Ronnie O’Sullivan has called on his fellow snooker professionals to ‘go where the money is’ and consider a breakaway tour amid rumours of a Saudi-backed revolt. The Rocket began his World Championship campaign with a 10-1 demolition of Jackson Page but controversy has reigned over the tournament amid talk of moving the showpiece event away from the iconic Crucible Theatre venue in Sheffield.
Snooker supremo Barry Hearn played down talk of a LIV Golf-style development in the sport during a BBC grilling on Wednesday, but O’Sullivan believes that he and his peers should be able to compete elsewhere, in direct competition with the World Snooker Tour (WST).
WST rules prohibit stars from playing in events not run by the tour if they clash with their own events, but are free to do so when a gap in the calendar appears. The Rocket recently signed a lucrative three-year deal with Saudi Arabia and was dubbed the Kingdom’s “snooker ambassador” by Hearn, before insisting that players should be able to join a breakaway tour.
“There’s talk there might be another tour,” O’Sullivan explained. “Every player has the right to do what they want to do – you see it in other sports like golf. The bottom line is you’ve got to be prepared to walk away, if I didn’t get what I want am I prepared to walk away from the sport? And the answer is yes. I’m, happy with my life.
“I want to be looked after wanna be pampered, anyone who wants to pamper me and look after me, I’m your man. I’m just an open book, I’m here, best offer, come speak to me, you’ll find my contact details on Instagram. First come first served, that will be my policy until I stop playing.
“Each sportsman is a business whether you like it or not so you have to do what’s right for you. We all have families to feed. Every person in the world is like that, I’ve got a friend who works for the NHS but has been offered three or four times her salary to go and work in Australia so she’s going to go and do that. She’s just going for the better pay, that’s what happens sometimes. We live in a competitive world, so it’s great that there’s this choice out there.”
Should a breakaway tour develop, snooker would be dramatically altered as two competing tours would likely see massive sums of money offered to WST professionals to revolt. Whether the rebels would be able to compete at Triple Crown events would also come under question, similar to the disruption caused in golf due to LIV.
O’Sullivan was joined by the sport’s biggest names in Saudi last month for the Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker and has drawn criticism for his affiliation with the nation due to their human rights record.
Earlier this year, Saudi were critiqued at the United Nations over their lack of freedoms for women, prosecutions for freedom of speech and use of the death penalty, but O’Sullivan asked critics to look closer to home before imposing their views on the Middle Eastern powerhouse.
“I think we’ve got really serious human rights issues going on in the UK and the US,” the seven-time world champion added. “We should be looking at ourselves seriously, I don’t think we have the right to criticise anyone.”
