The old is snooker a sport or a game debate....
The amount of people who, knowing that I like to watch snooker, come up to me and say; "Of course, I don't consider snooker a sport. It's really a game." I just usually reply; "And?" or; "Okay, consider it a game then."
Am I alone in being confused by this? The people who often tell me this, often claim that they are not trying to insult snooker in any way, or trying to imply it isn't difficult. Or that it shouldn't be watched on the telly. If this is the case, why are some people so furious that it's considered a sport?
When asked my opinion, I say it's probably a game but it's only considered a sport for classification purposes. When it's televised on the BBC, it comes out of the BBC Sports budget. It may be a game, but there is no BBC Games budget, so it gets called a sport for classification purposes. It's not going to come out of the BBC Movies budget or the BBC Religious Programming budget, is it?. Because even if it's technically a game, it's as close to being a sport as it it to being anything else. The same with it being on Eurosport, or written about in the Sports Sections of the paper. Are people suggesting that it shouldn't be on Eurosport, a dedicated sports channel, because they consider it to be a game? Should the newspapers invent another section called The Games Section, which just covers snooker and darts news? No, that would be stupid. It may be a game in your eyes, but when it's played competitively on television, it's classified as a sport just for ease of reference. What is there to get upset about?
Is there something I'm missing? Why is it people seem so argumentative about something so trivial? Or are people really trying to be dismissive of snooker, and pretending that they aren't?
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SnookerFan - Posts: 150752
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