Deep pockets size up the green baize

Heritage and history of Crucible appears to be for sale to highest bidder

There are six pockets on a snooker table; there are no pockets on a shroud. Somebody should tell Barry Hearn OBE the difference. The hustling accountant who made his first million during British snooker’s TV boom in the 1980s has reached the age of 75 without seemingly accepting a fundamental truth about money: you can’t take it with you.

He was Steve Davis’s manager when the ginger magician dominated the baize during that decade, the era of Thatcherite economics that was defined in a catchphrase coined by the comedian Harry Enfield which entered popular culture — the ‘loadsamoney’ decade.

They were a pair of brilliant selfmade men from London’s East End. Davis won six world titles, Hearn went on to become a very wealthy promoter in snooker, boxing and darts among other sports. His son Eddie Hearn has continued the dynasty and become a global player in the fight circus, where in recent years Katie Taylor has been one of his more famous pawns.

Barry takes a back seat these days from the snooker and boxing rackets but he remains president of Matchroom Sports, the company he founded back in the early ’80s and which became the stable not just of Davis, but most of the top cue men of the day.

The Edwardian gentlemen of this amateur pastime first competed for a world title in 1927. In 1977 the tournament rocked up to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield for the first time and it was here that snooker’s premier event found its spiritual home. The Crucible has long since become synonymous with the game. It is woven into the tapestry of the British and Irish sporting year.

And now, of course, having become the repository of so much drama and so many gorgeous memories, it has apparently outlived its useful life for this purpose. It is too shabby, it is too small, it is too passé. And gigantic sums are apparently being tabled from the Middle East petrostates to hoover up this small but prestigious truffle too.

Saudi Arabia is allegedly offering big money to bring the Worlds to Riyadh; China is supposed to be offering major money too; both are reputed to be offering big shiny arenas that will pack in twice or three times more punters than the 980-capacity Crucible.

There is talk, too, of a breakaway tour, not unlike the LIV circuit in professional golf.

In 2010 Matchroom Sports took a 51 per cent controlling interest in World Snooker Tour (WST), the sport’s commercial engine. In 2021 Barry Hearn stepped down as chairman of WST. But during the last 10 years and more, as in the ’80s, his lethal instinct for deals and opportunities helped to put a lot of money in the players’ bank accounts.

So, while he has finally moved upstairs, the old shark can still smell cash in the water from an ocean away. On Wednesday he fetched up at the BBC’s temporary studio in Sheffield’s Winter Garden, the tourist attraction that becomes home to presenter Hazel Irvine and her roster of pundits during the 17-day World Championship saga. Steve Davis, as it happens, was on duty with Ken Doherty alongside Irvine.

What’s the story with the Crucible, was Irvine’s first question. The Dagenham geezer went straight into tub-thumping mode. The deal between the theatre and WST expires in 2027. “Well, I’ll stay here while we’re wanted and I think we’re wanted,” he replied. “I know we’re wanted by the BBC, but, we’ve said for the last few years [that] we need a new venue that seats two and a half to three thousand people. I’m looking to Sheffield to come to the party.” By “Sheffield” he meant Sheffield City Council.

Irvine then asked about “the new deals on the table with the Saudi Arabian backers. They’re very much part of this championship now as co-sponsors and there’s a lot of money swirling around in the game which is fantastic. But I guess a lot of people are saying, does money talk completely now or does history and heritage still have a say?”

Hearn went straight into Harry Enfield mode: “No, trust me, money has the edge every time ... The Crucible’s got a fantastic history, it’s been a massive part of my life with [nods to Davis] this ginger little fella next to me here ... But we’ve all got to live in the real world. There’s a price for everything in today’s world whether we like it or not. I don’t like it and I wanna stay here but I need help, I need a reason to stay here as well.”

At this point, said “ginger little fella” intervened. Playing devil’s advocate, said Davis, even if Sheffield City Council were to go to the cost of building a brand new 3,000-seater Crucible, they wouldn’t necessarily fill it for the early rounds of the tournament. And in addition, it is a working theatre for the rest of the year where they stage productions of plays that won’t necessarily be pulling in those numbers either. “Is that being selfish from snooker’s perspective?”

Hearn: “Yeah, I think it is and I’m gonna be selfish because my attitude is, I can’t be more loyal to Sheffield than I have but ... it’s still not going to go as far [financially] as the Saudi Arabia market or the Abu Dhabi market or whatever because these people are buying up sports right, left and centre. We’ve seen what they’ve done with boxing, it’s a completely different world and they can do that at will.”

He added that “as custodians of the sport”, WST had “a fiduciary duty to [the] players” to generate the highest revenues possible for them.

One would have thought that as the aforementioned custodians, their duty encompasses the game in general, not just the professionals at the top of the pyramid. While sports like cricket and boxing have long ago migrated to subscription television and lost their umbilical connection to the masses, snooker’s otherwise niche appeal has stayed afloat in the public realm by simple dint of its freeto-air access on the BBC. Lose The Crucible, lose the BBC, and the sport fades away out of the mainstream and into the ether, lost behind paywalls and public apathy.

Ken Doherty won his world title in 1997. He wasn’t quite sharing Hearn’s philosophy on life either. “But does the history and the nostalgia of the Crucible,” he asked, “not mean something? Aren’t there things in life that money cannot buy?” Hearn: “No.” Doherty: “Well I think there are.”

In 2017 Davis fronted a documen

The sport fades away out of the mainstream and into the ether, lost behind paywalls.

tary to celebrate 40 years at the Crucible. Hearn was one of his guests on the programme. As the final credits rolled he vowed to Davis that the World Championship would be staying there.

“[The] atmosphere is totally unique, [it] can’t be replicated anywhere [else] in the world ... On my tombstone will not be written, ‘This is the man who took the World Championships away from The Crucible.’ It’s staying and it don’t matter how much [money] is involved.” The familiar wide-boy grin spreads across his face as he adds: “And I have never said that once in my entire life!”

Oh Barry. Seven years later, he’s humming a different tune. He was also interviewed about the same issues on the same day on Eurosport. Saudi Arabia is an option that cannot be ignored, he explains again, because the money on the table is just too big. If the players have “the chance of a £5m first prize as against a £500,000 first prize, where are they going to go? You tell me.”

But what about the heritage and the history of the famous old venue, he is again asked? “You can’t eat history,” he retorts.

But we can all read tombstones. Here lies Barry Hearn: the man who sold the world.