Barry Hearn OBE | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:13Barry, thank you for joining me. Pleasure. I've been really looking forward to this. Tell me who is Barry Hearn OBE? multinational genius super smart I'm not disputing it best bodyguard in the business secret of life make sure you look after those that are close to you family first of course friends second be prepared to take a bullet for them and give 100 % commitment to everything you do no retreat no surrender brilliant we can stop there it's just golden I know so much from knowing what you've done listening to things and watching things before including this TV programme you've got coming up.

0:52I was listening to your podcast. You've just got so much energy. You've got a glint in your eye now. Yeah, I know, because I'm so happy, you see. I mean, I know we live in a troubled world. We live in a f***ing world. And when you're doing sports events, it's the same things. The ultimate is to give people escapism into another world where they're having fun. And fun seems to be something that, you know, money can buy you most things. It can't buy you fun. That sheer enjoyment of what you do, breathing God's air, living your life to the full, not wasting one second. My father had six heart attacks from 28 to 43 and died at 43.

1:29His father died at 44 and his father died at 43. You're going to be 77 in June. Because I'm a phenomenon. But the only lesson that taught me was don't waste. The only thing my father ever told me that made any sense at all was don't waste a second. life too so you mustn't you know we get things we have to take things seriously at certain times but the ideal aim is to take life not so seriously at the end of the day it's a very trite phrase that you know we're just going through a period of time that starts in tears of happiness and ends in tears of sadness the bit in the middle is what interests me what do you do for fun because you mixed interesting and a key part of what you've done is storytelling yeah and by doing storytelling you're having fun you've created characters along the way characters that are then built it goes back a little bit further than that you see when i looked at different aspects of the sports scene especially is i realized that you know some people with blazers on take sport too seriously it is for some people it's a what it's a living but for most of us it's an enjoyment, a passion, a pastime.

2:40So what we're doing is we're trying to create a soap opera within a sport. So we used to describe it as snooker was Dallas with balls, darts is Coronation Street with arrows. And most important thing is the storytelling involves getting people to understand, to recognise, to identify with certain characters in this soap opera. So personality driven sport is the most important thing to ensure longevity because inevitably like you always remember the first football side you ever watched the whole of your life and generally that side will be your team for the rest of your life similarly in our world is we have to draw people in by way of identification with personalities or people in starring in certain sports and so there was an element of you pioneering something that certainly wasn't being done in the UK.

3:34Yeah, you're being a bit too kind. I'm a little bit more restrictive than that, you see. I'm working class. The fact that I've made an inordinate amount of money, it's neither in or there. It's okay, but don't change my life. My values are still working class. So as I said to my son the other day, who is obviously a different class, I'm very much in love with him. He's a brilliant guy. I said, if I ever see you walk past a£10 note on the floor, I'll cut you out of my will. So you've got to understand where you come from. You've got to understand your own frailties, which we've all got. You've got to live with those.

4:08But in trying to improve yourself every day, William Gladstone said on his deathbed, I have been a learner all my life. I think he was 88. I understand what he says now. I learn something every day about people, about business, about life. And it fascinates me, the evolution of that during your own years on this earth. But what you all know is we're all dealing with something very limited so you've got to be passionate about it when you're passionate work does not become work it becomes a way of life my wife will tell you I'm a sad why because I alter my ratings on snooker and darts every single match live by hand She says that's sad.

4:53I say you watch EastEnders. I can't think of anything sadder. We are involved, we're immersed in our life and our business, and we have a dream just to be one simple thing. Be the best you can be. So I like fighting people. Not now, I'm getting a bit old. I like playing sport, and I'm not necessarily very good. but in everything I do I aim just to be the best I can be and whatever it is God will decide not me and there's so much that you've done and there's so much that you're still doing and of course there's Eddie with the legacy side of things now and I know how proud you are of him you can feel that and of course proud of what you've been able to do to have that that sort of platform if you like for him to come in and then steer but what have you not done is there anything that because it feels like you're in a non-arrogant way You're very content, but still driven.

5:48But is there anything you haven't achieved? I have a compartment in my brain. So all my failures, all my disappointments, are compartmentalised in an area that I never revisit. I don't set impossible targets. It's really interesting mindsets. So you just shut the door? Shut the door. It doesn't happen. Someone dies. It doesn't happen. They never exist. Did that take time to manage? I don't know. Was there a younger version of Barry where you open the door and shut it open short? Now you just shut it. I think I was always like that. I don't, you see, I'm very realistic as well. So if I can't change anything, none of us can change our past.

