In December 2019, World Snooker Tour (WST) announced a 10-year deal with Saudi Arabia, including ranking tournaments that will be hosted in the country.

[3] In January 2024, WST announced a new non-ranking tournament called the World Masters of Snooker, scheduled to take place from 4 to 6 March 2024 at the Boulevard Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

[7][8] The announcement of the event, hailed as a "huge breakthrough" by WST chairman, Steve Dawson, was met with criticism accusing Saudi Arabia of sportswashing.

Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK's Economic Affairs director, said: "It was just a matter of time before Saudi Arabia's huge sportswashing machine sucked in snooker along with almost every other major world sport.

[11] The Daily Telegraph chief sports writer Oliver Brown described the Saudi invention as "warping the very rules of the game for its own hubristic ends", calling it "frivolous, tasteless, wretched".