Billiard Sport in China

krisgong

Registered
With billiards’ introduction into china at the end of 19th century and the reform and opening up in the 1980s, people’s living standards as well as billiard sport have developed rapidly. In 1986, with the birth of Chinese Billiards & Snooker Association(CBSA) and domestic enterprises like STAR, billiard sport in China has moved from public sport into competitive sport. Zhang Xiaoning, director of The Multi-ball Games Administrative Centre of General Administration of Sport of China, claimed that the amounts of new billiard clubs and fans of Ding Junhui and Pan Xiaoting have experienced rapid growths amounted to over 30,000 and 80 million respectively since 2005.
In 2012, billiards with Chinese characteristics such as “Chinese eight-ball”, “Chinese nine-ball”, “Pool” , etc., were officially named “China Billiards” . The new rules are so easy and flexible that every players can pick them up easily. John Higgins, a famous snooker player, once declared that he fell in love with the rules within only 10 seconds.

Since 2012, China Billiards has carried out a series of matches and has won support from world’s three main organizations (International Billiards Federation, World Pool-Billiard Association, World Snooker Association), brought into world ranking points system and co-organized the first China Billiards World Championship successfully.

China now has 80 million billiard fans and 70% of them are fans of China Billiards. Famous billiard players such as Selby, Higgins, Hawkins, Kim Ga-Young, Fu Xiaofang and so on, all had made their debut in 1st China Billiards World Championship. 7 live broadcasts were conducted by CCTV for 304 excellent players coming from 23 countries, conducted over 830 matches in 10 days.
Despite the suspect and controversy of Chinese holding world-class events, China billiards is still taking firm steps in this regard.

Featuring billiard sport, Yushan County possesses hundreds of billiard clubs, holding matches regularly. Mineral-rich Yushan County enjoys more than 60 orefields whose unique bluestones are regarded the best materials for making billiard tables. Cooperated with STAR in 2015, Yushan County invested 3 billion yuan in building up international billiards city complex, training bases, billiard museums and so forth, developing tablecloths, lamps and other industrial chains. With the total area of 630 acres and around 3 billion yuan investment, the project has also input a lot of facilities, such as “STAR Billiard Industrial Park”, “International Billiards Stadium”, “Commercial Complex”, sports events resources and so on.

As the most fundamental match in 2015, STAR China Billiard Ranking Match is the only one access to 2015CBSA China Billiard Ranking Match. By getting credits, the top 4 players can reach the direct qualification to 2016 China Billiards World Championship.

Held in every spring in Guangzhou, GBE is the first professional billiard exhibition in Asia and has been held successfully for 9 sessions. With only 18 exhibitors and 1,000m2 exhibition area in its first session in 2007, GBE attracted over 4,000 billiards lovers. Since then, GBE has become a top and high-quality professional exhibition in 2011. In 2015, GBE had covered an exhibition area of 11,000m2, gathered several famous brand included STAR, RASSON, Simonis, LUCASI and so forth, developed into an excellent billiard exhibition. GBE2016 will be held in Area A of China Import and Export Fair Complex during March 9th-11th.

In the future, billiard sport in China will develop in areas of operation & management, training base, technological products, entertainment programs, etc.

You can catch all the latest GBE news on the website www.gbechina.com, "follower us" on our Twitter page (@gbechina), or contact Ms. Eve Cheng via grand.ev@grahw.com
 
Top