Forty of the world's leading players, including the world champion Mark Williams, Ronnie 0'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry, are to support a 10-tournament tour to rival the existing world-ranking events.
A new internet company, The Sportsmasters Network (TSN), is behind the plan which will spark the biggest shake-up in the 75-year history of professional snooker and directly challenges the authority of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association which has governed the game since 1971.
The move means that next spring's Embassy world championship in Sheffield will be the last in which all the leading players will compete. That will be greeted with dismay by the BBC, which has recently signed a six-year deal reported to be worth £23m.
Snooker's dependence on tobacco companies for sponsorship has been a key element in the TSN decision to go it alone.
George Smith, TSN's chief executive, said: "Over the last decade, snooker has found it impossible to attract new sponsors who are concerned that their own brands would suffer from indirect association with tobacco, while legislation has also severely limited broadcast opportunities.
"For all these reasons, TSN will be working to attract a new range of global sponsors to the sport, also pre-empting the legislation for a complete ban on tobacco sponsorship scheduled for 2003."
Tobacco sponsorship covers three of the current eight world-ranking events, and Benson and Hedges sponsor the game's most prestigious invitation event, the Masters at Wembley. Four of next season's world-ranking events have no sponsor.
Links with tobacco are not the only reason why WPBSA has failed to attract backers. The business and sponsorship worlds have become increasingly reluctant to deal with an organisation perceived to lack commercial experience.
TSN, which received a £10m investment from the City finance house Warburg Pincus last May, spent last summer on the brink of a three-year deal which would have given the governing body £3.3m in exchange for the title sponsorships of four events: the Champions Cup (ITV), British Open (Sky), Grand Prix (BBC) and Nations Cup (ITV).
In addition, TSN would have become WPBSA's internet partners, bearing the costs of that operation but giving the association 45% of any profit.
Having already concluded a 10-year £6m deal with the International Billiards and Snooker Federation, which has 60 national associations affiliated to it, TSN has simply decided to go head-to-head with the governing body.
TSN's five-man board is chaired by Ian Doyle,who manages Williams, Hendry, O'Sullivan and 20 others. The key to the deal is the internet product. TSN's information website is attracting 3.5m hits per month from 110 countries. But to make any real money, not immediately but a couple of years down the road, it needs moving pictures of important tournaments.
For October's Regal Scottish Masters, the only event Doyle promotes, TSN obtained permission from BBC Scotland TV to show its pictures live on the internet. This was supported by TSN's own studio coverage.
The response was immense from established snooker nations, particularly China when Marco Fu made his 147, and unexpectedly positive from Brunei, Mongolia, Nepal, Lebanon, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Tonga, hitherto unconsidered as hotbeds of snooker.
