 When World Snooker scheduled the 2008 Bahrain Championship on dates which clashed with Premier League Snooker matches scheduled five months earlier with World Snooker approval, this caused four leading players (including Higgins) to miss the Bahrain event and consequently lose ranking points—Higgins called the clash "laughable".Premier League organiser Barry Hearn commented that "I am very disappointed and I can't understand why World Snooker hasn't discussed dates with us", while Higgins and his manager Pat Mooney threatened legal action over the ranking points situation.In response, World Snooker referred to the Premier League being a "third-party promoter", noted that they run events on 11 out of 13 weeks between September and November, and (ignoring the threat of legal action if the players involved broke their Premier League contract) declared that "our members have the freedom of choice to pick which tournaments to participate in".