6:25I don't try to change anything because it's a total waste of time. And working back again, time is the only thing I can't afford to waste. So why bother to go things where you can't have an effect on it? You can learn by those experiences, of course, but you don't dwell on them because there's no point. you know I always remember when people close to me die I'm sad they're dead but I don't think about them the second afterward their journey's ended they've moved they've finished they can't affect my life I must move on that's interesting and you could almost call that selfish but actually what's wrong with that and also I love the unashamed amount sort of you talk about of being successful making money when particularly in Britain it's a very much a sort of like you You know, it's not the done thing, but actually how we're all aspirational, we're all ambitious.

7:15But some people don't like to hear. It's only part of the journey, isn't it? I mean, I grew up only wanting money. I didn't want anything else. So my dad was a bus driver. My mum was a domestic cleaner. Dad was ill all his life till he died. We had no money. I was never unhappy. Children don't get unhappy. You know, if they have love around them and they have parental guidance, some of the things that's missing in today's society. most of the problems are caused by, in my view, lack of parental guidance for whatever reason or the other. But as I looked around me, I was never envious but I saw things I wanted and I couldn't quite understand why we didn't have them.

7:57You know, I was 18 years on a council estate, never saw a tree. What do I do now? I buy farms now. I like trees. They don't make any money but I walk around and I feel good about myself. and feeling good about yourself is half the battle. Now, it helps if you're selfish. It definitely helps. So growing up, I look at my age, looking back on it, I probably wasn't the best father and I definitely wasn't the best husband because I had a mission I was on to become financially secure and I was blindfolded. When you're talking about trying to be a success, I try and put it across to kids today especially, is there's no barriers to what you can achieve.

8:37The only barriers live within you. Are you prepared to live that type of life and be a bit of a b****? And we go through these three stages of life. The first stage of an entrepreneurial life is focus, success, deal with everything and anybody that gets in your way. Fighter. Whatever you've got to do. Whatever you've got to do. I don't want to hurt anyone unless they're trying to hurt me. And then there's no rules. It's like coming into your family. you know so then you come to a stage where you achieve a little bit of that and you sort of chill just slightly and then you become a better husband and a better father and a better person probably then you come to the third stage of your life you think job's over what do I do now so you start planning legacy and that's the phase you're in and that's the phase because there's no retirement for you right no I mean you'll always be working on something and doing something because it's what stimulates you it's what gets me out of bed normally i mean the the beauty of my life at the moment is i probably get up when i wake up you know i don't do the five o 'clock starts in the morning only very occasionally what do you do because you're in good shape you've got a proper twinkle in your eye and you look fit so what are you have you got a morning routine yeah well i've got a routine of life but i don't like boundaries and i don't like to limit myself so if you start off by saying there's 24 hours in a day I like to sleep you know so I'll always have eight hours at least.

10:10Do you prioritise that? Yeah because it relaxes me but when I wake up my pulse except I've actually put a pulse meter on to check this so my pulse goes up five or six beats as I arrive at my office. So almost like you're preparing you're ready and when I'm going home, it goes up five or six going home, because it's another part of your life. So it's quite regulated, but it's not boring, and I can't stand boredom. So I have to be doing things and having ideas, and you know, listen, as I say, the compartments in my brain help, because I have lots of s*** ideas, but I couldn't tell you one failure in my life, because I've locked them away, and they're gone.

10:53Do you even see them as failures, though? I don't see them. Because you've been a pioneer. I don't see them. I don't see them at all. Everything is a success. If I wake up in the morning, it's a success. Your mindset's phenomenal. Who is it? He used to tell me, who is that comedian from Manchester? I say to him, look at the state of you, you know, you're drinking 10 pints a day, you're having Indians at one o 'clock in the morning. I said, you should do something with your life. And he said, I do. He said, every morning I go like that. I said, oh, you work out? No, no. He said, if my elbows don't touch wood, I know I'm good.

11:26No way. That was his world. So he was enjoying his life. And everyone's different. And what works for me doesn't work for other people. Some people grow up. Some people want to be a nun. Some people want to be a doctor. It's a calling. I don't have any of that. I have fixed motivation on achieving certain goals. And it's a game. So I play business like I play sport. And I'm not great at anything. I'm good at everything. But I'm not great at anything, which is really tedious. But anyway, I get over it. I live with it. I play business like I play sport I prepare diligently I dedicate myself I sacrifice around it and I finish off with the most important criteria I do the best I can possibly do I don't leave anything on the table I was just going to say no regrets you know no I mean last week I was in the nets getting ready for my new cricket season you know I play for the Essex over 70s it's pretty s*** but I love it and then I Last year, I played in the US Open pool.

