World Snooker Tour financials this century

With late match fixing and critical statements about World Snooker Tour (WST) I often hear “worst/best ever” “stagnation” and all kinds of dramatic statements that beg for some analysis to back or overturn them. Nothing talks better than numbers, so I decided to look into them.

WST or WORLD SNOOKER LIMITED PLC

is owned by World Snooker Holding Limited

and managed by:
Simon Paul BROWNELL
Stephen James DAWSON
Jason Elliott FERGUSON
Edward John HEARN
Nigel Terrance OLDFIELD

World Snooker Holding Limited

is owned by:

26% — World Professional Billiards And Snooker Association Limited

75% — Matchroom Sport Limited

and managed by:

Stephen James DAWSON
Jason Elliott FERGUSON
Edward John HEARN

Matchroom Sport Limited is fully owned by Matchroom Holdings Limited, which is in turn is owned by Barry Hearn’s kids Katie and Eddie, with possibly some more minor shareholders not mentioned in filings and Stephen Dawson serving as director.

World Professional Billiards And Snooker Association Limited is basically players union, and I do not know ownership structure, but it is managed by:

Jason Elliott FERGUSON
Nigel Mark MAWER
Peter LINES
Andrew Michael DUNN
Christopher James John HORNBY

So, roughly it is 1/3 Eddie Hearn, 1/3 Cathie Godding and 1/3 Players owned with Jason Ferguson represented basically everywhere.

With this some kind of clarity let’s look into WST financials that feeds all mentioned parties.

I dug up WST statements since 2002, but before that, let’s keep in mind inflation, value of GBP halved during that period, so you can

Turnover. Company turnover was growing at nice pace hitting the bottom in 2010 when Barry hearn took it over at 8.5 millions and now nearing 27.

Gross profit. When we subtract cost of sales, that is all direct expenses (including prize funds), we will find out gross profit. No anomalies here, crisis in 2010 and dip in 2020 coronavirus year.

Administrative expenses. Saw some significant growth too.

Let’s see if they grew proportionally to turnover…

No. it is visible, that administration overhead nearly doubled since Hearn saving operation, that’s normal, good people who can grow biz are not cheap.

Now let’s get to prize moneys. Key promise when WST takeover happened was to increase players’ prize money by 5% every year since 2013/14 season.

So, this is how minimal agreed prize fund looks like:

And let’s see how well was that promise held: (I could not find data for 2005–2008)

Basically it was overdelivered all the time. According to agreement, excess prize payouts carry forward into the next period, now there is around 48 millions of excess, which means in theory even if WST will not be able to pay prizes at all for 4 years, Matchroom will still fulfill its part of the agreement.

But what about fair share of the business income for players? Here is the prize money to turnover ratio. Up to 80% is possible, because only nearly the half of the prize money comes from WST (direct prize money).

Clearly there is prize money drop last 2 years related to money earned.

So, let’s put it all together and I will leave you to make your own conclusions.

Had 194M in revenues.
Paid directors and staff 50M
Paid players 114M in prizes (of 66M commitment)
Paid shareholders 8.4M in dividends.

!!! One important omission in my quick analysis is related party transactions. Last account statement alone tells that WST paid for different goods and services:
* 1.3M to WPBSA
* 4.3M to Matchroom
* 40K to Ferguson
which may or may not be profit distribution.

I can go in more details if I will find this small research any useful.

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