Cazoo Launches Partnership With World Snooker Tour
CAZOO LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH WORLD SNOOKER TOUR Sponsorship of new Cazoo Series to cover 3 major tournaments
Cazoo, the UK’s leading online car retailer, which makes ordering a car as simple and seamless as buying any other product online today, announces that it has signed a multi-year deal with the World Snooker Tour (WST) as the main sponsor of the Players Championship, Tour Championship and World Grand Prix.
This trio of prestigious events on the snooker calendar will be known as the Cazoo Series and will see prominent Cazoo branding on the main set, players’ waistcoats and interview and media conference backdrops and will have extensive live coverage on ITV and a range of broadcasters across the globe.
The Cazoo Players Championship will take place from February 22 to 28, contested by the leading 16 players on the one-year ranking list, followed by the Cazoo Tour Championship which will run from March 22 to 28, featuring an elite field of the world’s top eight.
During the 2021/22 season, the Cazoo Series will start with the Cazoo World Grand Prix, scheduled for early December.
This latest deal with WST adds snooker to Cazoo’s impressive portfolio of major sports sponsorships announced over the past year which includes principal sponsorship of the Rugby League World Cup, The Hundred cricket tournament as well as Premier League football teams Everton and Aston Villa.
Cazoo owns and fully reconditions all its cars before offering them on its website. Cazoo has thousands of cars available at any time for either delivery or collection in as little as 72 hours. Every Cazoo car comes with a full 7-day money back guarantee and a comprehensive 90-day warranty.
Cazoo is pioneering the shift to online car buying in the UK and, since its launch just over one year ago, has already delivered over 15,000 cars to consumers across the UK who have embraced the selection, transparency and convenience of buying high quality used cars entirely online.
Alex Chesterman OBE, Founder & CEO of Cazoo said: “We are delighted to partner with Barry and his team at the World Snooker Tour to launch the Cazoo Series. This partnership will help to further grow our audience as we continue to build Cazoo into a household brand and we look forward to engaging with and delivering the best car buying experience to snooker fans across the UK.”
Barry Hearn OBE, Chairman of WST said: “We are excited to welcome Cazoo to the snooker family and are looking forward to introducing our significant global audience to the Cazoo brand. The events in the Cazoo Series are some of the highest quality tournaments on the calendar because they bring together the cream of the crop and only the players in form earn a place in the draw.”
And, yes, you read it correctly, this NOT a bookie, it’s a company selling cars online.
Betting sponsorship: sport’s next financial crisis
Football and darts will be hit hard by shake up of gambling advertising laws
Britain’s sports industry – already on its knees due to the impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic – is bracing for another financial crisis.
In what is described by The Sunday Times as the “biggest shake-up of advertising in professional sport since tobacco promotion was outlawed”, the paper reports that gambling logos are set to be banned from all kits.
Football is one of the biggest beneficiaries of sponsorship by gambling companies with £110m a year alone generated for clubs in the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) Championship.
In the Premier League, eight of the 20 clubs are sponsored by betting firms – Burnley, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton, West Ham and Wolves – while in the Championship, which is title sponsored by SkyBet, it’s 12 clubs.
It’s not just football finances that will be affected. Sports such as darts, snooker and boxing will also be dealt a blow if the ban comes into play.
Every player in the top ten of the Professional Darts Corporation wears gambling logos during big tournaments, the Sunday Times reports. While in snooker, many top players, including Ronnie O’Sullivan, wear waistcoats which feature the logos of betting sites.
When would the ban start?
A huge rise in “problem gamblers” has led to the review of Britain’s gambling laws and the advertising that surrounds the sector. According to The Telegraph there is a “rising unease” in the government over betting addiction and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is “increasingly likely” to ban gambling sponsors on football shirts by the autumn.
In what would be the most extensive review of the sector since 2005, sources close to talks with Downing Street say there is “determination at the top” of the government to “press ahead with reform”.
In August 2017 a study by the Gambling Commission found that 430,000 people in the UK were described as “problem gamblers” and there were concerns that the volume of TV adverts helped to fuel under-age betting.
Research published in May last year suggested that levels of gambling addiction could be “even higher than was previously thought and half of those with a problem are not getting the help they need”. A YouGov survey of 16,000 people commissioned by GambleAware estimated that up to 2.7% of adults in Britain were “problem gamblers”.
