World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn has apologised on Twitter to snooker fans who struggled to buy Crucible tickets next year due to technical problems.

Tickets for next year’s biggest tournament of the snooker calendar have been met with extremely high demand throughout the whole day (Monday).

And because of the popular demand, the Crucible’s official ticket server crashed during the first hours of sale, leaving many fans frustrated and unable to get tickets online.

It meant online sales for tickets had to temporary stop so the problem could be fixed. Normal service resumed at 12pm.

TOGB Snooker understands tickets for the final were sold out within 20 minutes from the release time of 9am.

Chairman Barry Hearn said World Snooker could only sell the tickets via the host venue’s sales services and because it is part of the deal between the Crucible and World Snooker.  However tickets were also made available on http://www.seetickets.com.

WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson also apologised to fans saying repair work was required.