The 2024 World Women’s Snooker Championship will be staged in China, it has been announced.
World Women’s Snooker – in partnership with the Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association and Cantonese Snooker – revealed the news on Tuesday.
The 2024 Women’s World Snooker Championship will be held at the Dongguan Snooker Academy from March 11-17.
It will be the 41st staging of the most prestigious tournament on the WWS calendar.
As has become the norm in recent seasons, it will offer direct qualification to the World Snooker Tour with the winner guaranteed a two-year professional tour card from the start of the 2024/25 season.
The historic tournament was won most recently by Thailand’s (Baipat) Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan, who lifted the Mandy Fisher Trophy in March.
Its continued development will continue with a significantly increased prize fund of over £35,000 to be contested across three tournaments during the week’s play.
The tournament will be supported by the sport’s governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.
Alongside the main 2024 World Women’s Snooker Championship, the event will also include the World Women’s Under-21 Snooker Championship and the World Women’s Seniors Championship.
The latter two tournaments were won by India’s Anupama Ramachandran and England’s Mary Talbot-Deegan respectively earlier this year.
Mandy Fisher, World Women’s Snooker President said: “On behalf of our team we are all hugely excited to be heading to China for the first time for our World Championship later this season.”
“In particular, I would like to thank Bobby Lee and the CBSA for their support of the event.
“The return of professional snooker to China in 2023 has underlined the importance of this market to our sport, and we cannot wait to stage this iconic tournament in Dongguan.
“This tournament continues to become bigger and better with each year.
“The 2024 event represents a significant step forward for women’s snooker with an increased prize fund and a fantastic new venue to host the world’s best players.”
Bobby Lee, Cantonese Snooker (Dongguan) said: “On behalf of Cantonese Snooker, I am delighted to be able to work with WWS, the WPBSA, and the CBSA on the hosting of this major international snooker event.”
“Women’s snooker has seen fantastic growth in recent years – in particular in Asia with the emergence of Bai Yulu here in China.
“Together we are determined to make this the best staging of the tournament so far and give all of the players an experience to remember.”
Jason Ferguson, WPBSA Chairman said: “Today’s announcement represents another major landmark for World Women’s Snooker.”
“This iconic tournament represents one of our official qualifying pathways to the World Snooker Tour.”
“As a sport, our relationship with China and the CBSA is stronger than ever, and together with Bobby and his team at Cantonese Snooker we are looking forward to working together.”
Featured photo credit: WWS
Eventually the main tour world championship may follow! This is really a qualification tournament for the main tour now: having a world championship for women, the winner of which then gets a main tour card, isn’t really an endorsement of said world championship status! ‘Womens tour automatic main tour qualification tournament’ would be an honest appellation. More akin to a juniors world championship than a major title.
Really this could be a vivid example of two transitions: firstly the women’s tour into a full feeder tour for increased female participation in the professional main tour and secondly the move to China of the main world championship in due course.
Well I don’t think we can downgrade the Women’s World Championship to a mere qualification status. It’s clearly on the way up, with prize-money increasing every year, and an exponential growth in viewing online.
Much as I think snooker needs to upgrade from the Crucible Theatre, I don’t expect the World Championship will move outside the UK – there will be too much resistance from insiders, and a compromise will surely be reached.
The Dongguan academy venue is actually the base for players Bai Yulu and Li Bihan, and it’s clear that Bai has been identified as a huge star for the Women’s game, with sponsorship opportunities forthcoming.
I will be in China in 2024, and I may be able to attend this, and the tournament in Yushan which follows it.
Hopefully you get to see the event live. I agree that Bai Yulu has been identified as having big competitive and commercial potential. There has been a big push on snooker in China since the reopening of China to international sports and I wonder if a Chinese world champion might be a catalyst for a rotational world championship at the least, alternating between the UK and China? I do think that the women’s world championship is effectively a qualification tournament now, it’s difficult to see it otherwise in my opinion: it can’t be a pinnacle of achievement if it gives entry to a higher tour and it’s clearly functioning as a driver for female players onto the main tour so it really looks like a de facto qualification event to me.
It’s both the pinnacle of the Women’s Tour and de facto qualifier.