Professional snooker tournament
The Champion of Champions is a professional non-ranking snooker tournament. It was held in 1978 and 1980 and was then revived in 2013 by Matchroom Sport. The reigning champion is Mark Allen, who won the title for the second time in 2023.
The Champion of Champions features winners of World Snooker events over the preceding 12 months, with the field topped up, if necessary, from the current World Rankings. In 2020, the tournament had a prize fund of £440,000, of which £150,000 went to the winner.
History
The event was created in 1978 by boxing promoter Mike Barrett.[2] It was contested by four players at the Wembley Conference Centre in London, England,[3] and was played over two days, with the semi-finals on the first day and the final on the second day. World Champion Ray Reardon beat that year's Masters winner Alex Higgins 11–9 in the final.[3] Brief highlights were shown on ITV's World of Sport on the following afternoon.[4] The event was not held in 1979, but appeared again in 1980 at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane, London, in a different format. Ten players competed in the tournament, split into two groups. Each group played a round robin, with the winners of the groups advancing to the final. Doug Mountjoy beat John Virgo 10–8 to become champion. The tournament was then abandoned, since the audiences had been poor and the event was financially unsuccessful.[5]
It was revived in 2013 by Matchroom Sport, replacing the Premier League Snooker on the calendar.[6] Held in November at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, and contested by 16 of the world's leading players,[7] the event was broadcast live in the United Kingdom on ITV4.[8] The 2013 and 2014 tournaments were won by Ronnie O'Sullivan,[9][10] but he chose not to defend the title in 2015;[11] that year, Neil Robertson defeated Mark Allen 10–5 to claim his first win in the tournament.[12] In 2016, John Higgins beat O'Sullivan 10–7.[13] O'Sullivan was beaten by Shaun Murphy in the 2017 final too,[14] but he took back the trophy in 2018, defeating Kyren Wilson 10–9.[15] Robertson also won 10–9 against Judd Trump in the 2019 final, claiming the title for the second time.[16] The 2020 final was a repeat of the final of the 2015 edition of the event, but this time Allen defeated Robertson 10–6.[17] In 2021, Trump won 10–4 against Higgins,[18] but he failed to defend the title in 2022, losing 6–10 to O'Sullivan, who won the tournament for the fourth time.[19] Trump was runner-up again in 2023, suffering a 3–10 loss this time to Mark Allen,[20] who became the third player to be champion more than once, after O'Sullivan and Robertson.
As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 edition was relocated to the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, in order to create a secure bubble, the same way as all other snooker tournaments were played in that season. The 2021 edition was held in Bolton for the first time, featuring a change to the dress code, as all players had special shirts with their nickname on the back; this change was met with mixed response by the players.
Mark Allen (NIR)
