As readers know, one aspect of snooker that I think could and should be improved is the merchandise on offer. Here are a few of my suggestions, but what would you like to see?
Clothing
Aside from a few generic efforts, for example the ‘I love snooker’ t-shirts and the very corporate fleeces for sale at the ranking event tournaments, there are very few pieces of official clothing on offer for fans at the moment.
As a fan who enjoys supporting particular players and getting involved with the matches, what I would love to see are themed t-shirts with individual players on, for example a blue and white Stephen Hendry shirt or a red and white version with Ryan Day on the front. World Snooker do have a very basic “I love Ronnie” t-shirt available but what about the other 95 players? As popular as Ronnie is, he is not the only player to have his supporters.
Those responsible for the merchandise could in fact do a lot worse than making available t-shirts such as those on offer over at Snooker Shirt, who have some brilliant designs for sale. As well as those for individual players, they have some other inventive efforts such as their famous ‘Snooker Evolution’ piece which I would be more than happy to purchase.
Credit must also go to Mark Selby who also has a t-shirt available on his website here. If more players were to follow suit then perhaps this would solve the problem another way.
DVD’s
What actually inspired me to write this post however was something that occurred to me regarding DVD’s earlier today. Why is it that you can buy a DVD of the FA Cup final every season, the Wimbledon final, the Formula One season and so on, but there is absolutely nothing when it comes to even the World Championship in snooker.
Knowing snooker fans as I do there are clearly people out there interested in rewatching the classic matches, but with the content on Youtube being severely reduced recently and the lack of official DVD’s on offer, they are having to go without. Surely if someone were to release a snooker season review DVD once a year or even a tournament disc for just the World Championship, then people would be interested?
For anyone who has not seen it then I would recommend the 30 Years of Embassy Snooker DVD which was released in 2005 and though a little out of date, it is probably still the best of its kind at the moment.
Books
Ok with the advent of the internet these would presumably be less important than in the past, but on a similar theme to what I would like to see on the DVD side, it would be great to see an official publication, perhaps even annually, reviewing the past season or so. Again other sports such as F1 and tennis make something similar available so why not snooker?
The best available at the moment are probably those advertised in the back of Snooker Scene on a monthly basis, be sure to check those out if you have a copy.
Miscellaneous
How about other little bits such as mousemats, pens, badges, signed displays, mugs, calendars, rucksacks, board games, wallets and so on? Some of these are on offer but like the clothing are either overly corporate or too generic and frankly uninteresting.
Hopefully some improvements may be made over the next few months, indeed there were promising signs at the World Championship with tournament sponsors Betfred introducing some nice t-shirts with images of past champions on the back. Perhaps with a bit more time to prepare for next season’s tournament (remember they were brought on board very close to the start of the tournament this year), they will be able to come up with some even better ideas.
With money being tight everywhere at the moment, World Snooker included, perhaps it is a bit unrealistic to expect too much, but surely something can be done to improve things.
Those are my ideas, what would you like to see?