12:27I was terrible. I got beat 9-1. Yeah, but the one. I listened to something on the build-up, on your podcast, that one that you got, you loved it. I was so happy with myself. And now, since then, standard tournament table in my house. I play every day because I'm going to play the UK Open and I'm going to get slaughtered again. But on that day, I will be the best I can be. And that applies to business every single day. And lots of rules around business that make you successful. Be respectful to other people. Be hard, but don't be immovable. Yeah. And we talked about a couple of people that are mutual friends of ours that have mutual respect for you.

13:05But the key person from a legacy building point of view is Eddie, your son. There's a dynamic there. Father, myself, two daughters. So I'm trying to do... If they do what I do rather than what I say, I'll be pleased because my work ethic's good, my mindset's good. how much of that do you feel went in to Eddie and seeing how you I disappoint him sometimes because I always the one thing about getting older is you always tell the truth one is because you're too old to remember all the lies and secondly is it's a lot easier to tell the truth and I don't call Eddie I call him my son occasionally but most of the time I refer to him as my project.

13:45So from an early age, both him and his sister Katie have been projects. So I'm building something. A lot of people won't like that. I mean, a lot of people don't understand the type of people we are. You know, it's quite amusing to chat about it and it's quite, you know. But do they realise that when I didn't think Eddie was growing up to be the type of kid that I wanted, that I took him down the gym and we had a proper fight because I wanted to find out what was in him. and he dropped me twice in the second round. Which you liked. Which I loved. I loved. I mean, it was a bit painful, to be honest.

14:20But he's a project, and what I'm seeing now, where he's added his own piece of magic to a project, it's become something that is a legacy, is something that I'm proud of. My daughter's the same, an entirely different person. My daughter is much more of an academic than Eddie, but she has good values. You know, she has twin boys. It's her whole life as family. has always been my whole life. And that's how we were brought up. You know, someone made my sister cry. My dad would say, what are you doing sitting here? Go and sort it. And it would get sorted and they'd say, okay, now you have your dinner.

14:58You know, things like that give you a balance in life where you don't, I don't set myself in possible targets. You know, I'm childlike. I need to be successful. I breed off that success. That keeps it simple, right? Yeah. Yeah, and nothing more simple than business. Have you applied that to business? All the time. I'm a boring chartered accountant. I've done 54 years as a fellow of the institute. I think I was the youngest ever fellow of the institute of chartered accountants. I'm super smart. I like to give the impression I'm a barrow boy because it's quite a good image. People don't mess about with you.

15:31But it works for me, you know, and ultimately I am totally selfish. I spread it a little bit as though me and my family. But in the early days, it was just me. I didn't give a monkey about anything. But I had goals I wanted to achieve. And working class people, I always say, the fighters and the dance players and all those, first thing you do, you're going to make a load of money because I'm good at what I do. Second thing you do, you're going to pay off your mortgage. So if it all goes to ****, you can look and say, especially in the case of boxers, I've been damaged. Because you're going to get damaged when you're a boxer.

16:06It's inevitable. You've got to be able to say, what did I get out of it? And then it's worth the price you're paying. For me, the same thing. That's super good advice. And make sure you're prepared for that. The chartered accountant in you, I get, is sort of the business acumen and the sort of the bean counting, making money and knowing how to make money and protect money. But there's such a creativity with you, creating the characters. That's the big difference I found with accountants and entrepreneurial accountants. I had never had a time in my life where I wasn't running two or three businesses at the same time from 12 or 13 years old.

16:41And sometimes it's just to make a few pounds and other times it's to make a fortune. The rules are exactly the same. Just be the best you can be. Don't expect more than you're capable of delivering because you'll just disappoint yourself. So as superficial as possible, please, and you'll get away fine. You've got this program coming up, going back to this creativity, from how you've changed the world of darts, snooker in the 80s. but the vision you've got now and I guess the insight that will come from people being able to learn from you and Eddie and the empire you've built if you like where did that come from and I suppose the relevance of what you're doing now being visible social media the way we consume our content you've now immersed yourself into that it's like it's almost like a genius move at a time well I had no choice really because the world's a changing place and if you don't change with circumstance then you you know you're dead so that's my point about you're just so relevant you keep but you have to be like that and you have to work i mean i don't understand all these things you know computers and phones and all the thousands of things they can do i have people that tell me and i also have a brain myself where i slowly work things out but the world is a changing place and we're seeing it in in our sports business at the moment we had a ball meeting yesterday i I said, in three to five years' time, broadcast channels will be totally irrelevant.

