I listen to everyone’s then I just follow
TIS the season to be jolly. But it does not take the calendar to provoke a Barry Hearn grin. He is the sort of character who provides salvation when Santa delivers toys without batteries.
There is more than a suspicion that if this happened in the Hearn household of old, then young Eddie would just have plugged his toys into his dad.
‘We’re having a party,’ he roars, the chuckle forming a foam to the wave of enthusiasm. ‘It’s chaos,’ he adds, knowing it is the sort of mayhem he can handle. Snooker’s Scottish Open is in full flow at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow. The PDC World Championships are in full flight at the Alexandra Palace in London.
God in his heaven, Santa is in his grotto and Hearn, at 69, is in his element.
His Matchroom company has 600 event days this year across 12 sports, including the Scottish Open and the world championships in darts. The Londoner surveys this empire with a beady eye and benign smile. Young Eddie, his 38-year-old son, has abandoned his Scalextric for a place at the top table of boxing promotion and the old man has invested his time in revitalising snooker and making darts the phenomenon of arena and telly.
He has recently negotiated new TV deals for snooker and, as the first darts were thrown in the world championships, Sky announced that it was extending the TV deal with the arrows until 2025.
‘It’s Sky’s second most popular sport,’ says Hearn Snr. ‘It slaughters everything bar the football.’
Hearn’s past has been the core of myriad newspaper profiles. He is the boy from the Dagenham housing estate who has come to make the biggest of deals on the back of an apprenticeship selling anything from fruit and veg to his services as a car washer.
Hearn, though, is more than that cliche, however charming it might be. He creates a product that entertains fans while improving the lot of the players. It is a neat trick and one that attracts the attention of other sports, most notably the SFA, who invited him to give a lecture almost three years ago with spectacular results.
Christmas 2014 saw him lambast the lack of sponsorship, leadership and hard work at the top of Scottish football. Christmas 2017 sees him exude a seasonal bonhomie that does not exclude offering some advice to Scottish football.
But first, how did Hearn resurrect snooker? And how did he see the potential of darts to move from the pub to the major arenas?
‘You know the A Team slogan? It’s lovely when a plan comes together. If I have a strength, it is for strategic thinking,’ he says.
‘Seven years ago, snooker was in the doldrums. The game was going one way and it was not a good way.
‘I have been involved in sport for a long time. I know what I am doing. I listen to everyone’s opinion. Then I just follow my own. It’s worked well.’
Hearn is being light but the burden was heavy. He has changed the fortunes of the sport by being canny in TV deals, candid with the players and open to new markets.
‘Players used to be inactive for long spells, now they moan about being too busy. That’s all right. There’s nothing better than a man going to work,’ he says of the performers on green baize. ‘The players are delivering. We are already seeing some great snooker at the Scottish Open and we have 28 events across the world.’
The popularity of snooker in China has given the sport unimaginable potential.
‘There are more snooker tables in Shanghai than in the rest of the word outside China,’ he says.
‘The stars, too, are beginning to sparkle. Ding Junhui has long been a contender for the major prizes but others, such as Yan Bingtao and 17-year-old Xu Si, are coming through.
‘Snooker is part of the school curriculum and more than 210 million Chinese watched the world final in 2016 when Ding lost to Mark Selby.’
It is his success with darts, though, that has been the most extraordinary development in sport business in the millennium.
A quarter of a century ago, Sky broadcast a world championships featuring 24 players and a prize fund of £64,000. More than £1.8million is on offer for the 72 players from 24 countries who will contest the title before the winner is decided on New Year’s Day 2018.
‘The darts players remember where they come from. They don’t think they are Bertie big bananas because they are making a couple of quid,’ says Hearn. ‘Most dart players look like someone who lives in your street. He is not going to be able run 100 metres under ten seconds. He is not going to be able to hit a cricket ball out of the Gabba. They are exceptional at one thing but they never had been treated like proper professionals.
‘The prize money was once half a million a year, now it’s £14m. Ordinary blokes who were earning 15-20 grand a year are earning 100, 200, 300 grand.
‘It’s not Premier League football money but that is a sport that has lost its way.’
THErE are dart players, of course, who earn £1m plus a year. The standards have risen and so have the rewards.
‘Darts relate to the crowd,’ says Hearn. ‘There is a bond between fan and player. I say to them: “You have to be almost touchable”.
‘I don’t want them to surf the crowd but they have to understand where their wealth comes from. It comes from being professional.
‘The darts boys, to a man, have delivered. They can prepare so the standard has gone through the roof. And it’s going to get better.’
He points out that youngsters watch Michael van Gerwen, Phil Taylor and Gary Anderson and know the level. Van Gerwen, title holder and favourite, averages more than 100 on his trips to the oche.
Hearn believes that in snooker and darts, the world is watching the best two men to have played the sport in Van Gerwen and ronnie O’Sullivan.
How does Hearn deal with such big stars?