Can Snooker Reclaim Its Place as a Beloved British Pastime?

For two weeks every spring, the city of Sheffield in northern England goes snooker crazy. When the game’s World Championship come to town, as they have done every year since 1977, hotels get booked out, games are broadcast wall-to-wall in pubs and the central square, amateur players and armchair experts show off their skills in sports bars, and novelty T-shirts become de rigueur: “SNOOKER LOOPY,” “I’D RATHER BE WATCHING THE SNOOKER.” The championship is estimated to bring in 12,000 visitors and £45 million ($61 million) annually. In this blue-collar town, which is still mourning the loss of its steel industry, those aren’t numbers to sniff at.

The biggest transformation occurs in the blocky, brutalist Crucible Theatre, which shifts from staging Shakespeare and Harold Pinter to become the Theatre of Dreams — snooker’s holiest of holy sites, where 32 leading players from across the world compete to be be named the best of the best. Tables are installed in the auditorium, where just under 1,000 people bite their fingernails as they obsessively watch every break-off and back-spin for days at a time. (Some matches go on for 10-plus hours.) On Sunday, May 3, the next winner will be crowned.