Barry Hearn Chairman of matchroom sport Today’s and tomorrows heroes Barry hearn speaks about the value of sport and what it will take to find the champions of tomorrow. Interview by donnie rust
Having shaped the way that the world watches sport and pioneered the global stage for a number of sporting arenas, Barry Hearn the Founder and Chairman of Matchroom Sports (Matchroom.com), is without a doubt one of the foremost authorities on the business of sport and media in sport. I was pleased to have the chance to speak with him regarding the relationship between the two and as always, left the conversation with a better perspective and a deeper understanding. The smooth talking, eloquent gentleman who is always prepared with the perfect sentence or the funniest story is a great Voice in the sporting industry. As #Sportsider places a great deal of value into the aspirational quality of sports, I asked Barry what he believed was the real power of sport. Barry: There is no question that sport is capable as an activity to unite a nation, it doesn’t have boundaries and is not fixed dependent on race, religion or gender, as it is an encompassing area that unites communities both local and national. Nothing quite unites England as the Rugby World Cup, football games or the Olympics. For a moment all of our differences are set aside both socially and financially and we unite as one people following our heroes. This has been one of the fundamental factors of being human and has survived for thousands of years. Sport has enormous value much deeper than a game. Is everything being done to increase this value? Barry: Governments are letting sport down in my eyes, in the UK and globally. The value and the power of sport to create and help is far greater than the power of warfare. So, why don’t we spend as much money on sport as we do on defence? Sport shapes a country and inspires young and old while defence protects the character that we’ve developed through that sport. Just imagine what a world would look like where governments
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put as much money into supporting sporting activities across the board instead of into the military. Barry, who has seen the growth of the sport media empire grow and has been instrumental in planting many of those seeds in the first place, has seen a great deal of things over his years, especially on how we consume sport today. Barry: Sport has such a strong influence on people that it is often at the very bleeding edge of consumer technology. It is and has always been changing. Different generations have different priorities and within those generations those priorities are always shifting with new trends. Today we don’t have the same principle as watching TV from a sofa, what is happening today is the younger and millennial market is in fact wanting to watch sport when they want to watch it on whatever device. In gaming, in terms of industry, that same philosophy is extended to sport where they are consuming sport on tablets and phone. This is a fundamental shift in how we watch our sport and from a commercial point of view impacts how we promote it too. As one of the leaders of the industry who has also seen his own son take the mantle and run with it, what is the trick to keeping up with these sweeping trends? Barry: Firstly, we have to accept that it isn’t a sweeping trend. Sweeping implies it might come back on itself, and things only move in one direction. We focus on younger markets and the customer experience, and this is purely a media technique in terms of identifying and hitting the right target market. You can see how fast things change and the change has been accelerating for decades. Colour TV changed it, then sports cable, then subscription services such as ESPN or Sky,
