SnookerRoom is no more

Statement from SnookerRoom:
http://snookerroom.tv/news/goodbye-farewell-and-amen/

Dear friends and snooker fans!

It's time to announce that our project called SnookerRoom come to it's end. Unlicensed broadcasting is bad, bad, BAD!!! It is illegal and it makes harm to the sport and players. Of course you understand it and you have just the same opinion, especially when you're sitting in the office of World Snooker or in London's branch of IMG corporation with billion annual revenue.

Honestly we have a slightly different point of view, but we can't resist to business sharks. We don't believe that the organization of webcasts to a small number of loyal fans of snooker caused damage to anyone of the players. We made lots of broadcasts and records of the game to those of you who could not take advantage of the TV or official streams due to territorial or some other reasons... However the commercial director of World Snooker Mr. Pearce (milespearce@hotmail.com) and IMG lawyers clearly know their interests and therefore demand to remove content from our YouTube channel as well as website broadcasts, otherwise we will be prosecuted/threatened litigation and harassment.

We tried to keep alive our channel, which has more than 66 thousand subscribers, and which entirely covered snooker life last years. Moreover, we proposed different compromises to right holders: to put a TM on every video, to indicate their authorship, to give them the whole YouTube channel just to keep it alive without removal of all videos... Well. There is no compromise. All the people who could not see snooker because of the circumstances now is left without snooker. It's like a sad joke. they say that SnookerRoom s extremely harmful, but they use the video of our YouTube channel even at the World Championship in Sheffield.

We apologize to the players, who suffered some losses because of our activity. The losses which are declared by pricey lawyers of right holders... We hope that we did our best for the promotion of the game which we love. SnookerRoom tried to convey the universe of snooker to those who wanted it, not to harm the game. Thank you for your support, guys! Thank you for watching us, dear friends! Keep calm and love snooker!

P.S. From now @snookerroom twitter account will be maintained by its previous owner. He is not related to our YouTube channel, website or group in Facebook.

I never understood why SnookerRoom was able to continue for so long, because obviously what they were doing was illegal. Nevertheless, they did the snookerfans a huge favor by providing us with live matches that we sometimes could not watch anywhere else. Hopefully, the Youtube channel stays up for as long as possible. I still need to download some of their videos.
Maybe they should upload their whole archive as a torrent?

https://ronnieo147.com/2016/05/07/farew ... ookerroom/

I totally share and agree with Monique Limbos view on this one.

I understand some people might have been taking an unfair advantage of this service, but like she says, was this so damaging enough to make silly WS shut down this incredible channel?

The answer is clearly NO! Snookerrrom is indeed an incredible channel which gives viewers all across the globe the chance to watch Snooker when in no other way is available to them. PLus, myself included, have watched many many matches through that channel when I hadn't got the chance to watch for whatever reason.

This is like sort of a Snooker archive if you want. No other channel out there offers this kind of service.

It's indeed a huge huge shame this incredible Youtube channel will come to a definite end because of some silly burocricy.

I guess I'll have to upload some of the matches there because soon they'll be gone for good. And idea above is an interesting one, make it as a torrent and then no one can shut them down. It's not the same as a YT channel by any strech of imigination, but at least it wouldn't be gone for life.

Snookerroom and whoever ran that deserves our full respect and appreciation for the incredible service they done to Snooker.

At the moment I find the battle for televising sport fascinating. The rights for premiership football have just gone through the roof, yet watching it for free has never been easier. Snooker is a tiny sport compared to football yet the same principal applies. Some people have to pay an absolute premium to watch any given sport, whilst the majority watch for free! Is this sustainable? Can it be combated? I believe we're living in a kind of 'wild west' era of the internet, where anarchy rules. Obviously somewhere down the line this will end and some form of law and order will be established, but how? And what will be the outcome

I hope the youtube channel stays as it uploaded the Crucicle Classics series and I was going to watch them over the next couple of weeks. I can't see the iplayer in Ireland.

I am also totally with Monique.
I live on the other side of our "language border", the Eurosport NL commentary does not make it to the BBC standards but is decent, sometimes featuring Bjorn Haneveer.
The downsides to the paying services are for me the reasons not so pay for them, not enough value for money.

This looks like I'll be going back to only watching the World Championship.

or maybe we have a surprise over the next days announcing an "official", affordable full mirror of snookerroom.

Thanks to the guys @snookerroom!

Well things doesn´t always goes perfect. It is rather just THE NATURE of the snooker why many people get hooked up and interested about the game rather than things would go perfectly.

The only thing I am yet to find a flaw is Ronnie O´Sullivan´s general approach on things and life. It doesn´t necessarly mean I would particularly like him. I can´t say if I do or don´t because obviously I don´t know as a person at all. But every thing he writes on speaks is spot on. There is no flaw. He is some wicked bloke with some extremely wicked and strange sense of humour. Some people have analyse his strange antics causes of his father served that long imprisonment. But it´s not that.

But even he is misfiring on a snooker table. We won´t have to wait long before the headlines once again are "The misfiring Rocket found wandering in the streets of London.. "

This is properly stupid. It will stunt the spread of the game.

Perhaps Eurosport asked Hearn to do something about cracking down on illegal sites as a condition of the new shiny contract.

Guess snookerroom was a prominent target to send that message out(if this was the case).

