Hearn Targets Table Tennis Revolution

 

 

Ben Campbell,

Correspondent (Sport)

 

It is fair to say that Barry Hearn isn’t exactly endearing himself to sports’ purists. Credited with having brought darts and to a lesser extent snooker, out of the doldrums and into the public eye, the ubiquitous Hearn, a former account and now a sporting events promoter, has recently set his sights upon spicing up table tennis.

As it is now synonymous with Hearn’s involvement in a sport, his vision of what the game should be is in stark contrast with its current state. Hearn’s inaugural event, the World Championship of Ping Pong, took place last month at Alexandra Palace amidst a sense of excitement and expectation. Hearn has stated before that the event that he wanted to “make them [the players] all superstars” and that it would be “rock and roll” table tennis.

As with Hearn’s other sporting conquests, the changes made were unashamedly geared towards creating more excitement for the spectator. $100,000 was stumped up in prize money and the usual calm setting for table tennis was replaced with dazzling lights and pounding entrance music. On top of this, Hearn uniformed the paddle with the intention of making rallies longer and introduced the double-point ball. These significant changes created a spectacle a far cry from the original sport.

For this reason, Hearn’s penchant for change is not always well received in the sports he meddles in. Snooker player Mark Allen launched a scathing attack at Hearn after last year’s Masters, saying that Hearn’s approach shows that “the players don’t really matter” and that that the sport is “not all about bringing people in to watch and have a good time, shouting and having a drink.”

Hearn’s approach to the expansion of darts had its foundations firmly in the nature of the sport with his events replicating the bustling atmosphere down the pub commonly associated with darts. This blueprint, however, cannot be transferred to all sports. It is not suited to sports such as snooker and table tennis.

Despite this, it cannot be denied that commercially Hearn’s changes have been successful. He revitalised snooker, by increasing the prize money from £3.5 million per annum to £8 million in just three years as a result of making the game more accessible for audiences. Darts has also seen a huge surge in popularity with the 2013 World Championships drawing in a record 45,000 fans. It remains to be seen whether Hearn can produce change of the same magnitude in table tennis.

The key problem that table tennis faces is not its lack of popularity, but its image as a leisure activity; one which gets played for a couple of weeks a year on a holiday. The interest is already present; more than 300 million people a year play ping pong. In order to make it a global spectator sport however, it needs to evolve from being seen as a leisure activity to being viewed as a credible sport.

Purists talk of Hearn’s ideas as being the death of the sport, but as with anything in life, development is essential. This is perfectly highlighted with table tennis. Table tennis could continue as it is, plodding along, watching other sports achieve commercial success. The arguments for the commercialism of table tennis are overwhelming — the added revenue would lead to an improvement in the quality of play, money in the game and exposure the sport receives. If it remains as it is, it risks losing supporters to other sports which are more attractive to the masses. So unless table tennis actively reaches out to a new audience by jumping on the commercial bandwagon, it might be left behind.

 

Image Courtesy: DmitryYakunin, via Wikimedia Commons