Emily Frazer: From The Joke of Matchroom To The Next Big Thing; The Rise of Multi-Sport (Ep.97)

0:00You will earn money, you will be able to provide for your families and I will turn this entire sport around. I've essentially said to them, I'm going to change your lives. So I now have to deliver on that. The world I'm taught is like my baby. For years, special events was kind of like the joke of Matchroom. The sports that Barry didn't want to let go of. The temping bowling, the ping pong, they're all good events. But the pool was different. Multi-sport turned into something quite cool. I've always found that the ethos at Matchroom is that you always learn from your mistakes. I want to be the best at everything I do.

0:32I have this massive job on my hand turning the World Nineball Tour into a global professional sport. I know how long it's taken the darts and the snooker to get to where they are, but I want to do it much quicker than that. I like being the underdog. Everyone always roots for the underdog. I'm hoping that people who watch the Netflix show kind of rooting for multi-sport, because we are the underdog. We've got the likes of Barry, who has created an absolute monster in all these different sports. How can I not succeed at all? How can I not?

1:03Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. Emily Fraser is the Managing Director of Matrim Multisport. She's led the charge in transforming sports like nine ball pool into fast growing, commercially compelling global properties, building new formats, elevating athlete storytelling and bringing fresh audiences into what we could call a challenger landscape. The multi-sport story was told to perfection on the recent Matrim Netflix series, shining a light on the lesser-known side of this organisation, at the centre of the boxing world and driving the boom we've seen in the darts.

1:43The question for Emily is simple. Can the success of these other sports be replicated in the multi-sport model? Ahead of the Moscone Cup next week at Ali Pali, which is Paul's answer to the Ryder Cup, Emily delivers a compelling reveal on life behind the Matrim curtain and what it's going to take to deliver an emerging sport on a global stage. We're delighted to welcome Emily to the Business of Sport. For years, protein bars have been the go-to snack for a quick protein boost, but finding one that truly delivers without adding excess calories and sugar has been a challenge. Most bars offer around 20 grams of protein, but often pack in 350 calories or more, along with a hefty amount of sugar.

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4:09Whether you're looking for yield, exposure to uncorrelated growth or simply want to invest in what you love, Stride is reshaping how the world accesses sports private equity. Ready to step into the game? Visit gostride.com, that's G-O-S-T-R-Y-D-E dot com, and discover how sports private equity can work for your portfolio. Because investing in passion shouldn't be off limits. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Business of Sport. No, no, it's exciting. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. It is the completion of the trifecta today, as I said. We've had Frank Smith, CEO of Boxing.

4:48we've had matt porter ceo of darts and now we have you ceo of matron multi-sport best till last but it is i was going to say we had to wade through the you know the others to to finally get to the the one we most wanted um tell us what is multi-sport oh gosh how long do you have um well a bit it's interesting multi-sport formed um i'd say it really kind of expanded in the last five years or so when I actually first went into um that part of match room it was actually called special events um because there was always like one event per sport essentially and I remember coming in and it was okay we've got one fishing event a year Fishermania that is still ongoing by the way and it's probably Barry's favorite event um is this one with the celebs that you teams no that was sports star fishing that i actually competed in and came third by the way but this is fishermania and essentially we run qualifiers all around the uk um throughout the year and there's like 24 anglers and they all compete for one day for five hours for 50 000 pounds which is like you know it's a big it's a shed load of money um and it's developed over the years you know we now put in like the female world champion the junior world champion and it's uh it's become quite a cool event everyone at sky sports always wants to work on it they're like i want to be on fishermania um so i came into special events and yeah had a fishermania we had the world championship of ping pong obviously i've never done a ping pong event um the Weber cup which is 10 pin bowling that was Europe versus USA obviously knowing Barry you know he was a golf fan and the Ryder cup was where he got the idea from the Weber cup and the Moscone cup from um and then we did three pool events the Moscone cup which is our creme de la creme the whirlpool masters and the world cup of pool that was when I first came in and it was fun it It just felt like there was like a kind of a season for special events.

7:02It kind of ran from July to the end of the year. January for a couple of months was quite like an easy sort of time. And it was interesting how over the years it then developed. You know, we got involved into gymnastics and we actually worked alongside British Gymnastics and did their World Cup at the O2. that was one of my first events that was completely brand new for me so it was the first event I wasn't taking over from someone else completely you know come up with the the arena you know everything and there was three of us in a team I remember so you know you're selling out the O2 you got like all these gymnasts coming off of the back of the Rio Olympics and you had like Max Whitlock, Amy Tinkler and it was incredible and then off the back of that we were like let's get involved in netball, let's get involved in basketball and then special events all of a sudden turned into multi-sport which is really quite interesting because it felt like we were the pros at doing these different types of sports you know like a one-off and which is really quite challenging because you can go from a gymnastic setup in the o2 which by the way I learned so many different things about the equipment how long the equipment takes to get set up like honestly if you give me a sport I can say how quickly we can rig it in like what the install dates need to be and buy for all these different sports just because you learn so much and then you go to the fishing lake and it's a completely different install so you know it makes you really dynamic and you learn so many different things in just live sport and you're also working with so many different associations um you know the difference between a netball association to the basketball was extremely different the athletes are different and you just learn so many things and you know multi-sport turned into something quite cool for years special events was kind of like the the joke of matchroom um they were like the sports that basically barry didn't want to let go of like fishing and he obviously started the pool off of the back of the snooker you know steve davis was his you know superstar and steve davis competed in the first ever moscone cup and you know he was pulling in all the favors left right center from like ronnie steve to come and play in this nine ball pool event and the moscone has got to a point now like it's been running for like 32 years where you can sell the arena off the back of you know these nine ball pool players so essentially multi-sport then formed as this department that was like cool we created the superstars of gymnastics which was basically like your strictly come dancing of gymnastics and the idea was and And I remember Barry and I like brainstorming about it.