18:02Let's plan for it now, because we'll have our own platforms, and we'll make programming for a select few rather than the gross image where you can't necessarily influence something. What you've got to be is in a position where people choose your product. So they choose where they want to go, whether they want to sit at home and watch it on telly, whether they want to buy a ticket in these troubled times for a lot of people with no money. So it puts different responsibilities on you to come up with a product where people can say, my plan is always, where are you going tonight? I'm going to see a matchroom show.

18:44I don't care if it's boxing, snooker, darts, pool, whatever, fishing, it doesn't make any difference. But I want association of quality so someone knows that they're going to get value for money and they're going to get a top experience, which is going to enrich their life in as far as they'll go to work the next day and say, oh, I had a cracking night last night. But that's what everyone used to do. But they're still now sharing it as well, right? Which is where you're kept. Well, you can reach people a lot quicker. In the old days in the sports business, first year you did your brains, second year you broke even, third year you make a profit.

19:20Today's world, if you're smart enough, first year you make a profit. that's where this and speed the process done that because you're you have a narrative that people want to listen to and you have a channel where you can get that narrative out into the general market faster than you've ever done before do you feel almost a sense of irony that you have worked with and promoted some amazing sports stars and personalities and yet there's going to be such a huge amount of interest in this upcoming program that's about you and about how you sort of I think it's brilliant listen because you were I wasn't necessarily in favor of doing this because it's intrusive you know I mean number one my wife and my daughter will not have anything to do with the show it's intrusion in their world they live a different world they live a very private world and they're out of the Eddie and me, especially Eddie, it's like, you know, it's the cream on the cake for us because we're performers in our own way, bizarrely.

20:20Hence the characters. And the characterisation and the narrative that evolves is relevant to a lot of people and, I hope, entertaining. Hence the greatest showman, right? The greatest showman describes what we do. I mean, again, people don't really understand so much about what we do in the sport, how passionate we are because you could not. I mean, I thought I was a proper grafter, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, most of my life. Eddie's taken it to an extra couple of hours. So he's grown up in an entirely different society to me. He's grown up as a rich kid, which is one of the reasons why I didn't like him when he was 16, 17 years old.

21:01But the project comes through, the learning on the job has come through, and now he realises you know does an extra few million quid make any difference to Eddie no of course not he's a showman and what he's doing is he's fulfilling what he was always intended to be and it it ticks a lot of boxes it does and I think there's a desire Gen Z you know 70 % plus I think want to be an influencer you know there's a huge desire to be visible and be seen and of course social media You couldn't do that when Steve Davis was playing. They had to watch it through the BBC with you, and you made it something.

21:42But that's now a huge elevation. And I love the fact that you embrace it. Yeah, well, you've got no choice. I mean, you've got to be really... My eight-year-old said to me the other day, he's completely about money. He's pazzer, pazzer. They all call me pazzer, pazzer. How do you become a billionaire? And I said, well, what any granddad would say, you work hard at school, you give 100%, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he went to me, yeah, I think I'm going to be an influencer. He's eight. Now, you know, in the same way as that people grow up wanting to be a footballer or a train driver or whatever, this is half a smart kid that decides he wants to be an influencer because he's seen the world and how it's evolved.

22:29for me to ignore it would be to ignore one of the great rules of life. Don't ever be irrelevant. You have to be relevant. And that involves moving with the times. I love that. I love the fact that you recognise that because there are so many parents and grandparents that will turn around and go, that's not a job. Because it wasn't a job. No, no, no. You're doing it now. You're doing it as you with the greatest shame. My mum came home from a man who used to clean his house. I was 12 years old. She said to me, I know what you're going to do now. When you grow up, you're going to be a chartered accountant.

23:05And I said, really? What do they do? She said, I haven't got a clue. She said, but the man who's a house I work in told me today that you never see a poor one. That one phrase triggered off a whole reaction in my brain. I'll never be poor. I'll never be poor. And even in the late 80s when things were going really bad, **** up and I owed millions of pounds everywhere. and you start to doubt yourself, which is a killer. It's a killer. It's like a 12-round fight when you've been battered. Do you see out the 12 rounds? Or do you say to the bloke in the corner, I've hurt my shoulder, pulled me out?

