The New Zealand publication, "Billiards Letter", was issued for the last time in December. Ray Habgood, who has lately been solely responsible for its production has decided "to spend more time actually playing billiards". Covering general items of billiards news, but mainly recording happenings in New Zealand, the Newsletter first appeared in December 1995 and had a World-wide circulation.
The IBSF have renewed their Internet presence with a relaunch of their website which is scheduled for February. Their previous site, which was maintained under a sponsorship deal with The Sportsmasters Network (TSN), was abandoned shortly after this sponsorship was withdrawn, just one year into a projected six year deal. The address of the new site will be http://www.ibsf.org
From an initial undertaking to maintain the WBA billiards budget at £150,000 for the current season, this figure was first revised to £50,000 and is currently down to providing £20,000 prize money.
With such limited funds now available, an offer by Malta to stage the World Professional Championship is being considered, although it is more likely that this venue will be selected for another attempt to popularise the short-format game with a 100-up invitation tournament which also promises to unveil the long-promised appearance of the striped billiard ball.
This would probably leave enough funds to promote a full-scale professional participation in next season's IBSF World Championship.
The position of a consolidated World Championship has been an objective of the IBSF for some time, and becomes a realistic prospect for the first time as the WPBSA are clearly running down their commitment to billiards.
The news of the latest reduction in funding was delivered as a Christmas present to the 36 professional billiard players who comprise the WBA membership, and the WPBSA left them in no doubt that even this meagre level of funding was unlikely to be maintained next season.
Barring an unexpected revival in WPBSA fortunes, there is a distinct likelihood that the professional billiards circuit, awakened from a previous period of dormancy in the 1980s by a combination of independent sponsorship and a brief flirtation with TV coverage, will be in danger of coming to an end.