Snooker's Unfinished Handover: When the 'Class of 75' Still Carries the Whole Tour

In frame 34 of a semi-final at the Crucible Theatre, with the score at 17-16, John Higgins set his cue down and walked a lap around the table. He walked slowly. I was sitting four rows away, counting every step in the notebook that has followed me for six years. Higgins took 11 seconds to complete the lap, three seconds longer than his average. Those three seconds were not hesitation. They were the sign of a brain replaying the entire layout of the table, red by red, before the cue touched the white.

He returned to his chair, bent down, and over the next eight minutes closed the frame with an 87 break. I wrote two words in my notebook: "Legs shaking, head steady."

But the story here is not Higgins. The story is the gap behind him, and the question of how long until it is filled.

Snooker is living inside a paradox. Technically, the average standard of the tour is the highest in its history. Structurally, the system is cracking from within.

The story of the "Class of 75" — Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins, Mark Williams, all born in 2026 — is not a story about them playing for too long. It is a story about nobody replacing them. This trio has collected nearly 100 ranking titles, more than 4,000 century breaks and 20 world championships. At 48-49, they are still the names that sell tickets wherever they appear.

What lies behind them? A generation of the 1990s pushed to the margins. Judd Trump (35) carried the expectation for a decade but has only one world title, won in 2026. Kyren Wilson (32) won the world championship in 2026 but has yet to build a dominant run. Luca Brecel (29) won in 2026 and faded the following season. Mark Allen, Barry Hawkins, Neil Robertson — all past their peak, and none of them holding the number one spot for years the way the 2026 trio once did.

Then came the Chinese wave. Ding Junhui opened the door in 2026, and by 2026 more than 20 Chinese players were on the professional tour. But that same wave crashed into the biggest wall in the very same year, 2026: the match-fixing case.

This is the point I want to dissect.

In June 2026, the WPBSA concluded its independent match-fixing investigation. Ten players were sanctioned with varying penalties. Liang Wenbo and Li Hang were banned for life. Yan Bingtao was banned for five years. Zhao Xintong — the 2026 UK Championship winner — was banned for one year and eight months. It was the largest event in modern snooker history, and it landed precisely when the sport was expanding hardest into Asia.

What I found when I went back through the case documents was not personal corruption. It was economic structure. A player ranked 70-90 on the snooker tour earns an average income that does not cover travel, hotels, a coach and living costs. Financial pressure plus opportunity from illegal betting markets forms a formula I have seen before in many other sports.

Core insight: Snooker does not have a problem with individual ethics — snooker has a problem with the structure of prize-money distribution.

Look at the numbers. At the World Championship in the 2026-25 season, the total prize fund was around 2.4 million pounds. The champion received 500,000 pounds. A first-round loser received 20,000 pounds, not enough for an economy return airfare from China plus ten days of hotels in Sheffield. An overseas event in East Asia can leave a world number 80 in the red even after reaching the second round.

To understand why, look at the structure of the tour. The World Snooker Tour runs around 25-30 events each season. A professional must cover their own travel between countries. In one month they may play in England, Germany, China and Saudi Arabia. Costs are estimated at 30,000-50,000 pounds per season for a mid-ranked player. Meanwhile, prize money in the early rounds is usually only a few thousand pounds. This is the arithmetic any player in the lower half of the ranking list has to solve every day.

This is why I always say: do not ask me who plays better. Ask me how long that player can survive in the profession.

Meanwhile, money from the Middle East is reshaping the map. From the 2026-24 season, the Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker was launched in Saudi Arabia, with a lavish prize fund and a controversial new rule: a golden "Riyadh" ball worth 500,000 USD if a player completes a perfect 147 and then continues scoring off that ball. It was the first time in modern snooker history that an official event added a ball outside the standard. The rules of the game are being shaped by money, not by tradition.

As for technique, this is what I observe directly. Today's younger generation plays faster, attacks earlier, and endures less. The average break-building of the top 16 rose from around 45 points to more than 60 in a decade. But safety play — the art of leaving the white in a difficult position for the opponent — has declined. In a recent ranking event I counted only around 60 percent of the high-quality safety exchanges compared with ten years ago.

Why? Because the scoring system rewards attack. Because television likes frames that finish in 15 minutes. Because the younger generation is taught to score, not to fight. And that is why when a match reaches a deciding frame, players over 45 still win more often than most of the 1990s generation. Experience in snooker does not live in the muscles. It lives in the ability to endure silence.

One detail few notice: while snooker struggles to hold on to young players, Chinese 8-ball is drawing talent at an alarming rate. Chinese 8-ball events now have total prize funds larger than snooker in the same bracket, and travel costs are far lower because the events are concentrated in one huge domestic market. For an 18-year-old standing before two paths, the economic choice is not hard to guess.

But here is the counterintuitive point I want to make.

Many people in snooker believe Middle Eastern money will save the sport. I am not sure. Russia 2026 taught me one thing: data does not win matches, it only wins before kick-off. With snooker, money cannot measure a shaky hand in frame 35. Money cannot create a generation of players able to endure the silence of seventeen square metres of table.

There is a blind spot in the whole debate about the handover. People speak of the "next generation" as if it is waiting behind the door. But look at history: after Steve Davis came Stephen Hendry. After Hendry came O'Sullivan. Each time, the successor was not a natural evolution — it was a rare individual phenomenon, appearing roughly once a decade.

If no player aged 25 wins two of the next three world championships, what will we be talking about in 2030? I suspect it will still be O'Sullivan — but as a commentator, not a player.

Here is what structural data cannot tell you: I sat inside a snooker academy in Sheffield in February this year. Watching twelve children aged 11-13 train. They play very well. But when I asked one child why he chose snooker instead of Chinese 8-ball — a game booming in Asia with ever-growing prizes — the answer was: "Because the prize money is higher." Nobody said: "Because I love this game."

That is the blind spot. A sport whose leading motivation is money rather than passion will produce good players. But it struggles to produce great ones.

So what happens next?

The question I will chase in the coming season is not who wins. My question is: how many players under 25 reach a World Championship semi-final by 2027 — and among them, whether any talks about this sport with a verb other than "to make a living".

If the answer is no, then snooker has not just lost a generation. It has lost itself.

And when the table falls silent, I will hear the crack clearly.