‘Worst possible timing’
With sports seeking alternative revenue streams amid the Covid-19 crisis, senior Whitehall figures say they are conscious of “the worst possible timing” of the review into gambling advertising.
Clubs face “unprecedented financial chaos”, the Telegraph says, but according to campaigners the British public want to see a shake-up of laws. A Survation poll for Clean Up Gambling found that 51% back the banning of all advertising, sponsorship and promotion for gambling firms. Just 21% disagreed while the rest gave no opinion either way.
Campaigning Labour MP Carolyn Harris told the Daily Mirror a blanket ban on sports sponsorship by gambling firms has “got to happen”. She has also urged the government to go further, with further affordability checks and a complete end to newly-reformed “VIP schemes”.
Harris said: “It’s such a wide-ranging issue they can’t just put a sticking plaster on one thing and hope the rest will go away.”
Every time I’ve raised this issue on this blog I’ve had to face a lot of negative reactions from scorn to border-line insults, and a lot of those who reacted that way, wanted to negate or minimise the negative impact of betting on peoples’ live. I won’t have it: I have known personally two men who took their own life because they couldn’t see any other way out of their debts and shame over betting/gambling … leaving their family – in both case wife with kids – to deal with the aftermath of their addiction. And that was in Belgium. years ago, in a time and place where gambling was seen as a shady business at best and certainly not advertised. Betting/gambling kills.
Mark King has been very open about his own addiction and it’s consequences.
Barry Hearn has often hinted that, if snooker doesn’t grow as much as it could in mainland Europe, it’s because the lack of sponsors. The thing is, most potential sponsors in mainland Europe would not want to be associated with anything to do with betting or gambling. If snooker manages to distance itself from what is perceived here as “unethical” sponsors, it will strongly increase its chances to find good sponsors on the Continent.
Judd Trump beat Jack Lisowski by 9-2 to win the 2021 Geman Masters.
Congratulations Judd Trump
By winning yesterday evening, Judd became the first player to succesfully defend the German Masters title. This is Judd’s 21th ranking title, the fourth of this season already. The match wasn’t as one-sided as the score suggests: quite a number of frames were close. The worrying thing for Jack is that, despite getting chances, he didn’t win any of them, he missed all the crucial balls. Given his ability, this can only be a mental thing. He may benefit from seeking help with someone like Chris Henry.
World number one Judd Trump needs just two more frames for back-to-back BildBet German Masters titles, after establishing a 7-1 lead over Jack Lisowski in the final.
The Ace in the Pack lifted the title 12 months ago with a 9-6 defeat of Neil Robertson in Berlin. A win tonight would see him become the first ever player to defend the German Masters crown.
Lisowski is aiming for a maiden ranking title with victory this evening. The 29-year-old has lost all four of his ranking final appearances heading into today, including the World Grand Prix final against Trump in his most recent event.
This afternoon Trump found himself 3-1 ahead at the mid-session, after crafting breaks of 56 and 65 during the opening four frames.
Trump edged a tough fifth frame when they returned, before a break of 72 put him 5-1 up. Crucially, Trump stole the seventh frame on the black after Lisowski broke down on the blue. He hammered home his advantage with a break of 65 in the final frame to lead 7-1 heading into tonight.
They return at 7pm to play the best of 17 encounter to a conclusion. A top prize of £80,000 and the Brandon Parker Trophy are on the line.
World number one Judd Trump thrashed Jack Lisowski 9-2 to become the first ever player to win back-to-back BildBet German Masters titles.
Defending champion Trump lifted the trophy 12 months ago in Berlin with a 9-6 win over Neil Robertson. Today’s more emphatic victory over Lisowski secures him a top prize of £80,000. Trump now leads the BetVictor European Series, which sees the player who accumulates the most money over the six-event series pocket a £150,000 bonus.
Trump also lifts the newly named Brandon Parker Trophy. Brandon was a World Snooker Tour Director, who sadly passed away in 2020. He was responsible for bringing the German Masters to the iconic Tempodrom in Berlin.
Today’s win for Trump leaves him on four ranking victories for the season, having also lifted silverware at the English Open, Northern Ireland Open and World Grand Prix. He remains in the hunt to better his own record of six ranking event wins in a single campaign, set last season.
Trump is now on 21 ranking event victories in his career. Remarkably 12 of those have come since the start of 2019.