23:42That's the type of decision she's got to make. And you look back over those years and you say, gee, I showed some balls then. But then I always thought, because of the training and because of the past, I was never going to starve no matter what happened. I might have gone bust a few times. But as it turned out, good Lord smiled on me and certain things happened and it would have been more of a compliment to fail, really. It's interesting because I can tell that there's no room for failure because you're constantly focused on probably six or seven things at once. So if one thing's not going, you know when to pivot, you know when to drop.

24:19That's a skill there as an entrepreneur. Well, you always give things. I mean, again, I've experimented with, I think I did that the other day, 16 or 17 sports. Try. But you always got to give them the, you know, you see people that want to be rich quick seldom keep their money. Because the attitude of a gambler means that eventually the house always wins. So you have to build this house with solid foundations. And it takes time and you mustn't be too much in a rush. Someone said to me the other day, what would it be like, match would it be like now if Eddie had run it from day one? I said, we'd have either been the biggest entertainment company by a country mile in the world or we'd have gone skint.

25:01See, accountant comes in and balances the books, brings a little bit of sensibility to it. No one gets a prize for being brave. Brave fighters get beat up. You've got to be good. You've got to be thinking through and be technical about it. It's brilliant. So when we look at our business now, we're at a lovely crossroads because we're so, I don't know how big we are, we're sizable. Well, I think you built a unicorn ultimately. Yeah, no. I formed Matchroom in 1982. I'd made a bit of money on some, I was chairman of a snooker hall group, which sold out. Somehow I ended up owning a third of it, and I made a lot of money in 1982.

25:42I was going to retire, I was 34. Made a million and a half pounds. I thought, where I come from, that's it. Game over, a million and a half quid. I'm going to play cricket, I'm going to go fishing, and I'm going to play golf every day. I did it for six weeks, I'm climbing up walls. I've got to go. So I went to my lawyer, I said, I'm going to form a company, I'm going to call it Matchroom. He said, where does the name come from? I said, me and Steve Davis used to play snooker in the Matchroom at Romford, so that's our lucky name. He said, how much equity? I said, 100 quid. I said, there's£60. I gave him£60 in cash.

26:17I said 60 % for me because I have to have control. I said 20 % for Eddie, he's three years old. 20 % for Katie, she's five years old. It's a proper legacy business. Yeah. So that£100 business is north of a billion value. And if you don't feel you've done a good job and you don't feel happy, you've only got one person to blame because you're setting yourself the wrong standards. I'm proud every day I wake up. And I'm prouder at the end of the day because it means I've had another day. You've been awarded OBE. There are so many things you can be proud of that I could name as achievements. What's the one achievement you're most proud of?

26:56Well, it's trite to say, but still being alive. I mean, obviously, I had a couple of heart attacks. And I've survived generational heart problems. And I've run marathons around the world and triathlons around the world. And I've tried everything without being particularly good at anything. But I've loved every second of every day. I'm more happy about my state of mind and I think so much of it rests in the individual. You know, there's a lot of weakness out there. You know, with me, my big failure is I don't share my weaknesses with anybody, including wives and family. So if I've got something wrong, that's my problem as a man to sort out and it stays as my problem.

27:37When you say share your weaknesses, there's a very competent, competent, you know chap sitting here now those weaknesses are moments in time there are there's something you need to solve they're not behavioral because your mindset and your i don't i don't solve them so what you're really saying i just get rid of them yeah but my point is you're not the the weakness that you call it is something's playing on your mind right now that's a little niggle that you need to sort out and of course at times it's been probably a big big deal to sort out but you know you're sort of and you won't burn someone else with that.

28:10No, no, no, no. No, I won't ever discuss anything with anybody. Even with Eddie? No. No, well. This is my problem. Does he come to you? Does he have that where he'll come to you because of the relationship? Yeah, I think very occasionally but we're very quite similar. He hates me calling him a project but I said, actually, it's a benefit really because I've brought you up how I want you to be brought up and then we all add our own little bit of magic to it and that's the secret that determines is the difference between certain people. I don't know many people that would... We talk about sacrifices in life.

28:44I mean, I don't think there's... You can't make a sacrifice big enough to take away the enjoyment of life. So sacrifice is just a way of doing your job a bit better than someone else. We're having a game. We're just having a game. We want to win. So if I'm doing something with you, whatever, whatever it can be, I want to win. And by the way, I'm a really good loser. When I lose, I always go, beaten by the better person. I've got a problem with that. In business, I've probably had a lot more pluses. Because it goes back to you'll give it everything. I can't argue anything else. Is there an element of that being lost in some sport?