10:06It was like a judges panel and we were like, yeah, and they'll have the cards and it's one to 10 and you can lift it up. And basically the gymnasts can do whatever they want. So Barry and I like, yeah, this is great. And then you sit down with the gymnasts and they're like, so what can we do? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not a gymnast. Put the event on. Yeah, we just like put the event on. We're going to sell the tickets. And they're like, yeah, but you know, the different apparatus, what are we going to do? And I was like, oh, crap. like I haven't really thought this through and um download Olympics videos no but it actually like I do feel like whatever we do works out for us because we're just so passionate about it and what we found was that we could bring in like retired gymnasts who had won like golds in the Olympics I remember there was uh Fabian Hambushan he'd won a gold in the Olympics on the rings or something like that and he came in and he did this like world-class performance but because there was no boundaries as to what he had to do in terms of like the marking and the scoring and the girls like some of the girls did these uh routines on the vault which was like completely different and all of a sudden we had Simone Biles on the judges panel and who would have thought in a world at the O2 arena Simone got booed by the crowd because she gave someone like a nine and every all the other judges gave someone a ten but it was one of the gymnasts that was like a fan's favorite and she gave I remember she gave him like a nine and started booing she's like oh okay and I remember like Eddie come along to the event um and it was really really good it was like this one day event and you know we spoke about doing more of them but then like COVID kicked in and so obviously a good couple of years ago we never had the opportunity to kind of do it um but then you kind of look at the pool and we had all these different sports and the temping bowling the ping pong they're all good events and they were fun but they weren't moving and every year we sold the same amount of tickets the social media numbers were good the players had a great time and you know you're at the event and you're in it and you're like this is you know the best thing since sliced bread but the pool was different we were doing these three events and then we started noticing the needle was moving a bit more than the others and you look at the invitational events and we were saying well how do these players get into these events there's no ranking system there's no qualification system it's just picking your 16 best players there's actually some talent here how do we make this grow so we acquired like a US Open pool championship and you yeah you acquire the US Open that was our first ever multi-table event and oh my gosh by the way the worst event I've ever done in my life.

12:57It was really difficult. I'm surprised I didn't get the sack after it because of the figures. Spent too much money on it. I had no idea what I was doing. Gosh, I really hope actually Barry doesn't listen to this. How old were you? When was this? Was this early in your year? This was maybe like 2018, 2019. So I was like 28, 29. So you're in the stage where if you make a mistake, you shouldn't have been a bit. Yeah. Not that you're not now, obviously. I still make mistakes. every day i'll be real um but i remember the shipping container got lost like it actually got lost so we're shipping all this stuff from the uk because it's we're in vegas doing this event mandalay bay and it's like 30 tables in this massive convention center and we'd only ever done one table events in nine ball pool so the moscone the world cup and masters were all just the one table in the center of an arena you know it's pretty straightforward logistically now i'm looking after 30 tables a small team you gotta have a referee at every table you gotta have a shot clock at every table because the way these pool tournaments used to run they would run over 10 12 days and obviously in our world the business world you need to shorten that down because you know days cost money so you add a shot clock to every table to speed things up so you know like Barry's like you can't have longer than six days so okay we'll make the US Open 256 players into a six-day event and it used to be an 11-day event okay challenge number one so all of a sudden you've got to have all these staff on it and you know the setup you've got 30 tables and obviously I don't do anything half-arsed and it was the first time Matchroom was staging this event and I wanted to make it look really cool and actually when I think back to it so backwards the way that I actually ran that event I actually built the multi-table part in one arena and then built a single table in another arena so I built essentially two arenas which is completely wild to think that like I now know that is the most stupid thing ever and so not cost effective but I learned from that and then obviously changed it moving forward but it's the first time I've ever done this multi-table setup and uh yeah like I said the shipping container got lost no one in our team knew where it was so essentially like our set that surrounds the table hadn't come out all the sponsorship branding loads of like little things that you take for granted that you put on those shipping containers um just didn't show up so me and will cope who was like the head of the staging side of transport that we work with he was like pulling his hair out and we basically just made a tv set out of trestle tables and we was just a stapling like branding onto it but there was one point and i remember it because this photo literally just not get off the internet um I just sat there and I just started crying because I was like I don't really know what to do and I remember I was in this hat and like a hoodie and like trackies and this photographer a little fucker like has snuck into the room and taken a picture and I'm literally like crying my eyes out on this table and it's just like you know it felt like the worst day in the world um and so that was always like a a point where it kind of changed and it felt like a big challenge but is that not to me as an outsider looking in that seems like something that's i wouldn't say accepted but you took a position that technically if you're looking at experience you didn't have the training or experience for just like the same for you know frank chasing was it eddie or barry around greyhound tracks or um you know matt doing the press officer and and then building into the positions like everyone's been given this opportunity by the looks of things at a young age way ahead of when an expectation to actually execute would have been so mistakes are going to be a part of that that can often make those mistakes and even more painful because you you can feel it a little bit more but it did it also help you kind of be better did it help you learn how to do these things properly yeah and i think at the time it's like the worst thing in the world and I can laugh at it now but it's more that you don't I've always found that the ethos at Matchroom is that you always like learn from your mistakes so you know when I came back from that or actually Barry came over to attend that event and I remember him getting there for the final stages and he was like this looks good you know how was it and I remember being like it was horrible and he was like well you learn from it and and I did and you know I think you just put so much pressure on yourselves because like personally for me I want to be the best at everything I do I don't want like every year even if it's the same event if it's the Moscone Cup and I've done that event probably like seven or eight times now every year has got to be better than the last year and if it's not then why and if that doesn't happen if it doesn't improve every year every event then I shouldn't be in the job that I am in because how am I going to push a sport forward if I'm just complacent or I don't notice what was wrong and how to improve on it and I'll be like my harshest critic every single event that I do I will sit down and be like I've done this this this wrong and I need to improve on that like even the last event that I did was the Philippines Open and that was the first time we've done this event and it was the first time we've done it in a shopping mall and myself my team we've never done an event in a shopping mall before I mean we literally turned up we're like okay so where's our event office and it's literally the coffee shop which by the way was the best coffee shop ever um that's like we're on a table like this smaller and people are just walking past they're in a shopping mall that is literally your office I mean how do you sit and work like that and I for the week I actually sat with the media team and we were joking I was saying I'm part of their team now because you just adapt and you learn but like I'm sat there and I'm looking around and there's certain things that I get so frustrated about and even on my flight home I'll sit there and I'll be like I should have done that better why didn't why didn't I think of that I should have thought about that and you kick yourself for it and but you'll do so much better next time but it's more that I take pride in what I do and so I should be the best at what I do I should be working in a cost-effective way and also I have this massive job on my hands which is turning the world nine ball tour into a global professional sport so I feel that every decision I make is basically so important to doing that if I make the wrong decision then I can take us back I could step us back two years I shouldn't I should be accelerating like I know how long it's taken the darts and the snooker to get to where they are just because like the stories that Barry tells me but I want to do it much quicker than that because I think that we have these other sports under our roof that we can learn from and they're there to ask questions Barry didn't have a future Barry sat there at every decision he was making or like you know Matt the sort of decisions he's made I don't know four years ago like I can go pick his brain on things like that so it's we shouldn't be so you know we shouldn't disregard that and take that for granted because we have two incredible sports I don't really refer to the boxing because it's so different to us but with the snooker and darts we can relate to slightly with the pool um can i ask on that because it's a really interesting point on like the whole business model often i look at these things that you guys do and i'm like it's like you own the sport you know you as if you're the governor as if it's matrim's darts but you know it's not i know and there are broader parts to it than than just what you do but how how have you been able to do that well I think the thing is is that we all believe in is like global domination which is such like a savage way to put it but the thing is and I'll go back to maybe like the netball and gymnastics where at time when we were doing those sports it was really hard to make commercial changes to things because sometimes and even yeah okay with the pool as well you have your hardcore fans who you never want to upset by the way and who are you know the heart of the sport but everyone has to understand that for a sport to really truly go global you have to get out of the comfort zone everyone knows that as an individual you all know that when you level up you're out of your comfort zone you feel all weird you feel all anxious and and something is changing and that change is normally always for the better and it's the same with a sport we're so commercialized and we are out of the sport where we can think bigger picture there's decisions that I've made in the pool that the hardcore fan base or some players will never understand because they're too within it and by us having these other sports to look at you can ask those questions I've always tried to get it in to the sport but there's a guy called Jake who's good balty sport and he's who I would lean on the most in terms of the pool element like the sporting element he's like the longest person in the team second to me and in ping pong in the superstars of gymnastics in netball in basketball we introduced the golden buzzer and it was just like totally like I remember I was at alley pally doing the ping pong event and I was looking at the netball format and we took it from bowls which is one of the events that matchroom did we used to do premier league bowls and i worked on that in the tv department with katie hearn and we used to televise it and i'm telling you go cyprus it was like this great week and you'd literally just be filming bowls and there was a point where everyone would go the the player would decide to basically make double points and they would hit this and they would just announce it and it'd be power play and these 30 people in the audience would go power play and it was the most funniest thing and I remember being there like I don't know it just worked and I think I was like 22 23 and I remember just sitting there being like I can't what the fuck is going on and it worked for bowls right And so when we're looking at the netball and basketball format, I was like, power play.

