By Elliott West
“The competition will be tough, serious and played to the highest professional level. But the 16 charities will be the ultimate winners”.
Geoff Foulds
Introduction
In 1995, came the exciting news that British charities would be rewarded to the tune of £300,000, thanks to a share out brought about by the creation of the Liverpool Victoria Charity Challenge in snooker. This brand-new event with invitations going to the world’s top 16 plus two wild cards was to be held at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham in January 1995 Each player would represent a British charity, collecting £100,000 for their designated organisation and the first-round losers would still get to give £10,000 to their charity.
Exciting News
Thanks to this monumental deal, the tournament had a deal signed so it would be held until 1997 with television rights going to Central Television as the host broadcaster. Sanctioned by the WPBSA, Geoff Foulds, the vice-chairman at the time, commented on the announcement, saying :
“We are thrilled that such a prestigious company as Liverpool Victoria have shown their faith and commitment in our sport”.
Geoff Foulds
One of the biggest challenges as a result of this decision was to work out which charities would be given donations. With around 250,000 registered charities at the time, the organisers had to set up a select committee to decide which ones would benefit and this was eventually whittled down to 64 charities with an eventual reduction to 16. To make it even more democratic, the general public would then be asked for their feedback. These final 16 were then put into a hat and paired off with the players taking part.
With sponsorship from one of the oldest insurance companies in the United Kingdom, formed in 1843 to provide insurance products for ordinary people. Thanks to research from Liverpool Victoria, the company found that snooker was the ideal medium to promote the company. A project that saw this insurance company take on its boldest marketing campaign to date, having just started advertising on television. In addition, the Liverpool Victoria Community Challenge was announced to run between February and April every year, featuring top players in 15 locations around Britain with proceeds going to local charities.
This thrilling news was announced in the South Hall at the Liverpool Victoria headquarters in central London. This was the venue for the World Championship finals in 1969 and 1970 when John Spencer defeated Gary Owen 37-24 and twelve months later, Ray Reardon overcame John Pulman 37-33.
