The championship has attracted TV coverage and 10 sponsors, including UK-based Milliken Woollen Speciality Products, manufacturer of Strachan, the world’s most famous snooker cloth brand. The World Snooker Team Championships will run from August 16-26 and be staged at the Double Tree, a 500-room hotel about one hour south of San Francisco.

The tournament is carrying the strapline ‘America welcomes the snooker world’ and is the result of several years’ work by championship chairman Anthony Hull and board members Ajeya Prabhakar and Alan Morris.

“The USA is pool country and snooker is a very small part of the cue-sport scene,” said Hull. “But it’s one of the biggest potential markets on the planet and little has been done to date to promote the game. Not to attack this market would have been irresponsible and we are already looking into three future sponsorship possibilities, offering financial support at a major world event in 2007.” Milliken marketing director Duncan Kettell said: “This is a great step towards establishing snooker as a worldwide sport and the IBSF and the USSA are to be congratulated.

“It takes an enormous amount of work to put on an event like this and it would be fantastic for snooker if the game started to catch on in the USA. We wish everyone associated with the world team championships every success.”

In Germany, where interest in snooker is at an all-time high, the Strachan brand has been chosen by organisers of the German Open, taking place in Feurth near Nuremberg from August 25-27.

Featuring China’s Ding Jun Hui, Ken Doherty and other leading players, all 3,000 tickets for the German Open were snapped up in under half on hour by German fans keen to see the world’s top players on home soil.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---