Snooker: Split personality leaves popular game heading nowhere

International footballers, lingerie for gay men, infighting, backbiting and mutiny. The snooker tour and its colourful agenda got quietly back to work this week at the start of a season that could prove pivotal to the future of the game.

On the face of it, the scene at Glasgow's Thistle Hotel, host venue of the Regal Masters, which concludes this weekend, has been completely normal. Twelve of the world's best players have been contesting a prize fund of £205,000. Almost every match has guaranteed a big-name showdown, from yesterday's evening quarter-final, which pitted the world champion Peter Ebdon against Stephen Hendry, the man he beat in a thrilling 18-17 climax at the Crucible in May, to today's semi-final between the world No 1 Ronnie O'Sullivan and last night's winner.

Some 600 paying fans – groups of lads, sons and dads, the obligatory pink-rinse brigade – have been filling a city-centre banqueting suite to watch. Celebrities, including Celtic's John Hartson and Neil Lennon, who were there to see John Higgins beat Jimmy White on Thursday, have been par for the course. And the BBC has been filming it all to screen to a sizeable regional audience.

But behind the scenes there is mayhem. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, the game's governing body, is in disarray, rudderless and under threat from an unlikely group of mutineers. On Thursday a letter arrived from 15 of them – Hendry and Steve Davis included – calling for the board, which has no chairman or chief executive, to stand down. Hendry and Davis want to head a new board and take the game forward. Unless that happens, they believe, snooker could go into meltdown.

The players' concerns have been heightened during a four-month close season in which the WPBSA has tried to find a business partner to take over the running of the game, which, despite its popularity, is failing to work as a business.

This season's calendar has just six ranking tournaments, less than any season since 1986-87. The WPBSA scrapped two others – in China and Thailand – plus an event in Malta because they were being run at a loss. For the first time since 1982, there will be no ranking or invitational event outside the UK and Ireland. The WPBSA says it hopes to add more but cannot say when. Other income is down, with two major events without sponsors this season and three more set to lose their tobacco sponsorship next year.

The WPBSA attracted two serious contenders to tackle these issues. One was World Snooker Enterprises, a subsidiary of the international World Sports Group, which promised an expansion of the tour and marketing expertise but no new investment. The other was Altium Ltd, a private company with City backers that said it would inject £2.5m. It later withdrew its offer, citing an unhelpful WPBSA. Thus WSE has been handed the deal by default. A formal agreement could be signed within days.

The tour's players are bitterly split into two main camps. There are those who side with the WPBSA, such as O'Sullivan, Higgins and others who receive fees reaching up to six figures each year from the WPBSA in "appearance fees" to promote the game. And there are those who are affiliated to the 110 Sport group, run by Ian Doyle, formerly O'Sullivan's manager and now in charge of a large stable including Hendry.

If the latter group, generally seen as modernisers, were able to simply break away and form a new tour, they probably would. But a major sticking point is that most of the game's television contracts are controlled by the WPBSA. Without these, any new tour would be doomed, which leaves the WPBSA's board in the driving seat, unless overthrown.

"There's a huge concern amongst our clients about the future," a spokesman for 110 Sport, said yesterday. "Imagine Tiger Woods or Michael Schumacher starting their seasons not knowing where of if they'll be playing this season. It's ridiculous. Snooker needs direction, and soon."

Others, not least O'Sullivan, see things differently. He accused Doyle this week of wanting snooker to suffer a crisis so that 110 Sport could profit. "He wants to see the game fall flat on its face so he can have the lot," O'Sullivan said. "It's just greed."

Doyle responded by pointing out that 110 Sport is running this week's event, profitably and independently of the WPBSA, and has therefore been paying him. "I love Ronnie," he added. "But he just lives in his own world. I only want the game to get the respect it deserves."

It may yet transpire that O'Sullivan quits that game, to help run a lingerie shop – catering for women and gay men – that he owns in Soho. "It's called Viva La Diva and is due to open at the end of the year," he said. That's snooker for you.

Results, Digest, page 13