No one dares speak louder than a whisper as nearly 1,000 people respectfully take their seats inside the dimly lit Crucible Theatre.
CNN — There is a sense of nervous excitement as those lucky enough to get their hands on a ticket cram into this historic venue in the heart of Sheffield, a city in the north of England. But they're not here to see a theatrical performance. They've come to witness the nerve-shredding, silently electric atmosphere of the World Snooker Championship. If you're unfamiliar with snooker it's a sport that requires formidable patience and outstanding precision in equal measure. Think chess played on green baize rather than a checkered board. Players score points by potting a sequence of balls, looking to ruthlessly capitalize on an opponent's mistake. Matches can be long – the 1985 world final lasted over 14 hours – and the crowd watches in almost total silence, breaking into polite applause should a player pull off a remarkable shot. The World Snooker Tour (WST) – organizers of the World Snooker Championship – say the sport is watched by half-a-billion people around the world. For the past 47 years, the historic Crucible Theatre has been the home of the annual tournament, a sporting nirvana which attracts people from around the world to its doors. "It's akin to Augusta and golf. Augusta is one of golf's spiritual outposts around the world and the Crucible is that for us," former snooker world champion Shaun Murphy tells CNN Sport behind the scenes of this year's tournament. "Snooker and Sheffield go together like peas and carrots, it's very special." But the venue's long affiliation with the tournament has seemingly come under threat from a source quite literally, and figuratively, thousands of miles away. As you walk through the spectacularly unspectacular bowls of the theatre, everyone is talking about the growing influence of Saudi Arabia on snooker. The Kingdom recently signed a lucrative deal with WST which some predict is a precursor to the event moving to Saudi Arabia once the current contract with the Crucible Theatre ends in 2027. It's a decision…