Snooker

The Masters Snooker: TV details, match schedule, results & more

bet365 News Team Updated: 15 Jan 24 09:58

Everything you need to know about the Masters, where the best 16 players on the tour bid to reign supreme in the second Triple Crown event of the season.

The invitational tournament, which saw its landmark 50th staging in 2024, is one of the sport's three Triple Crown events alongside the World Championship and UK Championship.

Held at the Alexandra Palace in London, the Masters is traditionally contested between the top 16 players in the world rankings, with the previous year's winner seeded at number one.

Here is everything you need to know about the 2025 Masters, where Ronnie O'Sullivan will be the defending champion.

The Masters Dates

The Masters is a fixture of not just the snooker calendar but the wider sporting landscape, with the Triple Crown event taking place in early January each year.

The 2025 edition will be scheduled from the 12th-19th January.

The defending champion traditionally gets the tournament underway, although last season saw reigning world champion Luca Brecel begin proceedings with his first-round tie against Jack Lisowski.

In total, there are eight first-round matches ahead of the quarter-finals and semi-finals, which are all played over a best-of-11-frame format, while the final is a race to 10 frames.

The event runs from Sunday to Sunday, and the one-table set-up means that fans can catch all of the action.

The Masters Times

With The Masters involving 16 players across eight first-round matches, the opening four days of action feature two games each.

One of those last-16 matches will take place during the afternoon session at 13:00, while the second will start at 19:00, which is the evening session.

This is a theme of the tournament until Sunday's final, which is over a best-of-19 instead of the standard best-of-11 and is played across two sessions.

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The Masters Venue

The Masters is held at the iconic Alexandra Palace in London.

Bar a switch to Milton Keynes in 2021, the tournament has been held in the English capital since its inception in 1975.

First played at the West Centre Hotel and then the New London Theatre, the Masters found its spiritual home at the Wembley Conference Centre in 1979.

The competition remained at that famous venue until 2006 but was then switched to Wembley Arena after the demolition of the Conference Centre in the same year.

Alexandra Palace picked up the baton in 2012, and the Haringey venue has done a good job of replicating the special atmosphere that was produced at the Wembley Conference Centre.

Many of the world's best players now point to Ally Pally as the venue with the best atmosphere in snooker.

How to watch The Masters

The Masters has been traditionally broadcast on both the BBC and Eurosport over recent years, and that will continue with the 2025 edition being shown on BBC2 and Eurosport 1.

The tournament can also be viewed on the BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website, as well as on the Eurosport Player and via Discovery+.

The Masters History

It won't come as a surprise to discover that current champion O'Sullivan has claimed the most Masters crowns with eight title successes.

The Rocket had not lifted the trophy since 2017, but the Chigwell cueman ended a seven-year wait with a hard-fought 10-7 win over Ali Carter.

Stephen Hendry won five consecutive Masters titles between 1989 and 1993, with the Scotsman having won the tournament six times in total.

Mark Selby has won the Masters on three occasions, with the Jester from Leicester winning on his tournament debut in 2008 and following up in 2010 and 2013.

The likes of John Higgins, Mark Williams, Neil Robertson and Judd Trump all have a brace of titles on their records.

With three titles, Paul Hunter's name is synonymous with this event.

He famously collected his Masters wins in 2001, 2002 and 2004 - all of them via 10-9 scorelines and featuring amazing comebacks from the Leeds-born talent, who sadly passed away in 2006.

Fittingly, since 2016, the world's best have competed for the Paul Hunter Trophy in honour of the three-time champion at snooker's most prestigious invitational event.

Ding Junhui, Shaun Murphy, Mark Allen, Stuart Bingham and Yan Bingtao have all claimed their sole Masters title success since 2011.

O’Sullivan is the defending champion after his victory over Carter and his earlier-round victims included Ding, Barry Hawkins and Murphy.

The Masters Odds

Given the 2024 season is still in full flow and the 16 players for next year’s event are far from finalised, the market for the 2025 Masters has not yet been formulated.