Stephen Lee turned 50 on Saturday, and yesterday, Sunday 13th of October 2024 his ban from the sport of snooker came to an end. Is he free to return to play? Not quite.
Stephen Lee turned 50 on Saturday, and he was able to celebrate the end of his 12-year ban from snooker for match fixing.
The former world number five was suspended in October of 2012 following reports of irregular betting patterns during a Premier League fixture with John Higgins.
A wider investigation followed before an independent tribunal found Lee guilty of fixing matches in 2008 and 2009, including a World Championship encounter at the Crucible Theatre.
The Englishman was handed a 12-year sentence in 2014, backdated to when his original suspension began two years earlier on his 38th birthday.
It was the most severe punishment handed to a player in the game’s history until last year’s Chinese match-fixing scandal saw Liang Wenbo and Li Hang given lifetime bans from the sport.
In theory, Lee is now free to return to competitive action from when his snooker ban ended on October 12th, 2024.
However, it’s unlikely that we’ll see him competing in any tournament sanctioned by or affiliated with the World Professional Billiard and Snooker Association (WPBSA) in the near future.
Lee owes the WPBSA £125,000 in legal fees related to the court cases and unsuccessful appeals from a decade ago.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson for the WPBSA told SnookerHQ.com: “Stephen Lee would need to reach a satisfactory agreement with the WPBSA over settlement of his costs before he could play.”
The unpaid fines will prevent Lee from participating on the Q Tour, Q School, and the WSF Championship – normal routes for amateur players to gain promotion back to the World Snooker Tour.
What has Stephen Lee said?
“I must get asked this weekly, daily, minutely,” Stephen Lee said about a possible comeback in 2022, as reported in The Mirror.
“I would like to say no, but I am still capable of playing. Let’s see what happens in two years. It’s not a no, and not a yes.”
“We can only just see what happens in a couple of years’ time. I have some exciting things coming up, and I’m also getting older.
“My eyes are getting worse, and I never had good eyes to start with. As you get older the determination and the fire goes.”
Yet it appears any of those small aspirations have since disappeared, with Lee confirming as much in a Facebook post in January this year.
“Not a chance of it my friend,” was Lee’s reply to a comment on the social media platform which encouraged him to complete the comeback.
“I struggle to break off nowadays. It’s down to my son now…”
Lee’s son Alfie is an aspiring amateur player who has competed in Q School and at the WSF Championship in 2023.
Stephen Lee after winning an APTC minor-ranking event in 2012. Photo credit: WST
What did Lee achieve in snooker?
When he was suspended in 2012, Stephen Lee was regarded as one of the best players in the world and had recently secured his fifth career ranking title.
The Englishman graduated to the pro tour in the same year as Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins, and Mark Williams – the fabled Class of 1992.
He didn’t quite enjoy the same level of success as his contemporaries from that era, but his silky cue action was widely regarded as among the smoothest in history.
In addition to reaching the 2008 Masters final where he was denied Triple Crown glory by Mark Selby, Lee’s best finish at the World Championship was a semi-final appearance in 2003.
He won the Grand Prix twice (renamed the LG Cup in 2001), the Scottish Open, the Welsh Open, and the Players Tour Championship Grand Finals.
During the 2000/01 and 2003/04 snooker seasons, Lee was ranked as high as number five on the official world rankings list.
Why was Stephen Lee banned?
Lee had survived several investigations into suspicious betting patterns prior to the one that eventually banished him from the sport in 2014.
A tribunal ruled he deliberately lost matches against Ken Doherty, Neil Robertson, and Marco Fu at the 2008 Malta Cup.
He was also deemed to have agreed to lose the first frame against both Stephen Hendry and Mark King during matches played at the 2008 UK Championship.
Lee was additionally found guilty of influencing the outcome of matches against Mark Selby at the 2009 China Open and Ryan Day at the 2009 World Championship.
Since getting banned, the Trowbridge potter has had other run-ins with the law.
In 2014, Lee was fined by Swindon Magistrates’ Court for failing to deliver a cue he had sold online to the buyer.
Four years later, he appeared in court again for teaching snooker without a permit in Hong Kong.
For a period last year, the five-time tour title winner was one of the best potters on the planet, reclaiming his place in the top 10 as his smooth cue action helped rack up a string of impressive results.
But behind the scenes his world was unravelling, with a web of deceit finally exposed at a tribunal which heard he teamed up with his then manager, sponsor and a friend so they could profit from his cheating.
Lee, of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, was found guilty of deliberately throwing two matches at the 2008 Malta Cup and the opening frame of two games he went on to win at the UK Championship that year.
He agreed to lose by a particular score in another Malta Cup encounter, and pulled off the same trick in a match at both the 2009 China Open and World Championship.
If the offences had been committed more recently, he would have been given a mandatory life ban under a tougher disciplinary regime introduced after Barry Hearn took over as boss of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA).
Because his case has been heard under the rules as they stood when the matches took place, a lifetime suspension is not guaranteed, although the option will be available when his sentence is considered on 24 September.
Hearn maintains there is no place for cheats in the game, and he set up a dedicated integrity unit – headed by former detective chief superintendent Nigel Mawer, an expert in tackling sport match-fixing.
