He’s one of the most charismatic and enduring sportsmen on the planet.

Ronnie O’Sullivan has now been a professional snooker player for 30 years, winning all of the sport’s biggest tournaments on multiple occasions.

The Rocket remains a firm fan favourite too thanks to his entertaining style of play and sometimes unpredictable behaviour, but supporters are being warned to enjoy him while they can as the 47-year-old goes to war with snooker’s governing body over the amount of lucrative exhibition events in China he is playing.

Fan’s Favourite

He may not be the world number one anymore, but O’Sullivan is very much still the main draw in world snooker.

And boy: can he still play the game to an incredible standard. He is a popular choice for those having a snooker bet, with his odds for the first triple crown event of the 2023/24 season confirmation of such: the Rocket is 5/1 in the snooker UK Championship betting market, just behind the 4/1 favourite in Judd Trump.

But the sad truth is that fans could be seeing a lot less of O’Sullivan on their TV – if he has his way, anyway.

The Rocket wants to spend more time in China, playing in exhibitions and helping to grow the sport in a country where it’s rapidly gaining traction with fans and would-be professionals already.
But that would mean him having to take time out of the already-packed World Snooker Tour (WST) schedule – something that the WST is cautioning the 37-year-old against.

They have already sanctioned five players – Mark Selby, John Higgins, Ali Carter, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and current world champion Luca Brecel – after they revealed they planned to swerve the Northern Ireland Open in favour of an exhibition event in Macau instead.

The WST was planning to discipline the quintet until the exhibition was moved to a later date, but O’Sullivan – who had supported the Macau five – has said that he will not be controlled by the governing body… threatening to quit the sport if they try to micro-manage his schedule.

“If I can’t go out and do what I need to do – which is play a lot in China – then I won’t ever play again,” one of the greatest to ever pick up a cue has warned.

On the Edge

O’Sullivan is no stranger to appearing on television given his lengthy stint as a player and pundit, but welcoming a camera crew to film his every movement?

The fruits of that invasiveness will be revealed in Ronnie O’Sullivan: Edge of Everything, a feature-length Amazon Prime documentary that will take viewers behind the scenes of The Rocket’s home life and tournament preparations.

This is quintessential O’Sullivan, a complicated character full of paradoxes: even in the limited screen time of the documentary, we see a man who clearly loves and loathes snooker in equal measure.

But the seven-time world champion – he could surpass Stephen Hendry at April’s tournament to become the most decorated player in the sport’s history, will leave snooker in a better place than he found it… whenever he decides to retire and set sail for China.