24:01Okay, that worked in balls. But how do we make this work in netball? And basically, we created this golden buzzer. And it was like, right, a visual thing sits in between the two teams. And basically, for two minutes, they could earn double points. So it was like, okay, that's kind of cool. And like year one, we introduced it. Technically, the golden buzzer didn't actually work. So you had like the coach like slamming the buzzer and like no one was looking at the time. And so logistically, it was really bad. But to get back to my point, because we're a commercial organization and we think outside the box, I could introduce that internet ball because I wasn't so far into the sport.

24:41The same with the pool. I keep saying to my team, how do we put the golden buzzer in? And Jake's like, Emily, stop it. Like, he's like, I'm going to tell you when you're going too far. He's like, you can't do it. But, you know, I think recently we did the Reyes Cup event, which was Asia versus the rest of the world. And we had non-playing captains. And they shouldn't really play in the event. And then the day before the event, us and the team come up with this idea. And basically, do you know what it means when you lag for the break in pool? No. so essentially it's it's whoever wins the lag gets to break first and so basically there's two two cue balls on the table and they have to basically hit the cue ball and it's the closest to the opposite end of the cushion is that what is cool yeah and so that's the lag right and yeah so it's like you know and it's like um you know it's something that we do for the team events and it happens in all of our pool tournaments and the night before we were like you know what fuck it we're gonna decide that team captains are gonna lag and so to get back to like my point of things is that we're always trying to think outside the box and trying to bring in like the commercial side and you know that video clip of those two captains because one of them was Django who's like a legend in the Philippines no one really sees him play anymore so that video clip of him lagging goes viral in that sport so it's all about us always trying to think outside the box and when you are in a sport you have to be able to have that control to do those things because so many people want to kind of stop you and if you put those blinkers on try not to listen to too many different things and you can make those decisions that are for the better of the sport so what's your master plan this is going to nine ball pool is going to be a global sport you've got a brilliant case in front of you that is now killing it in darts but when you're looking at this now and you're saying okay right we i want this to compete i want this to be the conversation when you sit down for your board meeting at the end of the year where they're looking at the numbers going i can't ignore this how do you do that good fucking question um you've got to be like 80 % a little bit crazy.