They are aware that any event with only two outcomes (a winner and loser) is potentially open to those who want to profit from wrongdoing via inside information.
Every match is monitored for unusual betting patterns on a range of markets, from frame winners to correct scores, with alarm bells sounded by punters placing unusually large wagers or a big-staking new account holder focused on one particular player.
“Match fixing is a growing concern, indeed a cancer in many sports, and must be eradicated,” said Adam Lewis QC, chairman of the independent tribunal which heard the Lee case over three days in Bristol.
World champion Ronnie O’Sullivan’s claim after the verdict that he has heard of other players throwing matches echoes comments that have floated around snooker for years.
If a player is willing to deliberately lose a frame or match, he can do so – veiling the act under a cloak of excuses, which could range from a mis-hit shot, pressure, nerves or being out of form.
Lee’s downfall shows this remains possible, whatever the safeguards, but also that those who cheat risk their careers.
While online gambling, and the ability to ‘lay’ or back against a particular outcome, has opened up the scope for more fixing, the trail of evidence from betting accounts, computers and phone calls can expose the cheat.
Whereas criminal cases, with the evidential ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard, are harder to prove, sport governing bodies can successfully bring cases within their own rules using the civil standard of proof – ‘the balance of probabilities’.
This is what did for Lee. He had been arrested by West Midlands Police in 2010 over the allegations, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the charges in October 2012.
When fresh suspicions surrounded a Premier League game against John Higgins, which Lee lost 4-2 and was not pursued to a hearing, World Snooker suspended the Wiltshire player and opened its own investigation.
The tribunal report into the Lee case said bets were placed by three groups of people, including his then sponsor Paul Jones – an independent financial adviser trading as Prosperity from Stourbridge in the West Midlands – who opened multiple betting accounts with various associates.
The second group were found to have been co-ordinated by his then manager Neil Clague, based on the Isle of Man, who placed almost identical bets. And the third was a friend called Ian MacDougall, from his hometown of Trowbridge.
They bet in unusually high amounts, on the internet and with high street bookmakers.
“Lee was in contact with the groups in the lead-up to the matches in question and afterwards,” said a WPBSA statement.
“In one case the person collected the successful bet and placed half of the winnings into Lee’s wife’s bank account.
“The total amount bet on these matches was in excess of £111,000 leading to winnings of over £97,000 for the persons placing the bets. It is not clear how much Lee benefited from their activity.”
Lee will have the chance to put forward mitigation, and can cite the fact he has been suspended for a year already and the allegations have hung over him since early 2010.
He has been in trouble before – testing positive for cannabis in 2001 after a routine drugs test at the Champions Cup in Brighton – although his father insisted it was the result of him being in a room with someone smoking the drug.
However, these fresh findings bring far more serious consequences and come just after a time when his career was on the up again.
He rose to fifth in the world from a ranking of 18 at the start of the 2011-12 season, and over two years pocketed a total of more than £200,000 in prize money from tour events alone.
Only last March, he won his first ranking tournament for six years, whitewashing then world champion Neil Robertson 4-0 to win the Players Tour Championship Grand Finals in Galway.
“It’s a cracking feeling. It makes all the hard work and travelling worthwhile,” said Lee at the time.
But despite making well over £2m from tournaments during his career, he was in financial trouble. The father-of-four, who married his long-time partner Laura in Florida in 2005, faced county court judgements for unpaid bills.
His camp protested innocence throughout and claimed the suspension effectively made him guilty before any evidence had been fully examined.
“He has worked incredibly hard. He is sick of all this stuff getting thrown at him and feels there are doubts about him every time he misses a ball,” said his most recent manager Adam Quigley around the time of his suspension.
Supporters bemoaned the length of time it took to bring the case, but the process was not helped by the player changing his lawyer three times.
Quite why he was in financial turmoil, or exactly what motivated his money-making misdemeanours, has not been made clear. When asked for his side of the story, he wanted to be paid for it.
During his suspension, which applies to tournaments sanctioned by World Snooker, he has still been playing the game for money at other events and exhibition matches.
In May, Lee – who will be 39 next month, a year to the day from his suspension – won the RKG Masters pro-am tournament in India, with his run including a 7-1 defeat of Michael Holt in the semi-finals.
But after 21 years as a professional, the chance of him adding to his tour titles now looks remote.
I was taking pictures at that fateful premier league match that triggered the whole investigation and, eventually, the ban. Although this match was not “retained” in the investigation eventually, there were no doubts in my mind, nor in Clive Everton’s1 mind that something was seriously amiss. Yet, bizarrely, when I watched it back on YouTube years later it wasn’t that obvious on the TV images. But it definitely was there and then in the arena. John Higgins who was his opponent must have sensed it as well. Judd Trump who was watching on TV called it on Twitter. The last minutes of the last frame in particular featured some bizarre shot selections and misses.
Anyway you can judge by yourself … the end of the match is still on YouTube
Why would Stephen Lee, who was earning decently from his snooker, need so much money? I don’t have an answer to that. There were rumours that he and his wife were drug addicts but that were rumours nothing more. It is true that Lee was prone to sweating profusely2 which can possibly be a symptom of withdrawal, but it could have a lot different causes of course. He wasn’t a particularly fit guy for a start…
Many want to see him back on tour. I’m not one of them.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 