How snooker became a social media sensation in China

In the latest episode of the Business Leader Podcast, we speak to someone with a particularly unusual job: running a sport. Simon Brownell is the chief executive of the World Snooker Tour. This means he is responsible for organising the sport and its events, growing revenue via broadcast and sponsorship deals, and growing the audience watching snooker – all while competing against other sports with deep pockets.

This is the first time I've interviewed someone who said the biggest challenge in their job was finding table fitters. “It’s such a niche specialism. There aren't many table fitters in the world, let alone in the UK,” Brownell explains. “It's really hard to make sure that a table will run smoothly and that the players can showcase their abilities on it. It takes a lot of effort. We've fortunately got a fantastic table-fitting team. They're really pushing forward now. I think the conditions for players are as good as they've been in a long time.”

Brownell is referring to the fitting of snooker tables, of course, which is required at venues across the world. This is one of the unique aspects of his job. But other aspects are common to all businesses, such as how to think about international expansion.

Snooker has grown dramatically in China, meaning Brownell has a fascinating insight into what it takes to succeed there and how Chinese consumers behave. We tend to think of snooker as a traditional sport that peaked in the UK in the 1980s.

In 1985, for example, nearly 20 million people in the UK watched the final of the world championships as Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis in the final frame of the match. However, many more people watch snooker today around the world and YouTube-style videos in China regularly get more than 200 million views.

“There are not many sports that can offer one event that commands many viewers across huge markets like China and Hong Kong, the Middle East, Europe and the UK,” Brownell says. “We are one of the best-watched sports on Eurosport across Europe. We've got fantastic eyeballs [viewing figures], not only on main channels like CCTV in China, but across social media in China.”

Social media is a big part of snooker’s growth strategy. While Brownell talks about traditional broadcast deals for the sport, like with the BBC in the UK and the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV in China, there is a real focus on how to get people watching and engaging with snooker through social media.

“We get millions of people watching on CCTV, which is the major broadcaster in China, and we have a partnership with a company called Rigour, which then sublicense from a streamed perspective to a number of other parties such as Youku and Migu. They'll offer us hundreds of millions of views.

“For the equivalents of TikTok in China, so Kuaishou and Douyin, historically we would be hitting 5 million to 10 million views on those platforms. But because we've partnered with a company called Red Lantern and we've really tried to focus on this as an area, we're now seeing 200 million to 250 million views on our videos in China.

“That eclipses a lot of the numbers we'll see throughout the rest of the world. China is a huge growth area for us. I don't want to just limit it to a quarter of a billion views. What's it going to be next year? How do we get to 500 million to 1 billion views just on those social media platforms? That's the target.”