Snooker History
The game of Snooker, some say, began on a rainy and bored day in Jubbulpore in India in 1875.
At that time, the officers of the Devonshire regiment would spend many hours around the billiard table as the monsoon lashed down. Boredom was the order of the day for those young men and one such officer, Sir Neville Chamberlain, started to experiment.
Various games, such as pyramids, life pool and black pool, were devised involving more than the traditional three billiard balls. These variations started to catch on and the inventive Chamberlain started to add various colored balls until a basic form of Snooker was evolved.
That game included 15 reds, yellow, green, pink and black. Snooker was finally born when blue and brown were added in later years. Then, during the 1880s word filtered back to England about this new game. Top Billiard player, John Roberts, journeyed to India in 1885 and was introduced to Chamberlain, and snooker was on the way.
Snooker grew and grew, though Joe Davis earned just 6.10s.0d. For his initial first World Championship win in 1927.
That was a far cry from 2000 when Mark Williams banked 240,000 for capturing the Embassy World Championship trophy on a tournament circuit worth over 4.5 million.
Snooker has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time, to a stage where it can rightly claim to be a major internationally televised and participation sport.
Times have changed from those early days and, if it had not rained in India, who knows what might have happened.
Snooker nowadays
The Game of Snooker is second only to football in terms of television popularity with viewers in the United Kingdom.
There were more than 250 snooker programmes shown throughout the 1999-2000 season, which means The Game of Snooker is on television more often than Eastenders or Coronation Street.
Televised tournaments generated a cumulative viewing audience of 350 million in the United Kingdom alone.
Around 32 million people - more than 50% of the United Kingdom population - tuned in to watch snooker during the course of the season.
Seven events, six of which were terrestrial and one satellite, commanded coverage totalling 356 hours and 27 minutes.
There were 86,573 seconds of clear sponsor exposure from television and the national press generated 1,525 brand mentions.
Seven tournaments produced a total media value of 7,579,226. Television achieved 6,510,724 (85.9%) and press 1,068,502 (14.1%).
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