27:0280? Yeah, I'd say 80 % in definitely nine ball pool. Maybe in like two years, I'll drop it down to 50. Sometimes Barry and I have these conversations and I always refer to Barry because I think me and him are most passionate about the pool. I mean, I think he sees it as his next sort of legacy. And he was involved, obviously, with the darts and the snooker from the start. So he can see, you know, where they were when we like at this stage. and so he's obviously got a lot more faith um but sometimes we talk about things and and I go are we a little bit crazy because it's like only me and him are that crazy to think that this could actually be a proper sport because who would think that like nine ball pool would be like that but if we don't genuinely believe that it's going to be the next big thing then it's not going to happen so I think you've got to be realistic at the end of the day but then you've also got to dream big when you're looking at the realistic side of things I know we're not the front runner in the UK you know we play second to snooker you know snooker is this elegant sport it's very different to nine ball pool but it sits within that Q sports bracket darts obviously is incredible here and you know the premier league that sells out all around the UK is incredible well and Europe it goes to I would love for us to be able to do that I know in the back of my mind that won't happen here in the UK but it will happen in the US and I know it will happen in Southeast Asia where we could do a Premier League in different states for example but I can't ignore the fact that we need to be better here in the UK so that's where you go back to your point of thinking more outside the box so okay I might have pissed off a lot of people in the sport by doing it but let's get Andy Goldstein in for the Florida Open let's get him in to play the UK Open because Andy always loved the snooker not the pool the snooker and he fronted the Moscone Cup for a couple of years but off of the back of him loving snooker he's now fallen in love with the pool and he's got a taste for winning because he won a match and I think he won actually two matches sorry he actually played yeah yeah he actually played and this is against some like proper yeah players he's in the because you know we wild card him in we put him in the unseeded section because he's not a pro um that's where you know I hold myself thing I think you know putting him in but we got to put him in the unseeded section so he played a pro in the first round of the Florida Open he actually got drawn against Earl Strickland which probably like I don't think you know who he is but he's like one of the all-time greats in Nineball Paul he's known for being completely outrageous on TV he's broken his cue live on TV I love that by the way I don't have enough of that now he's a massive character and Andy knows him and you know he went on Talk Sport and I actually found out the draw and I said to the guys I was like don't tell me until I'm literally sat in that studio because I'd seen Andy 30 minutes beforehand and I didn't I knew he was going to ask me and I didn't want to give anything away so I literally looked at my phone I was like oh my gosh he's got old Strickland he's got old Pearl and he like lost his shit basically um and he played him in his first game and it was brilliant he lost that first match but it's double elimination in our open tournaments and the pros basically get to play like an amateur ie an Andy Goldstein and he then goes to play his second match which is against someone that's a bit more level to him because they're in the losers bracket and it's like another amateur essentially and I sat and I watched every rack of that and it was like live on talk sport and like the viewers went off and it was really cool and he won it and all of a sudden he had this like inspiration this motivation because I think the great thing about our tournaments in Paul is that we give you an opportunity to go and play a hero.

31:08So in all of the other sports, you would never dream that you'd be able to go and play the likes of Ronnie O'Sullivan or pick up a tennis racket and go and play against Federer. Like, you would never dream of that. And I know Earl Strickland isn't Federer and isn't these big-name sports, but within those sports, like Andy Goldstein, who is, you know, hosting probably the biggest drive time, like the biggest radio show, he knows who Earl the Pearl is and he gets a chance to go and play in a match like that, which, by the way, was one of his biggest highlights that he's done. But also for you, you know, now we look at what sport is now and it's not just about the best athletes, right?

31:52And it is driven by external facts, it's driven by social media, it's driven by noise that is created from people getting involved who haven't spent 20 years practicing to get to that moment whether people like it or not we've seen it in boxing we completely understand the value and the challenges that presents it but sometimes you know for something like this when you're looking to grow it you know you probably do have to sacrifice quality having barry play don't don't say quality i'm gonna he that is a great poor player what a phrase didn't but sometimes you do have to probably sacrifice that quality to create narrative yeah i think i think barry was like a different thing whereas it was that was on his bucket list and to play in the us open and that's the first one that he played in um and for me that felt really special that we managed to like tick off something like because he's like you know he said to me he said it at the moscone cup press conference he was like you know i've got all of this i've achieved so much in life and now I'm going through my bucket list and I want to play in the US Open.

32:52I was like, what? He literally told me like minutes before the press conference. You see in the Netflix show, like you see Eddie kind of taking the piss out of him because he put the governor on the back, but he loved it. And we've like, his favorite song is The Gambler, Kenny Rogers. And I did, I literally paused play throughout the entire arena at the US Open, which by the way, a lot of promoters should never do. But I was like, this is Barry Hearn. He's founded the company. He is the reason why we are all in this arena for Nineball Paul. So, yeah, I'm going to pause play and I'm going to play his walk on track.

33:26We're going to announce him into the arena. And he felt cool. And he made this 2-9 combo that was incredible. It went into the Netflix show. His reaction was priceless. I remember sending it to Eddie straight away and he was just like, oh, my gosh, kind of thing. Well, they had a lunch on it. Yeah, yeah, they did have a lunch. And, you know, so that was something a little bit different. but it did give us the opportunity to get people in like an Andy Goldstein, which... Did it drive engagement? Of course it did. More than you would normally have got. Yes. So 100 % worked. And the thing is about Nineball Pool, and by the way, this is going to happen to you as well.

34:00Once we get you in a little bit, listen, you just get me a person near Nineball Pool. I'll just get a foot in the door and I will get you hooked. I will get you hooked on Nineball Pool. Okay, let's go straight into it. You've got Moscone Cup. 3rd of December. 3rd of December. You've still got tickets. Yes, there are still tickets available. I think it's because the teams aren't fully announced yet. And, you know, it is kind of like leading up to Christmas. Everyone wants to get a little Christmas presents in. But I'm telling you, come along to the Moscone Cup. You can pick one of the days, the 3rd to the 6th of December.

34:37Bring some friends. And I'm telling you, if you do not have a good time, then I don't know, I'll make a bet on it. like you will have it's four hours basically at Ali Pali and it's your kind of in between snooker and darts more on the darts side listen if you don't like you know loud music or people on the like you know then don't come but um listen I know I'm a pro and I'm gonna sell it but the hospitality package you basically get like unlimited alcohol for like four hours and it's actually like a really good setup at Ali Pali you come after work you come along in between the racks like so it's not frames by the way it's rack so with the moscone cup yeah it's okay i forgive you um with the moscone cup it's race to five so it's really short races and so it keeps it all really fast and so obviously it's europe versus usa and you we have five matches a day so they're basically on and off all the time and so in between every rack everyone the music goes on we do dance cam we do kiss cam we do everything and i've seen some outrageous stuff at the moscow cup i've seen some poor performances when it comes to dancing that will just live rent free in my head but the thing is is everyone just has a great time and you know with it being versus usa we get um fans coming over from the us it's like rider cup right is quite a cup of pool.

