‘People are not happy’ – Mark Allen voices growing concerns over World Snooker Tour calendar

Mark Allen feels there are growing concerns among professional players over the gaps on the snooker calendar, as the World Snooker Tour struggles to return to its pre-Covid schedule.

World Snooker Tour did brilliantly to continue putting on events during 2020 and ’21, but they have not yet been able to restore the calendar to the state it was in before Covid hit.

This is largely down to China previously hosting a string of big-money tournaments and it still being impossible to travel to the country to play as Covid restrictions remain in place.

That is accepted and no blame is attached to anyone for that, but Allen says he and other players are concerned about how long China will remain off the table and what is being done to fill the void it has left.

‘Unless they start coming up with some new events, bigger prize money, then I’ll always be sceptical,’ Allen told Metro.co.uk. ‘It seems that they’re papering over cracks at the minute.

‘The Championship League is on for a month, but you’re only playing for a couple of those days and the money isn’t great unless you win it.

‘We appreciate how hard it has been through Covid, but it seems that this season in particular has been a massive step back. The past two seasons felt busier.

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‘China’s obviously being very strict, so that’s not World Snooker’s fault, we can accept that. But how long do we wait? If they shut the country down at every new variant, how long do we wait?

‘We need to find new venues, new countries, new tournaments. It would be great