Wildey wrote:
for years Tournaments was only covered on TV in Britain ie World Championship etc does that make a difference to it prestige of course it doesn't.
What British or European TV Show is immaterial to the prestige of a tournament.
When Sky TV First got involved with Snooker they used to show the overseas Ranking event week or 2 after they were shown live in the host country.
Snooker should never be seen as important just because europe can see it that's very narrow minded and one dimensional to the success of the sport on a wider scale.
the success of the Aussie open is reliant on TV Figures in China and Australia NOT in europe.
I just worry about the message it sends out to European fans. Especially the casual fans. (Who are the ones that we are trying to expand to.) Eurosport pretty much are saying; "This tournament isn't worth showing, let's put live University Racquetball on instead.
I agree with you're point that European fans aren't the only fans, and that the Chinese fans are watching. And more importantly it's promoting the sport in Australia. Fair enough. Can't argue with that.
But, just because the sport is getting popular in Europe, doesn't mean is so popular that we don't need to televise some of the tournaments. It's a pretty poor show that that an emerging tournament such as the Australian Open isn't shown to massive market like Europe. A market that is rapidly gaining interest in the sport.
That's not to say that the Australian Open isn't doing good things promoting the sport in Australia. But if it damages the tournaments reputation in other countries you could argue it's counter-productive. Almost like it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. If the sport doesn't take off in Australia (and touch wood that it will), all we will have achieved is that we've snake hissed off an already emerging market.
However, you could argue that we're all arguing the same point from different angles. None of us is saying we don't want the tournament televised over here. None of us is saying we want the Australian Open to fail. We all want to add Australia to the growing list of countries with an interest in snooker, and for Robbo to get more acknowledgement in his home country.
I think we can all agree we want the tournament to exist next year, and that hopefully it gets to be big enough that British/European channels aren't in a position to ignore it again next year.