matchroom Launches World Nineball Pool
Matchroom Pool, the pool division of sports promotion company Matchroom Sport, has unveiled the formulation of the World Nineball Tour.
The global tour will boast a minimum prize fund of £2.5m, a minimum of 40 ranking events and a minimum of 1,000 live TV hours as the promotors look to focus on ‘creating opportunities for players’.
The new competition will look to following in the footsteps of Matchroom’s successful models in darts and snooker – the Professional Darts Corporation and the World Snooker Tour respectively. Both tours are now offering £15m in prize money for the forthcoming season.
Matchroom claims that The World Nineball Tour will ‘accelerate at pace to provide a commercial platform for professional pool and change players lives.’
2023 will see 10 major events forming the backbone of the calendar promoted by Matchroom with a new signature 256-player field Spanish Open Pool Championship recently announced as part of a wider partnership in Spain. The Southeast Asia territory is also set to announce a host of new events aligned to the World Nineball Tour in the near future.
As well as the prize money, the World Nineball Ranking points are regarded as a key factor to the model’s success, providing ‘a gateway to the most-valuable tournaments on the calendar.’
New ranking events are set to take place internationally with tournaments set for the Americas, Asia, Oceania, and Europe.
As part of Matchroom’s ongoing investment and expansion, the World Nineball Tour will also launch an independent integrity unit with a remit to focus on anti-corruption, drug testing and more to ensure the continued professionalisation of the players competing in all World Nineball Ranking events.
President and Founder of Matchroom Sport, Barry Hearn OBE, said, “This is a time of opportunity for all players around the world irrespective of gender, nationality, age, and faith. It’s also a time when anyone who truly cares about creating opportunity for players to join in this historic journey. This is Pool’s big chance and with the support of all the top players and the dream of all aspiring amateurs, I believe we can create a huge global sport.”
World Nineball number one, Francisco Sanchez Ruiz, added, “The World Nineball Tour gives us all more motivation to succeed. Nineball is the future with the rankings, previously we only had three tournaments now we have so many. Now you can be a professional by playing this game, it’s perfect. The World Nineball Tour means you can qualify for the biggest events and that includes the Mosconi Cup.”