SteveJJ wrote:Perhaps Eurosport asked Hearn to do something about cracking down on illegal sites as a condition of the new shiny contract.

Guess snookerroom was a prominent target to send that message out(if this was the case).

Snookerroom wont and cant pay for cameras to show matches Eurosport can and has decided to take on that but there was a obvious clause in that.

its better having eurosport doing it on a commercial level than LiveworldSnooker.tv. its not beyond a possibility that the Final Round of World qualifying will be live on Eurosport TV as appose to Eurosport player something liveworldsnooker couldn't do.

So it is obviously beneficial on that level for Barry Hearn and World Snooker to keep Euro Sport happy.

What I am most upset about with this is all of Snookerroom video is such a vast archive. I demand that World Snooker gives us an archive. I don't care about snookerroomtv live stream I will buy a live sub...world snooker needs an archive.

Gridlock wrote:What I am most upset about with this is all of Snookerroom video is such a vast archive. I demand that World Snooker gives us an archive. I don't care about snookerroomtv live stream I will buy a live sub...world snooker needs an archive.

Well quite. And this encourages new fans such as your self.

I'm cross about this, but of course I understand the commercial aspects, particularly as I make money from music and it would be hypocritical of me to slam this decision.

However, I slam this decision.

Gridlock wrote:What I am most upset about with this is all of Snookerroom video is such a vast archive. I demand that World Snooker gives us an archive. I don't care about snookerroomtv live stream I will buy a live sub...world snooker needs an archive.

I'm guessing WS can't create an archive because of the broadcast rights? So far the SnookerRoom Youtube channel is still up, and hopefully it stays that way. I wonder if they will still upload new matches.
If I had the resources I would download all their videos and create a backup of their channel, but alas...

pasunegirafe wrote:

Gridlock wrote:What I am most upset about with this is all of Snookerroom video is such a vast archive. I demand that World Snooker gives us an archive. I don't care about snookerroomtv live stream I will buy a live sub...world snooker needs an archive.

I'm guessing WS can't create an archive because of the broadcast rights? So far the SnookerRoom Youtube channel is still up, and hopefully it stays that way. I wonder if they will still upload new matches.
If I had the resources I would download all their videos and create a backup of their channel, but alas...

I'm probably being simplistic but I'm thinking that BBC and or Eurosport could build a huge archive from the matches. They could even pay for it for the sake of the fans.

Worldsnooker are wasting their time perusing this line.
They know well that snookerroom.tv have little or no revenue so are they really gonna spend 50k getting a guy (who probably does this at home in his bedroom) to court? And for what? They wont receive a dime back because he probably doesn't have it.
So world snooker would be down 50k in legal fees and the guy who created it could just as easily set another one up in a different name and worldsnooker would have to fork out another 50k in legal fees.

Instead of going after the little guys trying to promote the game, worldsnooker need to realise we live in the age of digital sharing and instead of making threats to sue people which they cant really win, they should work closer with such people.

Skysports have long ago stopped going after websites sharing their content because they simply cant win.
If i was that dude, id let worldsnooker take him to court only for them to realize he has nothing, and it will be worldsnooker down thousands. Then i'd set up a new website the very next day :)

Big tv companies know they cant bring these guys to court either so they rarely bother, instead they invest in better technology to protect the content from being shared.
BTW, on youtubes terms and conditions, it clearly says by uploading to youtube you are consenting to this material being shared throughout this and other networks.

Coverage on the global scale has went to rubbish since last year...I am done lamenting about it.

Andre147 wrote:https://ronnieo147.com/2016/05/07/farewell-and-thank-you-snookerroom/

I totally share and agree with Monique Limbos view on this one.

I understand some people might have been taking an unfair advantage of this service, but like she says, was this so damaging enough to make silly WS shut down this incredible channel?

The answer is clearly NO! Snookerrrom is indeed an incredible channel which gives viewers all across the globe the chance to watch Snooker when in no other way is available to them. PLus, myself included, have watched many many matches through that channel when I hadn't got the chance to watch for whatever reason.

This is like sort of a Snooker archive if you want. No other channel out there offers this kind of service.

It's indeed a huge huge shame this incredible Youtube channel will come to a definite end because of some silly burocricy.

I guess I'll have to upload some of the matches there because soon they'll be gone for good. And idea above is an interesting one, make it as a torrent and then no one can shut them down. It's not the same as a YT channel by any strech of imigination, but at least it wouldn't be gone for life.

Snookerroom and whoever ran that deserves our full respect and appreciation for the incredible service they done to Snooker.

Make it as a torrent and someone can shut them down to be more precise.. The laws are there because everyone want´s them to be there. There might be some exceptions, but that´s just some. Everyone want´s that people who break the laws gets punished.

It used to be that, er, well yes, but that´s not the world´s greatest thinking you know.. And now the exactly same thing is that Oh Yes, that´s brilliant!! Regardless if that´s straight or shrewd. But I am glad that people are interested of watching different kind of players and are making an effort to find the streams. Let´s take this current 6reds World Championships for example; it´s not about who makes the mini-maximum or how many. Or not necessarily even that who wins it. It is about just pots a few reds and blacks and let´s see if it will work out. The style of play is more important, and how close one can get those different cannons right. Which are always going to be there. So in other words, not to miss the cue ball control.