Barry Hearn has delivered a blunt response to a request from world champion Luke Littler for an in-house chef at Premier League venues, telling the teenage sensation to "shut up and drink your lager." The Matchroom boss recounted the exchange in an interview with SportsBoom earlier this week in Sheffield, where he was discussing the development of darts and snooker. Hearn revealed that Littler, through his manager, had criticized the food at Premier League venues and asked if his personal chef could be brought in, prompting Hearn's fiery retort: "for fuck's sake, it's a darts tournament. What are you talking about?"
Hearn used the anecdote to illustrate how much darts has changed from a pub sport to a multi-million-pound business, with players increasingly behaving like elite athletes. He noted that while the winner of the World Snooker Championship currently receives £500,000, Littler took home £1 million with his world title earlier this year. Hearn emphasized his drive to grow the sport, stating, "I'm still grafting my nuts off... I want to win. And winning in my world is making events bigger, making prize money bigger, even though they do still moan." He also speculated that Littler could earn around £6 million this year, remarking, "Ain't bad for a game of darts, is it?"
The 77-year-old, who turns 78 in June, attributed darts' current explosion in popularity to a "quantum moment" where major TV contracts with Sky, Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia came up for renewal around the same time as Littler's breakthrough. Hearn explained, "All of a sudden, three or four of our biggest TV contracts come up for renewal... And it just came at the right time, where everybody's going, 'Oh, we can't lose it.'" He contrasted this with past eras, noting that Phil Taylor threw similar or better averages than Littler but earned far less due to limited commercial opportunities at the time.