36:07Essentially. But it's just a bit more lively, I would say. So listen, come along to one day and I promise you, I'll get you hooked in. So you finish the year with your Moscone Cup and then all of next year, you'll be following matchroom porn. You'll be going, oh, wonder what players doing well at that. Oh, they're doing the Hanoi Open. Oh, they've got the World Cup. They've got this. So I can get you hooked on. That is what I'm very good at. I'm easily hooked. That's good. How important is it to leverage the athletes to help you do that. You know, sports stars now are massive, right, profiles, often bigger than if they're playing in teams, some of the teams that they play for.

36:44We've got so many great personalities in our sport. And that's what annoys me the most. I look at some of the other sports, not so much in Matchroom, just like other sports around the world. And I'm like, this is tedious. I have got some absolute incredible players who there's one guy who's captaining team USA this year Scarlett Woodward and he says to me like USA haven't won for quite a few years so I'm gonna be so real I'm biased towards a USA win because I'm a promoter I want it to be competitive at the end of the day and he says to me he goes Emily um I'm not gonna try and do his accent is that no no I can't hey emily no no i can't do it um which part of america is he from uh virginia somewhere around yeah um and he's like if we win the moscone cup this year i'm gonna get on the table and i'm gonna down a jug of beer and i'm like a jug yeah i'm like skylar if you win the moscone cup this year i will get on the table with you and i will also chug that like just to because i'm so behind them What are their chances?

37:54Oh, fuck, they're slim. No, no, no. Do you know what? I'm confident because Europe have two rookies on their side this year. So remember I was saying at the start of the podcast that at the beginning of the pool events, it was selecting players. Now there's a qualification system because we have the World Nineball Tour rankings. So now they get in off order of merit. So for Europe, it's the top three Europeans on our world rankings that qualify. two of those are completely new players never played in moscone cup they are the definition of the world nine ball tour because they've played the ranking tournaments and they've got enough order of merit they are the ones you know they're in their mid-20s they're the ones that the younger pool players are looking up to for inspiration they're saying you know they are showing the world i go and play the tour i earn my spot into the invitational event you know you you get 20 ,000 for just securing your spot into the Moscone Cup.

38:52And you get extra, obviously, if you win. So there's two rookies who have never played in a Moscone. And listen, when I step out into that arena, I get like the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. That arena and the way that the seating banks are, it's like everyone is sat on top of you. And I get nervous being there. So let alone being one of those players and having to like make the winning nine ball Or, you know, it could be so one miss could change the whole game because because it's over four days, you could be three or and so it's race to 11 overall. So across those four days, it's the first team to get to 11 points.

39:35So after day one, it could be on the last game and it could be three, three. and all of a sudden you could be the rookie player and you're having to drop that winning nine ball which could be a really easy nine the arena is going mental but then what happens is is they cheer and they go crazy and then it goes like it's different to the darts they go silent and so you know the darts is this constant there they're chanting they're chanting they're chanting the player gets down goes to make their shot and it goes silent and then you can literally hear a pin drop and think of that pressure like my heart like goes faster at that point so you think of the player brand new event everything's riding on them he's got the whole team behind him he misses that shot and all of a sudden other team comes up wins the point and it's 4-3 for instance or and they're going into day two with a loss and that kind of pressure is too difficult and that's tough and they haven't been in those kind of arenas before so it could be competitive you know i'm actually getting excited about it so the players they can make a good career it's good money on tour now like it's a viable job i'm not i won't sit here and lie it's not like other sports but it's so much better than what they were earning you know our world championship is 250 000 to win that and like i said with the Moscone Cup you get 20 ,000 to secure your spot and the same with the Reyes Cup you get a guarantee so we have these all these open events that were that were inspired from the US Open that we initially acquired where I had my meltdown and all of our other opens came off of the back of that so the Hanoi Open, the UK, the European, the Philippines Open and we go to all these different territories around the world where we know that there's a demand for nine ball pool and so the players go to those opens earn their ranking points and then essentially get into these invitationals where they get extra bonuses from their sponsorships from their sponsors because it's the highest you know viewership you know the Moscone Cup is the one that Sky Sports will put on the main event for and they'll have the build-up and you know the production's always top class and all of the players want to make a Moscone Cup and they want to make now a Reyes Cup which only just happened in its second year this year it's in a much stronger place than it was you know years ago before you know Barry really got involved in pool the promoters that were around like players weren't even sure if they were going to get paid money matches were a big thing where it was more just going to a pool hall or a pool room in the US and playing in a money match but now with the World Nineball Tour and what we've launched and something that we've seen a lot more in the US and the other locations we go to is we hold ranking events and so essentially local organizers um owners of pool halls they will like refurb their whole pool hall and their pool center to host a ranking tournament and all of our top pros will go there to obviously earn their ranking points to get into these invitationals but what those ranking events do is they find local good players because we host those all around the world so we could hold a ranking event in Vietnam at the same time as one in Florida they will attract different players but they also get those players onto the board they get them onto that ranking system and then we can identify these players there are so many talented pool players around the world and so obviously we want to just showcase all of these professional events we want to you know if players want to still do money matches that's for them to do but we want to create an actual career for them I mean certainly when I first came in I think only the top 10 pool players were actually 100 % pool players so they had their own sponsorship which may have been like 10 or 20 thousand a year of like cues like patches that they have across their shirts now i'd say the top 128 players on our tour are fully professional because there is enough tournaments for them to make a living out of and i won't sit here and say that it's prize money's where it should be but we're a growing tour it's in like third year um and prize money can improve the better you do as a business if you're looking at it and you're going right okay so from matrim's side the the pool let's say the pool share that you have control over you're looking at events you're looking at sponsorship commercial media are those the three kind of core revenue drivers for you anything really

44:37I think the difficult thing with the pool is that it's not NFL. It's not the NBA. So listen, it's not easy to get commercial sponsorship and things like that. But obviously, one of the main things is ticket drive. You know, spectators come in. The Moscone Cup, the biggest source of revenue is the spectators, is the ticket revenue. What does it cost? Ticket price? It's quite cheap, actually, to come along for 40 quid. 40 quid? 2 ,000 seats per day? Yeah, obviously there's like VIP and you get a sofa and you get like a waiter coming to the table. And four hours of... I know, getting tanked up, basically.

