Sports broadcaster looks for its big break with snooker in China

Stirling-based 110 represents one of snooker's biggest stars, Stephen Hendry, and has ten of the snooker world's top 16 ranked players on its books.

Lee Doyle, 110 chairman and son of founder Ian Doyle, plans to broadcast a series of global live events via the site. It launched on 3 August with the live broadcast of a Shanghai Masters qualifier in Prestatyn.

The group has a three-year deal with the World Snooker Association to broadcast qualifier events. On 30 October, the site will broadcast its own "legends" tournament from Glenrothes featuring Steve Davis.

The subscription-based 110sport.tv and Beijing-based 110sport.cn has signed up former BBC presenter Alison Walker and former Setanta head of television Colin Davidson. The site is backed by a 1.5m investment, with Doyle and the group's managing director leading a group of private investors, alongside 750,000 from Scottish Enterprise.

110 Sport has more than 60 clients in a number of sports, including gold medal-winning cyclist Chris Hoy and Catriona Matthew, the Scottish golfer who recently won the first Ricoh Women's British Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes just 11 days after giving birth.

All sports represented by the management company will be on the website. Future plans include celebrity sport blogs and interactive chats, video master classes and social networking.

David Mackinnon, former Rangers and Arsenal player, and the company's managing director, says the mix of services is key to the venture's success – and the continued growth of the original sport management business.

"The live aspect of 110sport.tv is important but it can't stand in isolation," said Mackinnon. "We have the aspects of interaction with the players, social networking, streaming of master classes. We have merchandise and video games. But underneath that is the management company. The profits will be reinvested to get new clients on board. It becomes a circular thing. The more clients, the more tournaments you can control."

The scale of snooker's popularity in China cannot be underestimated. Lee Doyle thinks it is the number two spectator sport there behind table tennis. WhenDoyle and Mackinnon accompanied Hendry there last year, the snooker star was mobbed by hundreds of fans.

110 is in discussion with the Chinese Snooker Association to set up a big tournament – possiblyin Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City – between Hendry and Chinese champion Ding Junhui for exclusive broadcast on 110sport.tv. The last time the two played, viewer numbers were estimated in the hundreds of millions. "It is incredible, considering the highest viewing figures for a world championship final was 18.7 million for Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor in 1985," said Doyle.

The company is still developing its platform and its payment service. Its platform is managed by London-based web-streaming company Groovy Gecko. The group is also in talks to set up a payment system with both the Bank of China and Alipay, the Chinese version of online payment company Paypal. In the meantime, big potential advertisers with which the group currently has contracts through its sports clients – Highland Spring, Nike and British Airways to name a few – will receive free advertising until they can prove the site's viewer numbers.

"We will review viewer figures in three months or so and then start putting media valuations against them," said Doyle.

The company, originally called Cuemasters, was founded by Ian Doyle in 1986 and sold to Canadian sports broadcaster TSN in 2001. When the management company floundered, Doyle bought it back in 2003 and handed it over to his son Lee in 2004.

The company will soon welcome back another of its big snooker clients, Ronnie O'Sullivan, following the settlement of an acrimonious law suit.