Snooker chief Jason Ferguson believes the sport is in prime position to capitalise on its rapidly expanding professional itinerary by launching a renewed bid for inclusion in the 2024 Olympic Games.

Ferguson, both chairman of governing body the WPBSA as well as president of its umbrella organisation, the World Confederation of Billiards Sports, announced the move during the World Championships, currently underway in Sheffield.

Despite having been left off the final shortlist for inclusion at the expanded Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020, Ferguson believes a professional tour which visited 10 different countries during this season is testament to its rapidly increasing opportunity.

Ferguson said: “If you go back five years we’d have said, Olympics? No chance. But we have developed our sport and expanded our programme globally and I think we fully deserve our place on the Olympic platform.

“I can confirm that we will be making a bid for the 2024 Olympic Games.

“We made a late bid for Tokyo and we did very well. We learned a lot through that process and we know we have the ability to deliver a fantastic Olympic event.”

Snooker is a regular part of the programme for the World Games, a four-yearly event for sports not in the Olympics, and will use next year’s competition in Wroclaw, Poland as a means to impress the merits of snooker on watching International Olympic Committee officials.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.