One of the first additions to the tournament calendar was the recently-concluded IBSF-ACBS World Snooker Team Cup in Doha, which was won by the Indian team of Manan Chandra and Pankaj Advani, who took home the winners’ cheque of USD15,000.
The runners-up, Pakistan’s Mohamed Asif and Babar Masih earned USD7,000 for their efforts. The $60,000 tournament was the first of the three more tournaments that are in the pipeline this year. These three tournaments – for individual players – will be held in Qatar, China and India.
The idea, al-Khayarin told Gulf Times, was to offer “more tournaments, prize money, media coverage to the players”.
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), as the name suggests, governs the professional side of snooker, while IBSF is the governing federation for the amateur side of the game.
World Confederation of Billiards Sport (WCBS) is the umbrella body for all cue sports with Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB) for carom/carambole and World Pool-Billiards Association (WPA) for pocket billiards, and IBSF and WPBSA. WCBS’ goal is to lead cue sports into the Olympic Games in future.
Last year, WPBSA cancelled an MoU with IBSF. The 2013 MoU, according to a statement released by the latter in August 2017, was “to co-operate and establish World Snooker Federation (WSF) as a representative of snooker in the World Confederation of Billiard Sports (WCBS)”.
The IBSF statement added: “After almost four years, WSF could not form a legal status for snooker. We were expecting
WSF to be a legal world confederation.”
The severing of ties meant that WPBSA would no longer offer tour cards to the IBSF champions for the professional game.
In October last year then, WPBSA formed the World Snooker Federation (WSF) on its own.
“WPBSA is (registered as) a company and WSF (registered in Lausanne) is under that company. So how does a sports federation come under a company?” al-Khayarin asked.
The newly-formed body offers a passage to the professional tour run by its parent company WPBSA to players. However, only those players who are from member federations of the WSF will be allowed to play.
“We don’t have any problem with the WSF if they are only looking at individual players. But they have a condition that only those players whose countries are members can participate. And that can’t be happening because you can’t have two governing bodies for one sport,” al-Khayarin said.
After one of the first meetings with WCBS, IBSF and WPBSA held in January this year, WCBS in a statement said, “WCBS confirmed that the snooker members remain as WPBSA and IBSF. The WCBS does not recognise the newly formed World Snooker Federation (WSF) as an official entity within the WCBS structure.”
Al-Khayarin added: “There are some people who want to change a company into a federation, by just using the name World Snooker Federation and putting it against us. We must save our federations and our members. We would do anything to help the players.”
“WPBSA is a company and a player can go and play with them individually, but IBSF is a federation, with countries as members,” he said.
For its part, WCBS released a statement earlier this month, explaining the presence of “WSF” in its constitution adopted in 2013.
“The WSF was introduced in the WCBS Constitution in order to represent snooker and replace the International Billiard & Snooker Federation (IBSF). This was agreed to at the 2013 General Assembly in the UK. It was promised at the time by the IBSF and WPBSA that an Agreement to create a new organisation was imminent. On this basis, the WCBS accepted the word of those two snooker groups and made the name change in the Constitution from IBSF to WSF,” the statement explained.
“In Summer (of) 2017, the board of the WCBS was informed that the Agreement between IBSF and WPBSA never materialised. Due to the short timeframe, the name remains in our Constitution as the snooker member being the WSF. The only WSF that the WCBS was to recognise was the one that was being formulated in 2013 between the IBSF and WPBSA, not any other.
“Regarding the decision taken in 2013 and the current dispute between IBSF and WPBSA, the WCBS has no other choice to find that the WSF as it was intended in 2013 doesn’t exist, which means the only snooker groups that the WCBS is able to acknowledge are the IBSF and WPBSA.”
So if there are no professional tour cards on offer now, what’s the IBSF solution?
“What we have discussed now is that the champion of IBSF, we will give support to play in QSchool, and the qualification can happen for the professional tour from there,” al-Khayarin explained.
“QSchool is joined by the player. We can pay the fees for the player to play there, maybe for three qualifying tournaments, and semi-finalists for each tournament qualify for the professional tour.”
Besides, with the number of tournaments and the prize money going up, it will benefit the players too, al-Khayarin said.
“We have asked the players if they want to join them and leave so many ranking tournaments that we are hosting, it is their choice,” he said. “Even when players get a chance to play in the WPBSA tournaments, it’s too expensive for them. We have often asked WPBSA to offer apartments for the player who is participating, at least for six months. Let him not have to worry about lodging, food, etc. when he is only trying to settle down. It is not easy for the players.”
Shedding light on the efforts of WCBS on getting cue sport into the Olympic Games, al-Khayarin said, “A file from WCBS has been sent to the French for inclusion in the 2024 Paris Olympics.”
As far as the impasse goes, he said, “We want it to be fair. We are the governing body of the game. WSF is under WPBSA, which is a company. That’s not happening.”