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Barry Hearn on growth of World Nineball Tour and ‘quantum change’ in snooker
'I think it will just grow and grow.'
Barry Hearn feels the ‘signs are good’ for the growth and expansion of Matchroom’s World Nineball Tour, while he sees snooker at a point of ‘quantum change’.
The WNT was unveiled in 2023 as Hearn hoped to replicate the success of darts in taking a widely-played sport into a global, commercial, televised hit.
The UK Open in Telford comes to a climax this weekend, but the UK is not where pool is booming especially, with the WNT attracting big crowds in hotbeds like Vietnam, where the sport is a huge hit.
Asked if the venture into Nineball is going as planned, Hearn was typically bullish, telling Metro: ‘It’s always going as planned because we plan so well.
‘We’re trying to make a global sport into a true commercial global sport. It’s a bit like darts, the same sort of job we’ve done on darts, where we’re taking a game that everyone has played at one time or another but perhaps more socially.
‘What we’re finding is we’re inundated with tournaments around the world, I think we’re organising 12 or 13 tournaments, but we’ve got over 50 tournaments on the WNT rankings now, it’s a global game.
‘[Matchroom Multi Sport CEO] Emily Frazer is going to retire on her air miles! It’s difficult to make an appointment just to see her. The signs are good. It’s not going to be a short term thing, this is a long term development.
‘The Mosconi in December. That’s a sell out every year, the biggest event in pool. Then we’ve got the World Pool Championships in Saudi, we’ve got some decent prize money and money is what attracts the players to sacrifice their lives to get better.’
