History
The origins of Matchroom Sport came in the mid-1970s when chartered accountant Barry Hearn became Chairman of Lucania Snooker Clubs, a UK-wide chain. Developing an interest in the sport,
Hearn became the manager of aspiring snooker pro Steve Davis in 1978.
What followed was an unprecedented explosion in British sport that saw snooker become the nation’s No.1 TV sport with Hearn and Davis at the forefront.
In 1982, Matchroom Sport was formed in offices in Romford, Essex as the company became the pre-eminent management company in snooker, managing the eight biggest names in the game including four World Champions.
Having dominated snooker, Matchroom Sport branched out in to boxing, promoting the Frank Bruno v Joe Bugner heavyweight clash at Tottenham Hotspur football ground in 1987 in front of 35,000 people.
In 1990 Matchroom Sport TV began trading as the company started to move in the direction of event ownership, promotion and television.
Throughout the 1990’s Matchroom began to add more and more diverse sports to its portfolio of events as they built an increasingly stronger client base of major broadcasters around the world.
9 ball pool was inaugurated in 1993 with the World Pool Masters and shortly after the Europe v America Mosconi Cup was added to the roster. Since then Matchroom have gone on to promote various international pool events both in the Europe, Asia and the USA including the WPA World Pool Championship and the World Cup of Pool.
Fish’O’Mania is still the only live fishing event in the world and has been a British institution for nearly two decades. Other fishing events in the Matchroom cannon have been the Marlin World Cup and the Shark Cup.
Boxing has continued to be a major part of Matchroom’s output over the years and the recent innovation of Prizefighter has changed the face of boxing as televised entertainment.
Since the late 1990’s Matchroom have set the standard with televised tenpin bowling and events like the World Masters and the Weber Cup are the benchmark by which all other TV bowling is judged.
Since the first ever Poker Million event in 2000, Matchroom Sport have developed into a world leader producing in excess of 200 hours a year of original high quality poker programming.
The Europro Tour is Europe’s leading developmental golf tour and has been in Matchroom’s portfolio since 2001 and in that same year, Matchroom Chairman Barry Hearn acquired a majority shareholding in the Professional Darts Corporation.
In the intervening years, under the stewardship of Matchroom, the PDC has gone from strength to strength as darts has grown into a major sport in the UK with current prize funds in excess of £5 million.
Producing up to 1,000 hours of original programming on an annual basis, Matchroom Sport are committed to creating cost effective ratings for their broadcast clients as well as global exposure for their sponsors.
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