The Guild Hall is an established snooker venue after hosting the UK Championship between 1978 and 1997, and the Grand Prix between 1999 and 2005, 2000 being excetped.
The tournament, branded in previous seasons as the PTC Grand Finals, sees the top 24 players from the Order of Merit from the European Tour and top eight players from the Asian Tour battle it out for a top prize of £100,000.
It was originally scheduled to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, but due to unrest in the country, World Snooker were forced to find an alternative venue at short notice, and I for one am pleased to see top class snooker returning to the city of Preston.
It is clear that World Snooker are hoping to take a full-blown ranking event back to Thailand in the near future; the last time it hosted one was the Thailand Masters back in the 2002/03 season.
The Six-Reds World Championship seems to be a permanent fixture over there, with it being scheduled to take place there again next season, and the Players Championship finals would've given officials a real taste as to whether the country could again host a full-blowing ranking event.
It's stake to host any major tournament has been blasted by some, with recent betting scandals thought to originate from the country, tarring the sport's scene over the past 12 months.
But the country's hunger for snooker cannot be ignored, with seven professionals from Thailand currently holding cards for the 2013/14 season.
If the interest is there, and a suitable venue with adequate safety for the players can be found, then the country should rightfully host a major event once again but that'll have to wait for another season at least.
With little time to find an un-booked venue, World Snooker have chosen wisely to bring snooker back to Preston, a venue which has always pulled in decent crowd numbers.
A number of events, such as the World and UK Championship, plus a number of qualifiers, currently take place in Yorkshire, (which I'm not complaining about being a Yorkshireman!) but there has been little for snooker fans in the North West over the past decade, until now.
A star-studded line-up is set to take to the stage at the Guild Hall, with 14 of the top 16 qualified for the tournament, ticket sales are expected to be high, with Barry Hearn pushing fans to buy tickets before they sell out, certainly a clever marketing ploy to get tickets sold as quickly as possible.
To be honest, when I first heard that the Grand Finals were going to be staged in Thailand I was a little disappointed.
I'm not a 'traditionalist' that wants to keep all the tournaments based with the British Isles, but considering eight of the 12 qualifying tournaments for the event take place in Europe, I felt that the finals should be taking place within the continent.
I also feel that with tournaments such as the Grand Prix, which has been re-incarnated as the World Open and exported to the far east, and expulsion of the Northern Ireland Trophy and no more events in Scotland, that the UK is lacking the number of top events it once hosted.
This is an topic for another day but I'm sure the Irish snooker fans will have been disappointed when they learned that the finals had been moved away from Galway where they had taken place over the last few seasons.
Perhaps my thoughts were also based a little bit on me not being prepared to get up at silly o'clock to watch the 'afternoon session' matches which would've taken place at around 6am British time had it been hosted in Thailand.
Now I'll be able to watch the sessions at more social times which suits my slightly lazy student sleeping pattern!
I'm sure another reason why World Snooker originally selected Bangkok as the venue for the Players Championship was due to the pre-existing calendar arrangement, with a fortnight between the Haikou World Open and China Open, both events taking place within China.
With this arrangement, players who have qualified for one or either of those events will now have a lot of traveling to do.
They're out in the far east for the World Open in mid-March, then back to England for the Players Championship, and then back to China for the start of the China Open on March 31st.
For those that run far into the Players Championship, they could be playing in the final on Saturday night, with their first match at the China Open scheduled for the Monday.
Not ideal with the World Championship around the corner just a few weeks later but one big bonus is the almost certain appearance of a certain Ronnie O'Sullivan.
The World Champion has opted not to enter any Asian events so far this season and would almost certainly not have entered the Players Championship finals had they taken place in Thailand as was originally planned.
However, with the tournament now English based, he's now very likely to enter, which will of course draw in huge crowds as he always does when he's playing.
Tickets for the Players Championship go on sale on Monday 24th February. For more information follow the link.
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