BARRY Hearn qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1970 and spent several years with a major firm of international accountants before moving into the commercial world as finance director of Kensal House Investments.

After a period in the fashion industry and property development, he became chairman of Lucania Snooker Clubs in 1974 and began to involve the snooker hall chain in amateur tournament promotions.

In 1976 Steve Davis began playing at the Romford Lucania Club and the two struck up a friendship which was to have a major influence on the world of snooker.

In 1982 Riley Leisure acquired the chain of Lucania Snooker Clubs for £3.1 million leaving Barry free to concentrate on the development of snooker, both in the UK and overseas. With the support of the Matchroom professional players, Barry promoted snooker all over the world and has been particularly instrumental in the development of the game in the Far East.

Barry began his involvement in big time boxing by going straight in at the deep end - staging the Joe Bugner v Frank Bruno heavyweight show-down at Tottenham's White Hart Lane Stadium in 1987, in front of 30,000 people. Since then the Matchroom Boxing stable has risen to the top in both Britain and Europe, staging over fifty promotions throughout the season, including British, Commonwealth, European and World Championship bouts.

Together with Sky, who televise many of Matchroom Sport’s shows, Barry has helped discover and develop such champions as Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Herbie Hide, Carl Crook, Francis Ampofo, Steve Collins, Jim McDonnell and Eamonn Loughran.

In April 2008, Barry held the first ever Prizefighter Series tournament at the famous York Hall in London. The event featured eight British heavyweights fighting in four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and a final all in one night.

Each bout lasted a maximum of 3x3 minute rounds and the thrilling short format guaranteed exciting action and was a huge success.

Viewing figures on Sky were three-times higher than their regular boxing shows to ensure the format would be repeated at a variety of different weights.

Prizefighter quickly grabbed the imagination of boxing fans and it looks set for a bright future after three more events were successfully staged in 2008 - at heavyweight, welterweight and middleweight. 

Married to Susan with two children, Barry lists his sporting interests as poker , pool, running and golf. Whilst he has no pretensions about his snooker skills or come to that, his boxing ability - Barry is a fanatical golfer and never leaves home without his clubs.

While sports such as snooker and boxing are firmly established as two of the most popular on television, Barry Hearn has set his considerable sights on other immensely popular but less well known sports. Barry promotes the world’s richest coarse fishing match -  Fish'O'Mania - live on Sky Sports for six hours and now entering its 15th year.

Barry has helped develop the game of pool from a pub game into a huge TV sport, and the success of his Mosconi Cup Europe v America match and the World Pool Championship is a testament to the progress that has been made. In the summer of 1999 Matchroom promoted the event for the first time and it has since developed into the biggest event ever in the history of the sport.

The Mosconi Cup has been staged in Las Vegas on three occasions and will be held in Malta for the first time in December, 2008. 

Barry has had a similar impact with darts, which he has helped transform into one of the most popular sports on British television.

In 1992, Darts split into two bodies as 16 top professional players were unhappy with how the sport was being run and decided to form the World Darts Council (WDC).

This later changed its name to the Professional Darts Corporation in 1997, before Barry took over as their chairman in 2001.

This led to a boom time in the sport as a host of new events, such as the Las Vegas Desert Classic in 2002 and the Premier League in 2005, become regular features in the darts calendar.

The players, including Phil 'The Power' Taylor, have become huge sporting stars and the appeal of the PDC was shown in 2006 when Raymond Van Barneveld, the 2006 BDO World Champion, decided to move to the PDC.

He has been followed by a number of other top players and the PDC is constantly growing.

In 2007 Barry moved the PDC World Championship to the legendary Alexandra Palace venue in London and stages of the Premier League were now being played out in front of 9,000 spectators.

The tournaments are shown across the world and in 2009 there will be a minimum of 58 PDC organised competitions worldwide before the prize money at the 2010 World Championships is set to reach the £1million mark.

Matchroom Sport also dominate the international televised tenpin bowling market with three events. They are the World Masters which has been in existence since 1998, the Weber Cup which is fast establishing itself as the Ryder Cup of bowling and the AMF World Cup, bowling’s biggest international event.

In addition, Barry has also developed poker, one of the world’s favourite games, into a viable live TV draw with the running of Poker Million, the first edition of which took place in November 2000.

Since then poker has exploded as a TV attraction to tie in with the huge growth in online poker sites. Matchroom Sport now produce over 250 hours of original poker programming, including the hugely popular Premier League Poker, which was staged for the third time in November 2008.  

In March 1995, Barry Hearn assumed a controlling interest in Leyton Orient Football Club. Despite the ups and downs of professional football, Barry has rebuilt most of the stadium in impressive style and as reward for his efforts the team gained automatic promotion to League One at the close of the 2005/06 season.

Over the years, Barry Hearn's Matchroom Sport organisation has grown into one of the world’s most prolific independent sports promotion and television companies, producing over 1,100 hours of original material each year.