“We’re trying to bring a new look to what snooker clubs should be like,” stated Maxi Lounge owner Matt Lancaster ahead of the venue’s opening on Saturday, October 25.
The facility, in Yate Shopping Centre, boasts 17 billiards tables – including top-quality Star heated snooker tables, Mosconi Cup snooker tables and a Chinese eight-ball table – as well as interactive darts lanes with Omni tracking systems and a shuffleboard table.
The darts and shuffleboard area of Maxi Lounge a week before opening.
Unlike more traditional billiards halls, Lancaster is also aiming to tap into what he calls the “competitive socialising scene” and create a space for all.
“I’d like us to be a real central hub for the community,” he declared, “I know there’s not another venue like this for miles and I’m really trying to provide the best facilities for the local community.
“Gone are the days of your dark and dingy smoke-filled rooms and the old men and that perception of it,” Lancaster added.
“In the last five or six years, [billiards clubs] have been opening up again, but not like the ones that were shutting down, more like this with the high-class tables.”
Maxi Lounge is split over two floors, with the ground floor catering to more casual players and the first floor providing a more professional environment for snooker, with Lancaster keen to ensure that “there is something for every level.”
For more experienced players, there’s a restricted premium room that features the highest quality tables bought directly from World Snooker, which he described as “the best playing conditions you will find anywhere in the country.”
Maxi Lounge has also appointed former snooker professional Andrew Norman as their director of sport, and Lancaster is confident that thanks to his connections and the venue’s elite facilities, there’ll be “some very high-level players coming through the door.”
“We’ve got a couple of pros that I’ve been speaking to regularly that are very interested in coming down weekly, some possibly daily, to make this their home venue,” he revealed, “We’ll be running very high-level competitions with pro-ams. We’ve got a good link in with World Snooker, but without the high-class facilities, they wouldn’t be interested.”
Bristol is home to a number of current and former billiards and darts professionals including Judd Trump, Robert Milkins and Mark Dudbridge, and Lancaster is keen to capitalise on the growing interest in the sports in the region.
“English eight-ball is massive in Bristol, it’s one of the most thriving cities in the country for it,” he stated.
“Darts is another one that’s huge in Bristol but what we’ve done with the darts is we’ve got the fully integrated Omni systems all linked via the iPad, it’s going to be a lot more modern, and I’d say a lot more popular with the younger generation.
“Every time you throw your dart, it will look like you’re playing on Sky Sports and there’s none of this getting your chalkboards out anymore, it’s all done for you, so I think it will be very popular.”