45:17But it's about what works in the different territories that we go to as well. For instance, what we do with the Moscone Cup in the US and the UK doesn't work for the Reyes Cup that we host in the Philippines. you know that's only in year two what are the key differences it's just different locations you know we have lots of events here um you know we know that if we want to go to hard park or into wonderland we've got to pay a ticket um and we know that like going to live sporting gig you know you go and pay for a ticket whereas you know to go and watch the basketball in in manila is a very different ticket price so that's a completely different strategy the different thing that we have to deal with with the pool is that because we are in so many different locations you have to adapt to those you know it's very different for us buyers to what a uk sort of spectator would go and pay for so essentially it's about thinking okay viewership you know obviously the main thing is the broadcasters getting them on board you know sky have been great for the nine for nine ball and you know they've pushed that all the way uh they recently took the reyes cup um and then obviously we'll have the moscone cup coming up as well um but you have to have that viewership in order to attract those sponsors and listen we're not a major global sport yet does it make money what paul no what do you need to do to make it make money would you say the media piece the better distribution you know i don't know long-term deals is there one thing that you can lock into or do you look at it no i think it's like you like everything you have to channel absolutely everything to turn this into a proper business because you know it's like we touch base on the prize money side of things yes it would be you know you can't get a load of media attraction to an event that has a low prize money you so but then you can't put a load of money into the prize fund if you're not getting that revenue in you know the Moscone Cup is kind of the event that funds the rest of the other events that allows for us to start new events in different territories and I think everyone at Matchrooms looked at the pool and knows that it's something that we need to invest in for the future.

47:47But we've seen something with it. The kind of social media figures that we're driving and that we're pushing through the last six months of our events have been incredible. Like we have like our world championship was meant to be, you know, the best event. And the viewing figures and the social media figures that we got at our recent Philippines Open beat everything. Now, is that because of the territory that we're in? I'm not sure. We had a 16-year-old kid from the Philippines who everyone knows him there locally to play money matches. That was his first professional tournament he played in. he won his first game and then he actually his second match he come across he come against the player who actually won the whole thing and it was neck and neck really tight and there were just like a thousand fans that all came in for him he's got a million followers on TikTok and we look at it and we're like wow something's happened here um but one of the biggest things that we did this year was we launched WNT TV so we launched our own global television platform which I think a lot of sports are doing and you know you get to know your audience essentially all of those figures that come through off the back of WNT TV we start to know what our demographic is we know that our biggest following is the US so you know a couple of years ago we were doing one event in the US every two years now we're doing the Moscone there the US Open the Florida Open and I want to launch another US event there next year we know that that's our base so by launching platforms like that there's that's another source but I mean that's not going to fund the whole tour it's just the beginning have you ever thought about doing like a match with DTC side of it being huge, right?

49:47You guys targeting the events is a massive driver of growth. Have you ever thought about doing like a Matchroom loyalty program? And what I mean by that is, oh God, I don't know, you know, the Darts sells out now at whatever rate and everyone scrambles to get a ticket. It's like Glastonbury. I know. It's literally become like that, hasn't it? Everyone's on the computer going, oh my God, the Darts tickets are out. My phone blows up from so many people like, get me a Darts ticket. I'm like, just go online. Sign up to PDC TV. Matt's phone but you know let's say you have this amazing power as a collective organization where you're trying to build a sport and you've seen what's happened previously when you've done it and yours needs a little bit more investment right now while the others have really hit their peak and are driving incredible numbers but let's say you know you've got the Moscone Cup it's in the same venue it's in the same location there's one day let's say 2 ,000 worth of tickets of the 8 ,000 or whatever that we're going to run through a matchroom loyalty program.

50:44Now, if you do this, it's going to give you a better chance of getting access to some of the dart stickers. Maybe it can help you across boxing when the fights are in there. Some form of collective matchroom scheme where by participating or showing an interest in those individual sports can actually build that fandom across your products. Because me as a fan now, I'm looking at it, I'm going like, I'm in for whatever you guys are doing because it's awesome, right? You go and have a great experience at one of them. You're going to bring that to something else. the sport is important but the experience is just as good have you guys had that type of conversation is that something you'd look at doing because you've got that power as a collective we do talk about it and it's it comes up a lot more frequent purely because a lot of people mention it over the years we all have like our little babies and you know multi-sports my baby the darts is matt's baby boxing's frank's baby and you are in that and that's you know that's what you're growing we have tried it before but actually what you'll notice that the audiences are so different so the type of people that will sign up to scramble for the ben eubank fight aren't the sort of p aren't the people who are scrambling for a moscone cup ticket they are all very different types of audiences and i think as a group it's something that we're trying to talk about a lot more but also we are this huge company but we are also coming off of like a family business we're all just trying to do the best that we possibly can for that sport and I think sometimes that we all put our hands up and say maybe we should step back and look at things as a group more you know there's definitely a crossover of if you didn't you know if you didn't get a chance to go to the darts do you want to go to the Moscone Cup and that's things that we're like rolling out but actually the audiences are so very different moscone cup and darts would be different you think well thing is some people are going for the sport like some it's different some people are going for a bit of a jolly so yes maybe there's a percentage of that audience but then you would say the same possibly with paul and snooker they're both q sports they're both a table in the center they both have a you know a seated arena but completely different audiences completely different so i look at snooker like test match cricket and pulled by the you know and from what i've seen of it that's more like 2020 short form i can get up i can have a great time it's not all built on silence i know i hate the silence everyone sits there and it's like and it's amazing it builds you know it builds for the guys but it's not you know it's not gonna no i want to talk during a live event right if i'm going somewhere i want to chat to my friend like i want to talk i want to be like this is cool i want to like move around i don't want to just sit down like sort of thing and that's i think one of the things that we're all so good at matchroom is that we all see other sports and so we attend other sports and you know as a casual sports fan what you want to go and see like I remember when I first went and watched my first netball match with Matt and we both went and watched it and I was like I'm bored out of my brains but I love netball when I grew up like I love playing it I was like I'm so bored and I was like how do we make this more interesting so but you don't know that for instance does someone who wants to go to the Moscone Cup also buy a ticket to our Fast Five netball event that we did you know they are very different audiences but I guess it's just trial and error like what does it hurt to send out you know a mail out or something like that but I don't know about the loyalty program it's not something that I'm not sure I'm not gonna lie.