Both Trump and Lisowski were forced to sit out the Masters earlier this month, after returning positive tests for Covid-19 prior to the opening round. The pair faced each other in the World Grand Prix final before Christmas, when Trump won 10-7.
This is the first time in 26 years that successive ranking finals have been contested by the same two players. The last time was when Steve Davis and John Higgins faced each other in the 1995 Welsh and International Open finals.
Lisowski will have to wait for a maiden ranking event title. Today’s defeat means he has now been runner-up on five occasions, having also lost finals at the 2018 Riga Masters, 2019 China Open, 2019 Scottish Open and the 2020 World Grand Prix.
Trump stormed to a commanding 7-1 advantage in this afternoon’s opening session, leaving him requiring just two frames for victory.
The uphill task for Lisowski got even harder when he lost the opening frame of the evening to trail 8-1. He did claw one back by winning the tenth with two breaks of 53. However, Trump wasn’t to be denied, firing in a superb break of 119 to wrap up the victory.
Trump said: “It is incredible, another win. It was obviously tough for me and Jack to both miss the Masters. It was nice that we both got to the final in this one. It’s always tough playing against him, being my friend. It’s never going to be as enjoyable as winning against somebody else. It is a game you always have to play your best in.
“I’m enjoying my snooker. Whenever you win, you are always going to enjoy it. It is just important for me to keep doing the right things. I’ve not stopped practising hard. I’ve kept up that momentum. I’ve not rested at all over the last couple of years. I’ve put the work in and am fully getting the rewards.
“Brandon was someone who created snooker in the European countries. He started off with some minor events and in the end he turned the German Masters into a fully fledged ranking event. Berlin was a really special place for the German Masters. I can remember last year, he was so proud of what he had achieved.”
Lisowski said: “I’m not going to get too down on myself. There are a lot of events coming up and it is a good time to be hitting form. I’m definitely doing that. Hopefully I can nick a title soon, as long as I don’t keep running into Judd in finals!”
I have highlighted Judd’s nice tribute to Brandon Parker. Whilst Judd’s feelings and praise for Brandon are certainly genuine, and fitting under the circumstances, they also highlight the “UK centric” mentality prevalent amongst so many UK fans and young players who don’t know the history of our sport. Brandon did wonders for snooker in mainland Europe, but he didn’t “create” it, he revived it.
Th German Open/Masters was held for four consecutive years between 1995 and 1998 in various cities. The first three instalments were ranking events. John Higgins won it in 1995 and 1997, Ronnie in 1996. There was a fifth, minor, professional event played in Germany in 1995.
No less than 12 professional events were played in Belgium between 1986 and 1994, four of them ranking: the 1992 European Open (won by Jimmy White beating Mark Johnston-Allen in the final), the February 1993 European Open (won by Steve Davis beating Stephen Hendry in the final), the December 1993 European Open (won by Stephen Hendry, beating Ronnie in the final), and the 1994 European Open (won by Stephen Hendry beating John Parrott in the final).
The were also three professional events played in France, two of them ranking: the 1989 European Open (won by John Parrott beating Terry Griffiths in the final), the 1990 European Open (won by John Parrott beating Stephen Hendry in the final).
Eurosport started in 1989 and used to show the snooker in the 90th. The amateur scene was very strong in The Netherlands and Belgium. Some of those guys are still competing on the World Seniors Tour. In 2019, Joris Maas from the Netherlands qualified for the WSS World Championship. Joris, 46 years old, has never played as a pro but is a multiple national champion.
So, no, snooker is not a “new thing” in mainland Europe, and it’s not been brought there by the Hearn administration. It has however been revived by it, and for that I’m thankful.
This trio of prestigious events on the snooker calendar will be known as the Cazoo Series and will see prominent Cazoo branding on the main set, players’ waistcoats and interview and media conference backdrops and will have extensive live coverage on ITV and a range of broadcasters across the globe.
This latest deal with WST adds snooker to Cazoo’s impressive portfolio of major sports sponsorships announced over the past year which includes principal sponsorship of the Rugby League World Cup, The Hundred cricket tournament as well as Premier League football teams Everton and Aston Villa.
World number one Judd Trump needs just two more frames for back-to-back BildBet German Masters titles, after establishing a 7-1 lead over Jack Lisowski in the final.
World number one Judd Trump thrashed Jack Lisowski 9-2 to become the first ever player to win back-to-back BildBet German Masters titles.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 