A Crucible VIP ?

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The Crucible has been a long standing venue for snooker's World Championship tournament. Since 1977, the thrills and spills of the sport have been played out in this Sheffield theatre and it has become a treasure that is savoured by all that survey. However in recent weeks, The World Snooker Tour, as the body is now called, has revamped its Masters event at the Alexandra Palace, proving those who wish to pay a bit extra the chance to experience the VIP treatment with private viewing boxes installed, a Century Club and a soft seating area at the back of the arena. The question has been posed of whether to roll this out this out to other tournaments and especially the World
Championship.

When this question was posed on Twitter regarding revamping the Crucible event, there was swift retort from Barry Hearn, Chairman of the World Snooker Tour, saying:


"Crucible stays as it is. Too special to change"


With only 980 seats, the Crucible provides an intimate atmosphere with the audience only being twenty metres from the stage. In my opinion , this makes this venue so special and to alter the configuration of the layout would be not only be ruinous but physically impossible. The theatre is too small to build on and hasn't the room to add other luxury facilities. Proving extra facilities at tournaments is of course a good thing for the audience and the sport but it has to be look at on an event by event basis. What works at Alexandra Palace could be expanded to say the German Masters at the Tempodrom or the other various Chinese tournaments but certainly not at the present Crucible Theatre.







 Mike Watterson brought the World Championship to the Crucible after his wife attended a play there and said it would be a perfect venue, a satisfying reprieve after the organisers had to secure a place to hold future tournaments. Mike was an entrepreneur who had turned his hand from selling cars to bringing the darts to the Lakeside amongst other great inspirations in sport. To bring such additions to the venue would disrespect the spirit of the Crucible and so I am glad that players such as Mark Williams and Barry Hearn himself have put this idea finally to bed. The Crucible set up must remain intact in its present form to encapsulate the longstanding snooker history that it has generated over the years. Shatter that formula with change and you will not only destroy the winning formula but enrage the fans that players that support it.

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