The Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters won’t be returning after just two editions, and while that might not come as a huge shock, it does leave the sport with a few awkward questions to answer.
The World Snooker Tour confirmed the controversial tournament’s cancellation in a statement on Saturday, saying: “It has been mutually agreed not to proceed with future editions of the World Pool Championship and the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters.”
The usual positives were highlighted – new audiences and opportunities for local players – but the reality is that this was a venture that arrived with plenty of noise and has disappeared just as quickly.
While, from a political and moral standpoint, many people took umbrage with the engagement in the first place, taking snooker to Saudi Arabia wasn’t really the main issue in a sporting sense.
Snooker needs to grow internationally and new markets should be explored where possible – especially lucrative destinations that other sports have already successfully tapped into.
But elevating the event to “fourth major” status always seemed disingenuous and made a mockery of the storied history of the game.
It came across as a requirement that had been pushed – or essentially bought on the back of its mega prize fund – rather than something special that had earned its place.
That decision looks even more questionable now that the tournament is gone, and the feeling is only reinforced by the fact that this was initially presented as a long-term agreement spanning a decade.
Just two editions later, that commitment has already fallen away in an embarrassing blow to snooker’s hierarchy.
So what now becomes of a “major” that lasted only two years?
Judd Trump and Neil Robertson won the titles in 2024 and 2025 respectively, each picking up a £500,000 cheque that mirrors the one offered at the World Championship.
But it’s hard to know how those victories will be viewed in the years ahead when the event itself has already fallen off the calendar.
It’s not just the historical debate either. There’s a very real, present-day impact as well.
As things stand, Trump and Robertson are battling to finish the season as world number one at the World Snooker Championship, and both have been heavily boosted by the prize money earned in Saudi Arabia.
That alone highlights a wider issue in the sport.
When rankings are based on prize money, a single event with a prize fund on the scale of the World Championship can tilt the landscape in a way that doesn’t really reflect the rest of the season.
For many further down the official two-year list, being unable to defend the ranking points they earned at those two editions in Saudi could eventually have important implications on their tour survival aspirations.
For two years, the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters had that kind of influence. Now it’s gone, but the effect of it hasn’t yet gone with it.
Of course, there were plenty of early signs that it was all going to end badly anyway.
For all the investment and the promise of development, the crowds in Riyadh and Jeddah always looked thin.
Most of the atmosphere that was generated came across as manufactured, with the presentation forced and very little scrutiny delivered from any of the broadcasts.
It was always more about optics than authenticity.
The Riyadh Season Snooker Championship, another event staged in Saudi Arabia since 2024, additionally introduced its controversial “golden ball” worth 20 points – meaning a maximum break could theoretically reach 167.
Whether that invitational tournament continues is unclear, but it was another example of how easily the sport’s traditional structure was bent in order to accommodate the demands of a new market.
The return of the China Open – conveniently announced as a positive news story by WST just before this reveal – is undoubtedly a welcome boost for the sport in a country that does, in fact, take snooker very seriously.
It doesn’t really change the bigger picture, however.
A system so heavily tied to prize money is always going to be vulnerable to this kind of rise-and-fall cycle, where one event can reshape everything and then vanish just as quickly.
And in a desperate attempt to grow the sport at any cost, the World Snooker Tour allowed something to be positioned as a major alongside its biggest events without the foundation to support it.
Now that it’s already gone, that decision looks difficult to justify.
Featured image credit: WST
Boom and bust in a 2 year cycle. The Saudis might be trying to buy everything before the Emirates do, and before their oil eventually runs out, but this looked doomed to fail from the outset. The contrast with China says it all. What a mess, giving it equal status with the world championship seemed like it only made sense as a preliminary step to taking the world’s to Saudi Arabia and it’s interesting that this tournament has collapsed and the deal to keep the worlds in Sheffield have been announced so close together. I suspect that that’s the timing coincidence that really matters.