One of the world’s richest snooker events is to take place in Saudi Arabia for the next 10 years, further strengthening the Matchroom Group’s ties to the Kingdom.
A long-term contract announced today (Tuesday) between the UK-based sports event promotions firm, headed up by father and son Barry and Eddie Hearn, and the Saudi Sports Ministry, will see the world’s best snooker and pool players descend on the country for lucrative tournaments each year.
The Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters will debut in Riyadh from August 31 to September 7. It will be a world ranking event open to all 128 tour players, plus six local wild cards from the Saudi Arabian Billiard & Snooker Federation.
With a prize fund of more than £2m (€2.35m/$2.5m), which makes it the second-most lucrative event on the World Snooker Tour, it has officially been dubbed snooker’s ‘fourth major’.
In comparison, the World Championship paid out close to £2.4m last year, while the UK Championship and Masters (the three tournaments together make up the Triple Crown) had prize pots totalling £1.2m and £725,000, respectively.
The snooker tournament will be preceded by the World Pool Championship, the showpiece event on the World Nineball Tour, which this year will be staged in Jeddah from June 3 to 8. A prize fund of $1m (€930,000) will be on offer.
A first WST event in Saudi Arabia is actually slated for March 4 to 6, the invitational Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker, which was unveiled last month. Featuring eight of the world’s top players, along with two wild cards, there will be a total prize pot of $1m and an innovative format with a 23rd ball, ‘the Riyadh Season ball’, added to the table. This gold ball will be worth 20 points, but can only be potted once all other balls have been successfully cleared from the table if a player is on a maximum break to make it 167.
Snooker’s addition to Saudi Arabia’s growing sports portfolio is no surprise given Matchroom has already taken top boxing events to the Kingdom. The next one, Anthony Joshua v Francis Ngannou, is slated for March 8 in Riyadh.
Matchroom equity, ‘£1bn’ company valuation
Snooker is the third-largest vertical of Matchroom’s business, albeit someway behind boxing and darts.
During the 2021-22 period, revenues at Matchroom Sport and its group subsidiaries were £213.7m with a group profit of £33.5m returned.
Matchroom Boxing Limited and its subsidiary companies contributed a profit of £11.6m, the Professional Darts Corporation Limited (PDC) and World Series of Darts Limited contributed profit of £10.2m and World Snooker Limited contributed profit of £1.5m.
In an exclusive interview with SportBusiness late last year, Eddie Hearn, chairman of Matchroom Sport, said he believed the company was worth £1bn “at the moment” and that it will eventually double that valuation in the future.
Hearn was talking about a potential sale of a minority stake in the company, which he said will “probably happen” despite a proposed deal with CVC Capital Partners falling earlier in 2023.
Matchroom has remained in talks with three companies – believed to be CVC, KKR and Searchlight Capital – as the boxing, darts and snooker promotion continues to explore its options for growth with and without investment.
In 2022, Matchroom decided to explore the option of selling a minority stake in the company with the ambition of using that investment to accelerate the company’s ultimate ambition: a public floating of its shares. However, in May 2023, a proposed deal with CVC – that would have valued Matchroom at about £700m – fell at the final hurdle.
Read this: Matchroom fighting for £1bn valuation as investors circle