World renowned sports promoter and former chairman of Professional Darts Corporation Barry Hearn sat down with Goldstien of TalkSPORT to discuss the future of the 17 days World Snooker Championship that holds every year from mid-April to May at the Crucible in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
Below is the extract of the Sportstalk podcast interview which was post on their facebook page.
Goldstein: if you have a backer, let’s say Asia or Saudi who says “ we want you to bring the Wolrd Championship to us, and you get the 2 million pouns first prize and you get everything you want, all the boxes but trophy disappears and we put a brand new solid gold trophy inplace.
Barry: “No problem with that. You can’t eat gold trophy, son!”
Goldstein: So you will do that?
Barry: “of course”
That is terrible (Goldstein interjects)
Goldstein: You are having the World Snooker Championship at the moment and lot’s of talk this week has been about the future of the World Championship and whether or not it would be; (a) at Sheffield and (b) at the Crucible?
I have heard you speak about it quite openly and honestly as well about the fact that if it is going to remain at the Crucible, the Crucible needs to be bigger. Is that right?
Barry: “Yeah. I said this 2 years ago. It is not a new thing but we got our contract that runs out in 2027 with the crucible and we laid down …. We say look, if you love us, owe me a bunch of flowers. Get me a new venue or extend the venue in a way.
Goldstein: let me ask this. As a Snooker fan, how realistic is it for a building like the Crucible to extend it’s capacity and make it like about 2000.
2000 is massive,
Ally Pally is just under 2 1\2 thousand for the Masters.
Barry: “It is not impossible in my view to do anything about the Crucible as it stands as an existing building. We’ve got to be looking at another building in Sheffield which we can be name the Crucible, bulilt with the same type of feel that I feel we need, with 2 1/2 or 3 thousand seats to stand any chance or disregarding the type of offers we rea getting from around the world. We have built this into a global event as every year a lot of people say to me that it can’t be in the Crucible every year. So, surely if it is the world championship, I think we should make the first prize 2 million pounds as a minimum and every players that make it to the Crucible should be on a minimum of 100,000 pounds.
Watch the full video below.
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