Everything about Barry Hearn totally explained
Barry Hearn (born
1949,
Dagenham,
Essex) is an
English sports entrepreneur, the founder and
chairman of promotions company
Matchroom Sport. A qualified accountant who made his first fortune by buying and selling a chain of
snooker halls, he began his promotional career in
1974 working with little remembered players
Geoff Foulds (
Neal's father) and
Vic Harris before becoming manager of six times
world champion Steve Davis from
1976, and prospered from the snooker boom of the 1980s when he formed Matchroom with players Davis and
Tony Meo. Later Matchroom snooker players include
Terry Griffiths,
Dennis Taylor,
Willie Thorne,
Neal Foulds,
Jimmy White,
Cliff Thorburn and
Ronnie O'Sullivan. Some of these players such as Foulds blamed Matchroom for not looking after their tax affairs appropriately; Foulds ended his management contract with the firm in 1991 owing the Inland Revenue £200,000. The company denied that they were responsible for this state of affairs. Hearn moved into
boxing in
1987, and has promoted leading British and Irish boxers such as
Chris Eubank,
Nigel Benn,
Lennox Lewis,
Naseem Hamed,
Herbie Hide and
Steve Collins. Matchroom is also involved in
pool,
tenpin bowling,
golf (see
PGA EuroPro Tour),
fishing,
darts (as chairman of the
Professional Darts Corporation) and
poker. It specialises in creating comparatively low-grade events to fill the hours of television sport air-time created by the boom in digital sport channels.
In a separate venture, Hearn has been chairman of the
football league club
Leyton Orient since
1995. Prior to Hearn's takeover the club was facing a financial disaster due to the collapse of the then chairman Tony Wood's coffee business in
Rwanda at the time of the
Rwandan Genocide. Hearn's intervention and financial input assured the club's future. Although Hearn has been successful in stabilising the club financially his tenure has overseen the club's longest run in the bottom division (known through the years as '4th Division', '3rd Division' and 'League 2') of the Football League since its creation (in 1958). However at the culmination of the 2005-06 season Leyton Orient earned promotion to the third tier of English league football (
League One) this being their first automatic promotion since 1969-70.
Perhaps his finest moment came when he appeared in the video for "Snooker Loopy", a hit for
rockney megastars
Chas & Dave. Despite only appearing for mere seconds, Hearn has stated his desire to have the words "Pot the red then screw back" chiseled into his grave.
Barry Hearn has also moved into the construction industry, selling off land he owns for development.
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