The World Snooker Tour is launching a podcast to recap the latest news from the season, hosted by seven-time world champion snooker player Stephen Hendry and comedian Mark Watson.
Snooker Club is launching on 20 September, and will continue to release fortnightly throughout the 2023/2024 season, recapping highlights from the games, answering questions from fans, taking on challenges, and interviewing celebrity snooker fans.
In weeks between the 2023/2024 season, the podcast will release shorter episodes as part of a sub-series called The 147 - named after the maximum possible score in a single frame of snooker - to keep fans updated with all the latest news in just 147 seconds. Fans will also be able to interact with the hosts by sending their questions to Snooker Club via email for the opportunity to have them read out and answered by the hosts.
Snooker Club joins the growing trend of sports podcasts hosted by professional players, such as Goalhanger’s The Rest is Football which is co-hosted by former professional players Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, and The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby co-hosted by former professional rugby players Mike Tindall and James Haskell.
In addition to the talent-drives sports podcasts, other formats include official recap podcasts under sporting events such as The Official Rugby World Cup 2023 Podcast, publisher-led podcasts hosted by sports broadcasters and journalists like the Guardian’s Football Weekly with radio presenter Max Rushden and sports journalist Barry Glendenning, and fan-made sports podcasts like Liverpool FC podcast The Anfield Wrap which was recently added to the Sport Social Podcast Network.
During a session at the Radio Academy Festival last week, talkSPORT’s deputy head Kathryn Anastasi said that sports audio coverage is about growing an audience, delivering great content and “being the eyes and the ears” of listeners who aren’t able to attend those events themselves.