54:41Do you feel under pressure when you know you guys have those conversations because it does seem very much like my side of the business and everyone seems really jealous of the darts and they're crushing it and you know it's like oh yes this side of it's great and that side of it could be better and yeah but again you're in a very different stage of it yet probably I'd imagine lumped kind of into the same kind of conversation even if you got big bad on your side you know helping and really wanting this to succeed I'd much rather be in that conversation than in a conversation that I feel super comfortable in where I don't feel pushed or challenged.

55:19I'd always, you know, if there's two doors or two journeys, I'd always pick the one that looks like it's going to be the toughest one. The darts is incredible and I would love nothing more than the pool to be as popular as the darts. It may be as popular in a different territory like I already know that Paul is huge in Vietnam in the Philippines and I know I could I've got more chance of selling an arena out than snooker darts or other sports do maybe not basketball basketball is huge over there but I know that I could do that in that territory and so all I'm trying to do is learn what I need to do to get Paul to that level and it's incredible here in the UK for the darts and the snooker doesn't mean that that's the journey I have to go through for the pool so the best I can do is sit and listen and I think a bit of competitiveness is great and I think that's what Barry tries to do amongst the different sports and the companies but at the end of the day I respect so much of what like Matt and Frank have done and we all we're all trying to achieve the same thing um but you know it is tough because paul is you know the not so cool version of darts or but i would much for now yeah of course and because like generally i thought you you have the history and you have the names attached to it but this profile right now is massively different to a mass market than it was yeah so things can change of course and you know that's why i do that's why i said you know when you think back like a couple of questions ago when you say that you have that 80 of craziness like 100 like i am batshit crazy because i do believe that paul will get us to that level and you know sometimes i do talk and i'm like yeah you know but we can do this and we do that and I think like sometimes some someone could be sat across me and they must be thinking this bird is absolutely off like what is she thinking like it's you've got no chance no chance in hell but I'm just like well if I think positive and I think that it can get there then you know that that's the players will see that positivity I have to motivate the players you know if I get them excited and I tell them that that arena's sold out and I sell that Moscone Cup arena out for them I'm doing that job for them and they can go out there they can perform they can feel that motivation and they will want to win for their team so yes I have to be a little bit you know crazy to think like that and but I quite like it because I like being the underdog everyone always roots for the underdog when you watch any kind of sport or anything like that you know that there's a story of the underdog coming through you root for them right you do don't you so like i'm hoping that people who watch the netflix show kind of rooting for multi-sport because we are the underdog so listen i'll take that whilst we got it and i know that we're under one roof and we've got the likes of barry who has created an absolute monster in all these different sports how can i not succeed at paul you know how can i not and i've got all these other sports to learn from i know paul will be big i know it will be because yes i might have a cold today and i might feel like shit you've gone so well i know so sorry but i've like come along here do you know what i mean and because i want to talk about paul i want to promote it because i know it has the ability and it has the potential to do well because everyone in the world plays pool whether you're going out with your mates whether you want to take someone out on a date it's an icebreaker you know and the darts was the same and you know now it's known more as the professional side of things but everyone does go to a pool hall in Vietnam the pool halls there are open for 24 hours a day yeah and you go in there and normally when I go to like a snooker hall here or a pool hall here in the uk it's like 80 snooker tables 20 percent pool when i go to vietnam and i go to the philippines and i go to those areas and i go to the us no snooker tables they're all pool and so i know i've got potential so yes it might be a different territory but if i just keep pushing i just keep banging on that door then we're gonna get there It's a different type, isn't it?

1:00:00Because if you walk into, let's say, any pub or any place that has a table, it's a pool table here, not a snooker table because you have, well, there's a size part that helps. But there is an element of it being the social game, like darts, where the snooker takes more time. Most people are crap at it. So to actually play a frame of snooker takes fucking ages. and pool you know is way more accessible for an average person like me to just pick up a cue and actually go and pop my color if i'm playing traditional pool not not nine ball don't you dare ever talk about that ever again what's the right what's the right thing to say right nine ball pool is so basically it's the numbers one to nine yeah on the table and you gotta pop them in order okay but you can like pop the nine at any time as long as you always hit the lowest number on the table first.

1:00:50Which is what Barry did because he had the two onto the nine. There you go. But so much more fun, right? Just hitting like reds, yellows, there's no fun to it. Yeah, crap. Sorry, yeah. Thank you so much. Honestly, talk about that again. I'm literally going to walk straight out of it. Spots and stripes. That was my backup. What's worse? Let's not talk about it. Just both of them. No, we can't talk about those. Okay, so chronological. Start at one, end at nine. Exactly. So we need to basically integrate more of those, like make that the game socially here when pool is played socially. That should be.

