How much Chinese people like billiards? Tell you some amazing numbers

World Snooker Championship is going on at Crucible Theater of Shefield, England. Ding won the first round and millions of Chinese audience witnessed that on TV. There is no doubt that snooker is becoming more and more popular in China right now.

But why? Let us analyze it with the given data.

1. Market Base: snooker is the sports with the most participants in China.

According to the data from the China Sports Bureau: from 2007 to 2011, Chinese spent 55 billion RMB on billiards in total which boost the industry dramatically. By 2011, the number of participants reached 60 million all over the country. It means 1 in 20 people play billiards.

2. Events: China holds almost half of the major events every year.

In the calendar of Snooker 2014-15, China holds 4 ranking tournaments(Wuxi, Shanghai Masters, Chengdu International Championship and China Open) of 12. Moreover the Snooker World Cup will be played in Wuxi in June. The Prize of the tournaments are relatively high and the box office goes really well during the events.

3. TV broadcasting: just behind soccer and basketball, ranks the 3rd on CCTV5.

TV has the most stable and massive audience. According to the statistics from CCTV5, the snooker was on the TV broadcast for 380 hours in the first half of 2013, just behind soccer and basketball, rank the 3rd . That also indicates the favour from the audience.

4. Ratings：average rating was 0.23%, ranked 4th of all.

As a niche sport, the average rating of snooker in the first half of 2013 was 0.23%, rank 4th

, just behind basketball, table tennis and badminton, even higher than soccer.

Moreover, different with it does in England, snooker attracts more younger people than seniors. It led to more modern industry like finance and automobile to sponsor snooker in China.