1994 saw the significant introduction of Snooker Promotions (Malta) on the local sport scene with the staging of a modest tournament, the Cisk Gold Malta Masters, contested by the then four Maltese professional players.
However, the desire to support local players by affording them international competitive matches on home ground was only one of the promoters' objectives.
Two other ambitious goals - the satisfaction of being able to present local snooker enthusiasts with top level matches and the ambition to put Malta on the professional international snooker circuit - meant winning the confidence and respect of international concerns, mainly World Snooker and also that of the leading professionals themselves.
And in this exciting activity, like in any other venture, the proof of the pudding is in the eating where the 'eating' shows that both confidence and respect were eventually attained as in February 2008 SPM are going to be 18. Yes, the fourth Malta Cup will be the 18th international tournament organised by Snooker Promotions.
While the first event was described as 'modest', the last one staged last year was simply stunning.
One week of fantastic snooker, put up by the world's top players, saw full capacity attendances with an encouraging presence of foreign visitors, some 400 of them from 23 different countries. They travelled to Malta particularly to attend the tournament.
Furthermore, the 2007 Malta Cup attained priceless international exposure on Eurosport - 46 hours of total broadcast time of which 40 were live transmission.
These were transmitted in 20 languages with an average viewership of 34 million followers spread in 54 different territories, with a reach of 108 million homes across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Maybe one might query the popularity of Eurosport. Well, when it comes to the PETV channel system it is certainly no.1.
Recent surveys showed that Eurosport enjoys a 46.3% market share, CNN 35.2%, Euronews 30.0%, BBC World 24.4% and CNBC 15.0%. All these statistics are official ratings published by Eurosport who attribute this success to "the power of sport".
Furthermore, the channel's website gets up to 405 million views per month.
Branding exercise
Undoubtedly in recent years SPM tournaments have proved a successful branding exercise for Malta, possibly the only sport event held here that attained such prestigious promotion levels.
Snooker connotation with sport-tourism is endorsed by the fact that the main backing to the Malta Cup comes from the Malta Tourism Authority, Air Malta and Hilton Malta, with the national airline being involved since the very first SPM tournament.
For the 2008 Malta Cup, a new name has joined the sponsorship pool, an entity which should further enhance upon the overseas marketing of the event and secure more foreign visitors to Malta for the tournament.
The new 'partners' are Allevents Malta. They form part of the UK-based Fraser Eagle Group, specialists in passenger transport, travel and logistics solutions.
The Group already enjoys an active association with sports in Britain through a series of sponsorship concords amongst others with Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League, Accrington Stanley in Football League Two, Halifax Town in the Conference National League and with rugby's Wigan Warriors.
Exciting partners indeed who, as stated by Kevin Dean, managing director of Fraser Eagle Group, are "looking forward that this introduction to the sponsorship pool of the Malta Cup will be the beginning of a successful relationship which will further strengthen our association with Malta and the event itself".
The 2008 Malta Cup, earmarked for February 4-10, guarantees another snooker spectacle where the 20 invited players will be made up from the world's top 16 and two wild cards chosen by World Snooker together with Maltese wild cards Tony Drago and Alex Borg, selected by Snooker Promotions.
All players will be divided in four groups of five each which means that every player has to play four qualifiers prior to the winner of each group moves on to the semi-finals.
Indeed, 18 is looked upon as a thrilling moment in life when one becomes 'of age' to experience the so-called adults' world.
Yet, in snooker this number denotes a long line of exciting and spectacular events which have given Malta an identity on the international world of professional tournaments.