Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen documentary on Netflix shows off the worlds of darts and boxing, but not so much snooker, believes former world champion Shaun Murphy.
The six-episode series gets a look behind scenes of the sports promotion giant, led by Barry and Eddie Hearn.
It is declared in the documentary that the three pillars of Matchroom Sport are snooker, boxing and darts, but there is a strong feeling in the snooker world that only two of the three pillars were shown to be in good standing.
Boxing dominates the series, following Eddie Hearn and Matchroom’s CEO of Boxing Frank Smith around the world to big fights, and that is clearly a glamorous, exciting world they operate in.
The huge financial success of darts is trumpeted and PDC chief executive Matt Porter rightly shone in a good light for his work.
Snooker is featured by far the least of the three major sports of Matchroom, with the most substantial section covering Eddie meeting Ronnie O’Sullivan in Saudi Arabia. But the most memorable piece showing Eddie being somewhat forcibly told to go to the English Open in Brentwood and not seeming very impressed.
Murphy was confused as to why the Matchroom documentary would see those running the sport talking down their own product.
‘What I found surprising was…I was slightly vexed…it felt as if some of the bosses at Matchroom were mocking the venue [in Brentwood] on the Netflix documentary,’ Murphy said on the onefourseven podcast. ‘It almost felt a bit like they were having a bit of a dig at it as well.’
The 2005 world champion and reigning Masters champ added: ‘I was disappointed with it. I thought it showed snooker in quite a negative light and bear in mind Matchroom was created because of snooker.
‘Without snooker Matchroom wouldn’t exist. Barry Hearn would be a chartered accountant who you’d never heard of, you certainly would never have heard of Eddie Hearn.
‘I was very disappointed with how they portrayed snooker. I felt like they portrayed it as if it is the ugly relative.’
Murphy accepted that it may be more difficult to show off snooker compared to the innate, physical drama of boxing or the rowdy spectacle of darts, but feels there was a lack of effort in trying to do so.
‘The flip side of the coin, perhaps it showed perhaps how difficult a sell snooker is,’ said the Magician. ‘It doesn’t have some of the other sellable commercial aspects that some of those other sports have.
‘It doesn’t have the rivalries, the weigh-ins of boxing, it doesn’t have the lager-swilling, the chants, the 8,000-9,000 ticket arenas being sold out around the world that darts has.
‘You start looking at it and think, to survive in the world and the way the world is going, is the game and the way it’s marketed, is it going to have to change to keep pace?
‘What I thought came loud and clear to me, it looked as if the least amount of effort of all their business interests goes into the snooker. That’s how it looked to me.’
Commentator and journalist David Hendon was also concerned about the content, or lack of it, for the sport.
Speaking on the Snooker Scene podcast, he said: ‘I think this series is actually a disaster for snooker. I think snooker comes out of it really badly. Partly because it barely features.
‘I think one of the worst things you can be is ignored and to a large degree that’s what happened.
‘You wouldn’t have formed the impression watching the documentary that it’s very important to Matchroom and of course it is, it’s massively important, the whole organisation was built on snooker. I thought it was disappointing from a snooker perspective and a massive opportunity missed.’