1:01:26Yeah, it's just nine balls just not. It's always been like English pool. So that's just be the front runner. But, you know, there's a great club in Southwark called Spots and Stripes. And we've got, you know, two of our professional rass on tables up there. It's got nine ball branding all there. That's where Andy Goldstein goes to play and like practice and stuff. and that's a cool like place because it's got like I think one or two snooker tables and the rest is all the proper nine ball tables so we just need to be doing more of that here in the UK but again like trying to build a global tour so you know you can't all of a sudden just focus on the UK you know we're trying to grow this grow this globally and I think one of the main things that I always talk about is within our 128 rankings we have over 40 different nationalities so we are truly global there's a lot of sports that wouldn't have that and we have something that actually could be so huge and it's at that growth time and I just can't wait to the time when it's like real like really at that point when you know I would love to have Matt's problem of people going please can I get a ticket please I would love it after this you will all these millions of views like listening but I like obviously I would just love yeah I would love to have that problem and you know I know we will get there because to be honest with you I just won't stop until it does because I feel like I've I've got that pressure on me now where I have to make that happen so I can't fail I'm gonna fire some quick questions okay okay what did you find the easiest when you came to the role and what did you find most challenging I've never been asked that question the first one what came first yeah I've never been asked that you stumped me literally an hour to get a new question I think like the the tv side of things I found I've like really slipped into really well more because I'd had that tv experience when I first started at matchroom and i had the best teacher katie hearn she she was a director one of the best directors at sky sports and then she came over to matchroom which is like so she worked outside of matchroom first come home yeah then came home and she was one of the biggest bosses that i've ever watched in play like we used to work on the poker tournaments together poker's actually like proper in my heart and she used to operate in such an incredible way and she would work incredible hours I think I got my work ethic and confidence from her I just watched everything that she did and so that was something that I think coming into my role a lot of people within that kind of role wouldn't have that tv experience and so I felt that that really came naturally to me the challenge I think was there's kind of two sides to it I found that this is gonna sound so stupid the numbers side of things really tough like I always struggled with maths numbers were really really difficult for me like real difficult but I've said it like quite a few times like give me a scenario within like a pool tournament with a prize money format or figure out how many matches how many matches you need to play with this many days this many tables i can get you a figure like that put like a maths test in front of me and i'm like game over so we have a finance you can count from one to nine yeah yeah um so and then the other side i think that was also really challenging um was probably like dealing with like athletes because there's so many it's very different across the different sports you know athletes are just really different and you know I still even find it the most challenging now because I take everything so personally because the world nine ball tour is like my baby and I now feel that I have this job that I have to deliver something for the athletes I've essentially said to them I'm going to change your lives i'm going to create a tour that will change your career and you will earn money you will be able to provide for your families and i will turn this entire sport around so i now have to deliver on that and so that's also quite a big challenge that's powerful okay so i spoke to frank before and he told me about the time you nearly took his job oh my god He's such a drama queen.

1:06:22But he wouldn't give me all the information. He just said he misbehaved. He said to me, final warning. I was like, how many warnings did he get? What background did he give you? He took his job because he was on his final warning. And I was just thinking, if that had happened, what other part of the business would you most love to say boxing? You're coming for his job? No. Once Nine Ball's gone massive, obviously. I just, I know that whatever happens is like, that's my journey. Do you know what I mean? Like, so if you happen to be CEO of boxing, that's just your journey.

1:06:59I just, I need to be like in a, I could probably take like a new sport on and like fall in love. As long as I'm passionate about something, I know I can do anything that I put my mind to, essentially. I know that that is, that is what I'm good at. But he was actually working for Matchroom at that point. And I was still on work experience. So I wasn't actually working for Matchroom as an employee, but he was. And so I was very much like best behavior, turning up like two hours early. Feeding the alpacas. Yeah, yeah, feeding the alpacas. No, I actually never fed the alpacas. But he turned up late and I was there, Miss Goody Two Shoes.

1:07:47And so I had to fill in for it was actually like I remember the job, you know, like sit like obviously the sit down interviews that you'd pre record for the poker shows. You'd have to log them. So you'd have to log like what, you know, when the player was answering, when the reporter was asking. and you know if it was a good interview or not and like the good questions and stuff so you had to basically just sit there listen and log it and he was late and so I had to sit in step in but I watched him get his warning it was the funniest thing ever so yes he only had floppy hair um but it's funny and it's a talking point now from now on um but he always says oh phrase tried to take my job but he just turned up late this has been dramatic basically wants a conversation to go back to it yeah yes nice okay what sport or area do you reckon there's opportunity for you guys as a business to get involved in that you're not already um i'm frustrated we didn't get involved in paddle i think we hit the we missed the boat there um that's something that everyone seems to play but i'll be i've played paddle right i don't know one professional player do you do you play paddle yeah do you know a professional player no so actually maybe we shouldn't have got involved but no that's why you should yeah maybe that's why we should it needs something it needs something exactly like this yeah but you don't know one professional pool player do you no uh yeah baz no come on actually i've told you one yeah i know um the pearl pearl yes oh the pearl so andy goldstein and andy goldstein i he'd love to be called a professional so yeah um but do you know what i mean though everyone plays paddle but that's why it's an opportunity yeah maybe maybe there is an opportunity there um because that's that's what you guys do the best right you bring an environment an atmosphere a professionalism an event like you bring it to people yeah paddle it's huge everyone it's like the new golf as well everyone's you know it's like oh we can be social with it we don't need to go out and spend four hours on a course and do it but you could do it across work you do it socially you can but would you go and watch professional paddle tour.

1:09:59Yeah, they're amazing. Really? Have you seen the professional stuff? Look it up online. I mean, honestly, they're hitting shots from outside the court and everything. It's good. It is good. But it hasn't been professionalised, should we say, en masse in the way that you professionalise sport? Yeah. Okay. I mean, this is your question, not mine. Well, no, just let me get Paul over the line first. Can I come in and do paddle? And then I'll do paddle. I'll try and go into paddle. Before boxing. Before boxing. I think there's loads of sports out there. You know, we get approached for so many. I think I got approached for axe throwing, which gives me so many questions.

1:10:37Like there's so many risk assessments that I do not want to get involved in. But like... Was that in the US? I don't know, it was here. Really? Yeah. You've never been to an axe throwing place? No, I have not. Because I don't... No, I don't want to get an axe thrown in my head. I feel far too important. You didn't stand in the head. No, it gives me... But I think this like gymnastics is an interesting one because everyone loves gymnastics because they do things that look impossible and but it comes around every four years it's not you know there's a reason why prize money doesn't exist because it's not commercialized the gymnasts earn money through their own sponsorships off of the back of obviously olympics and things like that and there's there are so many sports that you can do so much with But sometimes there are so many associations that, you know, have a sort of their grip on things and you can't really change things to the sport because the thing is you have to change things up.