Lead of Sheffield City Council Tom Hunt on snooker in the city

In his latest column for The Star, Leader of Sheffield City Council Tom Hunt discusses the benefits of hosting the snooker in the Steel City.

Transcript

00:00Sheffield loves snooker and over the last month we've seen a fantastic celebration of this much

00:07loved sport right here in our city, the undisputed home of snooker. 17 days of incredible matches in

00:15the crucible ended with Zhao Jintong becoming the first Chinese world champion. For centuries,

00:22Made in Sheffield has been associated with skill, with talent and the highest quality.

00:27Zhao Jintong is a new world champion made in Sheffield, making our city his home and training

00:35at Victoria's Snooker Academy in the city centre. There are 300,000 snooker clubs in China but Zhao

00:43and many other Chinese players are based right here in Sheffield because they know that this

00:48is the home of snooker. In Sheffield we've put on a show right here in Tudor Square and across the

00:55city centre and across the globe, hundreds of millions of fans have been watching the world

01:00championships right from Sheffield. In fact, this year's championship was streamed a record-breaking

01:0629 million times across the BBC, iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and the BBC Sport app. A 25% increase

01:16from last year. This city loves snooker and over the last month we've seen how the snooker community

01:22loves Sheffield. Sheffield is a global and growing city and snooker is a global and growing sport.

01:30We continue to have positive, constructive talks with our partners at the World Snooker Tour and

01:36we're already making plans for 2026 to make the championship bigger and better. We can't wait to

01:43roll out the green carpet again for thousands of fans, for the global media and superstars like

01:49Ronny O'Sullivan, Judd Trump and our returning world champion, Zhao Jingtong.