Barry Hearn
Matchroom have invested millions of dollars into the sport of nineball pool and sporting supremo Barry Hearn has further highlighted their intentions during the prestigious Mosconi Cup in Las Vegas.
Matchroom increased their number of televised nineball events to eight this year, adding the hugely successful UK Open and European Open tournaments, and have teased that their portfolio will be extending to ten events in 2023.
They also launched the nineball world rankings under the stewardship of managing director Emily Frazer, and those now act as qualification towards tournaments such as the Mosconi Cup, the World Pool Championship and the World Pool Masters.
Hearn, who has already grown darts and snooker into multi-million dollar global sports watched by millions worldwide, has outlined his intentions of doing everything in his power to do the same for pool.
“Obviously we have a vision and we need everybody to share that vision and sometimes people don’t, which is ok. Sometimes people lack a little bit of vision,” Hearn told Sky Sports commentator Karl Boyes.
“We have asked the WPA time and time again to back us by making our nineball world rankings the official rankings of nineball pool and they’ve decided not to.
“That’s their call but it means that our events will continue without their sanction because we’re going to outgrow the world that they live in.
“We need to have a vision. We need to have the blowing away of boundaries. We need to blow the whole thing up and create a mega sport.
“For that we need the players, the fans and the associations around the world. We will get that eventually – sometimes people are a little bit slow to jump onto something I know will be a huge success.
“Matchroom will invest whatever it takes to make this game huge and the nineball world rankings from January 1st will be ever players ambition to get as high up those rankings as they can.”
The 2023 nineball calendar gets underway with the Turning Stone Classic and the Derby City Classic in January, before the first televised tournament takes place in the shape of the World Championship in early February.
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