Barry Hearn's terms for a controlling stake in professional snooker were approved by 35‑29 votes at a World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association EGM in Sheffield, thereby repelling a late challenge from the venture capitalist John Davison.
WPBSA will now become solely a rules, regulatory and disciplinary body while World Snooker, previously a wholly owned subsidiary, will become an independent company in which Hearn will pay £255,000 for a 51% stake after WPBSA's commercial assets are transferred to it for a nominal £1. WPBSA will take a 25% holding on behalf of the players, with the remaining 24% to be distributed to commercial partners.
After Sir Rodney Walker and two other board members were removed at last December's WPBSA AGM, Hearn was invited to become chairman and present his blueprint for the future, a future that is under threat from a paucity of sponsors, loss of profile and match-fixing allegations.
Immediately, Hearn obtained last-minute sponsors for the Masters and the Welsh Open, sold WPBSA's first event to Sky for eight years and brought in the former detective chief superintendent Dave Douglas to set up a new anti-corruption unit. Like Hearn, Douglas would have resigned if yesterday's vote had produced a different outcome. "I'm not underestimating the challenge that lies ahead," Hearn said. "I owe the game a lot and I'll be giving 100% every day to bring the game to where it should be operating."
Hearn's detailed plans for the future were circulated to players more than two months ago, together with a full tournament calendar, while Davison's counter offer of £315,000 for 63% of World Snooker emerged only late last week.
Davison, who was persuaded to bid by Lee Doyle, chairman of 110 Sport, which represents 11 players with voting rights, controversially offered that this £315,000 would be payable to the top 64 players as "an immediate dividend on acquisition".
In the frantic hunt for proxies some players found this attractive; others voted against Hearn because his wide-ranging plan, included a revision of the ranking system – whereby the list is updated, as in golf and tennis, after each tournament rather than annually, a system which some players with rankings to protect wanted to retain.
