Marcel Eckardt
Marcel Eckardt is a German snooker referee.Career
Eckardt is from Töppeln close to Gera in Germany. At the age of 13 Eckardt became interested in snooker while watching Eurosport. With nowhere to play snooker close to his childhood home, he only took up snooker later in life and continues to mostly play pool. In 2008 he completed his first course in snooker refereeing, earning the national association of Thuringia C-license in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, and later obtained the national B-licence. He first refereed professional players in 2010, during an exhibition tournament in Brugge featuring Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis, amongst others. The same year he applied to referee the new Players Tour Championship and he gained experience in European tournaments and in qualification matches for the Main Tour. He refereed his first Players Tour Championship Final at the 2012 Paul Hunter Classic, and his first full ranking tournament was the 2012 German Masters.
For the 2013/2014 season, Eckardt at the age of 23 became the youngest ever member of the referee A-squad, the group of twelve referees licensed to work in the final rounds of all ranked tournaments. In the 2015 German Masters, Eckardt became the youngest person to referee a full ranking tournament final. Eckardt also refereed the 2016 European Masters final in Bucharest, Romania. In 2018 and 2019, he refereed at the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
