Barry Hearn sets aim for snooker and darts prize money to overtake huge sport

While he has partially retired, Hearn is still president of Matchroom and is firmly involved in the running of the Professional Darts Corporation and World Snooker Tour.

The top prize in both sports is £500,000, claimed by the World Championship winners at the Alexandra Palace in January and Crucible in May.

That figure has now been matched in snooker by the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, which was held for the first time this season and saw Judd Trump win the £500,000 top prize.

Hearn feels that the interest in the sport in the Middle East will see the prize money in snooker continue to grow and push towards his wildly ambitious goal of outdoing golf financially.

‘The Middle East has now decided, specifically in Saudi Arabia but also in Qatar and probably in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi that snooker is actually very popular in the Middle East. It’s had a rebirth,’ he said on The Barry Hearn Show.

‘Of course with Saudi, the amount of money they’re putting in, the rebirth is not a minor happening, it’s a major event.

‘Our first [ranking] snooker event had prize money the same as the World Championship.

‘This is just the beginning of the next level of where snooker is going to go to advance it’s prize money.

‘When I took over [in 2010] the prize money was £3.5m, the players agreed to sell me the commercial side of snooker, which I still own, and the prize money is now £20m.

‘That’s a step in the right direction, but you mustn’t set your sights too low.

‘For my mind, and I’ve got nothing against golf, but I want to see darts and snooker have bigger prize money than golf because I believe it’s worth more money than golf in today’s commercial world.’

In comparison, Judd Trump tops snooker’s world rankings, which is a two-year money list, with £1,491,200, while Luke Humphries is number one on the PDC Order of Merit with £1,681,750, won over a two-year period.

The WST and PDC rankings don’t cover earnings from non-ranking tournaments, but it is still a good guide for the size of the gap between golf’s top earners and the stars of the baize and the oche.

Mark Hubbard is number 70 on the PGA Tour money list having earned $2,135,030 (£1,791,514) this year, more than the top snooker and darts players have managed in two years on the official rankings.

LIV Golf has also poured even more money into golf, with players who have signed up for the controversial venture earning mind-boggling amounts of money.

Jon Rahm’s deal to join LIV, for example, is reportedly worth ‘upwards of £450m,’ according to The Telegraph.

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