People have been asking my why would NOTW go for Higgins, and not a less regarded, "dodgier" type of fellow in order to make the story more believable. Well, there now appears more to their motives than there was at first.
Barry Hearn is the Chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, which has a deal with Sky to broadcast the tournaments
Higgins and manager Pat Mooney had been setting up a rival competition, to be broadcast on Eurosport.
James Murdoch is chairman of Sky and is in bed with Hearn.
Murdoch also runs, and in fact, works out of the same building as NOTW, as Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation owns both Sky and NOTW, and as we know, The Sun and The Times, which dutifully reported all this fiction as fact.
Higgins and Mooney had to be destroyed so that Murdoch and Hearn had a monopoly on broadcasting snooker.
And although this stinks worse than any stitch-up in the tabloid media in recent times, the so-called free press of the UK have simply repeated the news from NOTW and the AP wire that this is a "match-fixing scandal". There is no scandal. No matches were fixed. Nothing happened!
In all other match-fixing scandals where there has been a shred of evidence, Scotland Yard has been brought in, a proper police investigation has ensued, and players have been arrested and questioned.
Higgins has not been questioned by police, as there are no questions to answer!
It is telling that the only investigation is being held by a FORMER police officer, under the instruction of Hearn.
Please people, don't be so gullible as to believe this deliberate destruction of a glittering career. It is interesting that a few very wealthy men stand to gain a lot of money from all of this.