. You understood it from a commercial aspect too. Now though, it’s went too far and the game’s gone back 20 years.’

Ferguson, the chairman of the sport’s governing body the WPBSA, feels there should be a balance between tiered and flat draws, telling Metro: ‘Debate is great about tour structures. If you want my personal opinion, it’s not necessarily an opinion of the company, but my personal opinion is a balance is correct. I don’t want to see all events going to tiered structures. I still want to see some events retain open draw, flat draw structures where talent can progress quite easily.

‘It works both ways. Sometimes you draw Judd Trump in the first round and get knocked out and everybody says, well, that’s not fair. But sometimes a player can get on a good run and find their form.’

Qualifiers for multiple events have been played back-to-back at times this season, meaning that players failing to progress then have big gaps in their calendars later in the campaign.

Ferguson says this is a concern with the tiered system, explaining: ‘The other thing about flat draws is less qualifiers and it does create less downtime for players. One of my concerns with this structure is the amount of downtime that certain amounts of the membership are now feeling.

‘We’re looking long and hard at that at the WPBSA in terms of the structure of the tour and whatever else needs to happen to make sure players can keep busy.

‘The problem with qualifiers after qualifiers is it’s very easy to get on a downward spiral. You lose one close match and you’ve played well, you’re still going downhill quickly. Before you know it, you’re thinking about saving your season rather than winning events. It’s a different mindset when you’ve got lots of qualifying rounds and I absolutely get it. I remember it well from my own career and I don’t like many qualifiers one after the other. I really don’t like to see that.

‘So, I think it’s a work in progress. Everything is under review at all times. There is an upside to that kind of structure. The upside is that the players at venues will experience a better venue, a better structure to the event at the final stages. That helps promote the events better for broadcasters and so on.

‘The China Open is a great example. 32 players turning up, 5 Star hotel, we’ve got chefs on hand cooking for everybody. It was absolute luxury for everybody. Cars laid on for everybody. And the venue rigged with two tables. That means that you’ve got more space, you’ve got more attention and it means you can broadcast every match off two tables as well. So there are upsides and downsides to tier structures and flat structures.’

A concern for may outside of the top 16 this season is that the elite group of players have to win far fewer matches to qualify for the 32-player World Grand Prix, 16-player Players Championship and 12-player Tour Championship later in the campaign, which are all ranked events.

Recent British Open winner Jak Jones told Metro: ‘I think for the top 16 players, they would have to have an absolute disaster of a season to fall out. It’s virtually impossible, especially with the Players’ Series now. That was brought in in a predominantly flat draw format. For that to be still there now, with the tiered system coming in, it doesn’t work, in my opinion, because the top 16 can’t fail to be in the Grand Prix. They virtually can’t fail to be in the Players’ Championship.

‘I feel like, and a lot of players feel like, the tour is almost being split between the top 16 and the rest of the tour.’

Ferguson accepts that this a concern, especially as the smaller field Players Series events mean more time without competing in the second half of the season for the majority of the tour.

‘The players series for me, that is a concern. You do look at the ranking system. You look at the tour structure and lots of players are playing in qualifiers. There is a possibility that there is going to be a large gap in the calendar for a number of players. There is a period of time there where only 32, 16, 12 players are playing.

‘What we want, obviously, at the WPBSA, is all our members to play all the time. Whether that’s events run by us, World Snooker or anybody else, we just want to see our players competing. That’s our motto, is to build a bigger sport for everybody.’

The ranking system has also come under fire from players, with Judd Trump and Mark Selby calling for a points-based method rather than prize money, which is the current set up.

Trump and Selby are among those who argue that the biggest prizes in the sport have too much impact on the rankings and a well-timed good run is better rewarded than consistency over a longer period.

Ferguson says the rankings are being looked at, explaining: ‘The WPBSA has engaged mathematical experts who do rankings in other sports to work on ranking structures and look at the format today, comparing that to a point-based systems.

‘Depending on what structure you have for the events affects that as well. What’s your seeding structure? What’s your qualifying structure? All these things affect the ranking list. These things have to remain under review, and we at WPBSA have obviously got influence over the rankings. So it is our job to ensure that review comes to a to a head and then make some decisions based on that review.

‘The thing is, things change. We had a points-based system before, it wasn’t perfect. We’ve had a money system and people have enjoyed that for a long time. You start to look at the weight of large events and what effects large events have. There’s been incidents where a player wins something, they can probably miss a few events and stay at the top, and those kind of questions get raised.

‘The counter argument is you could win something and stay at the top for a while and everybody will say fair play, he won the biggest event in the world. So it works both ways.

‘But it constantly remains under review at the WPBSA, the ranking system, and I can tell you now we have the best experts in the business looking at it. We also have the players’ body, WPBSA Players, looking at it. If a change is necessary, then we would make those recommendations for a change. But it would be based on facts.’

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