'Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen' Recap: Did Turki Alalshikh Buy Matchroom In The End?

Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen is a new six-part documentary series streaming on Netflix that does not focus on any one sport or its athletes but rather on a sports events promotions company in the United Kingdom called Matchroom. Run by the charismatic father-and-son duo of Barry and Eddie Hearn, Matchroom is not just one of Britain’s most successful promoting companies but has also been making a name in the global context in the sports that the company promotes athletes in. Overall, The Greatest Showmen does not have much to offer, unless you are invested in the sports that are covered, like boxing, pool, and darts, or have an active interest in the promotions company itself.

What Is The Docu Series About?

Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen begins inside the headquarters of Matchroom, at Brentwood, Essex, where the company’s chairman, Eddie Hearn, meets his employees for a regular day of work. Founded and still running as a family business, Matchroom is a sports events promotions company that is now one of the biggest names in the United Kingdom, with ambitions of significantly growing in the global scenario as well. Started by Barry Hearn, who still serves as the president of the company to this day, in the early 1980s, Matchroom initially promoted pool and snooker events and first became popular after spotting and promoting a young snooker player called Steve Davis. Over his career, Davis went on to be one of the most celebrated athletes in the world of snooker, and this made Matchroom a well-recognized name in a comparatively short while. 

However, the series begins at a time when there is a slight instability growing among the ranks at Matchroom, not for any controversial reason but simply because of the president’s old age. Currently in his late 70s, Barry has been struggling with the usual health conditions of his age, and he has to go away for a medical procedure at the beginning of the series. The doctors ask Barry to not get involved in any serious physical activity, especially in any sort of outdoor or sporting events, for at least 6 weeks following the procedure, and this leaves his son, Eddie, completely in control of the company. Although Eddie has proven his worth time and again, both the father and the son continue to maintain almost a healthy competition with regard to running the Matchroom company.

For Eddie, life has always been about proving his worth to his father, who he admits has never quite been expressive or sentimental and has always focused more on the business and the successes to be achieved in that aspect. Eddie talks about how even the family meetings are essentially about business as well, and this is how their father-son relationship has strived for all these years. On the other side, Barry wants to ensure that his son is really the most ideal candidate to lead the company forward in his absence. Barry states at the beginning of the series that he would not hesitate to bring in any external member to become the next president if need be, and thus the whole docuseries essentially ends up being Eddie’s attempt to prove that he is ready to hold the reins of Matchroom once his father decides to finally retire.

What is the most profitable sport for Matchroom?

Although Matchroom has a number of popular sports under its belt, the one that brings the most profit for the company happens to be darts, and it is widely considered by the employers that the CEO of the darts department, Matt Porter, has the easiest and the most enviable position among all of them. The sport happens to make more than 60 million pounds for Matchroom each year, most probably because of the comparatively lower investment required as opposed to the tremendous popularity of the sport in the United Kingdom. At present, the company has projections of increasing this margin of profit even further because of the rising fame and success of 18-year-old Luke Littler. 

Given the nickname ‘The Nuke’ because of his ability to throw the dart with extreme precision and power, Littler was first scouted and signed by Matchroom when he was 16, and this turned out to be a fantastic piece of investment for the company. In his career, which began in 2017, Luke Littler has already won multiple World Championships organized by the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) and has also won the UK Open and the Grand Slam. He also plays darts for the national team, representing England, and has bagged gold medals at multiple events with the team. The prospects of Littler, promoted by Matchroom, look ever so much stronger in the current times, and it is quite evident that the sport will only become even more profitable for the company in the years to come.

How does Emily Frazer play a crucial role in the company?

Emily Frazer, the CEO of Multisport, plays a crucial role not just in Matchroom but also in The Greatest Showmen, as she appears throughout a significant portion of the docuseries. As she herself explains, Multisport is a department that looks over more than one sport and all the events that are not boxing or darts and mainly involves pool and fishing. Following in the footsteps of Barry Hearn, whom she looks up to with great admiration, Emily wants to achieve something significant for the company, and she plans on doing so in the field of pool. With boxing and darts being the most popular sports under Matchroom, Emily wants to make pool, which is under her department, one of the most watched and followed sports as well. 

Emily’s plan starts to come to fruition at the US Open Pool Championship in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Barry Hearn himself makes a debut in the sport, which he had always wanted to do in his life. But more than anything else, the founder of the promotions company participating in the tournament himself grabbed the attention of fans and followers, which turned up the viewership numbers for the event. Although Barry was obviously no match for the professional pool player he had to compete with in the first round, he thoroughly enjoyed fulfilling his dream of wanting to play pool on a professional stage, and it also garnered enough interest among the fans. 

Emily then came up with the concept of a new tournament, named Reyes Cup, that is annually held in Manila, Philippines, and has only been held once so far, in 2024. The concept is borrowed from the Ryder Cup in golf, in which a team of European golfers competes against the best in the USA. Similarly, the Reyes Cup has a team of pool players from Europe visit the Philippines and compete against the best pool players in Asia, with the competition aimed at proving which continent is more adept at pool. The first iteration of the tournament itself was already a hit, as the indoor stadium sold out all tickets on each of the days, and there was also enough buzz on the internet about it. Thus, Emily hopes to make the Multisport department even bigger in the years to come and hopes to someday make the sports under her control as popular as the rest of the ones handled by Matchroom.

Do Eddie’s personal disagreements overshadow Katie Taylor’s triumph?

Aside from profitability and ambitions to grow bigger, the biggest sport handled and promoted by Matchroom is undoubtedly boxing, which by itself has a much wider and more global appeal among followers of sports. The company faces a major setback towards the beginning of the season when a tournament is arranged in the UK, where the best 5 boxers of the two most prominent promotion companies in the country would face off against each other. Matchroom had to directly face their professional rivals, Queensberry, run by a man named Frank Warren, who did not have the best of relations with Barry Hearn. Although being professional rivals does not necessarily turn people against one another, the Hearn and Warren families really do not like each other and have been critical of each other for a very long time.

In the tournament, the Matchroom boxers were defeated by the ones signed by Queensberry, and to make matters even worse for the company, their most prestigious boxer, Anthony Joshua, lost a match some time after the defeat at the face-off tournament. With time, Matchroom started looking at other younger boxers to promote, and they eventually found their rising star in Katie Taylor. The matchup that is given most focus in the docuseries is Taylor’s bout against Amanda Serrano, which was organized as part of the highly televised and livestreamed fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. During this match, Taylor is given a points deduction by the judges midway for her frequent act of flouting the rules. Nonetheless, by the end of the bout, the judges determine Katie Taylor as the winner, bringing much joy and success to her personally and also to Matchroom.

However, the event is also somewhat overshadowed by Eddie Hearn’s own personal disagreements with Serrano’s agent and one of her promoters, Nakisa Bidarian. One of the co-founders of the Most Valuable Promotions company, along with Jake Paul, Nakisa Bidarian has a long-standing feud with Eddie because of the latter’s comments about Paul’s childish attempts to prove himself as a professional boxer, despite clearly being just an internet figure. Therefore, on the evening of the Taylor-Serrano matchup, Eddie and his entourage are initially refused entry backstage, and it even leads to a heated argument between him and Nakisa. 

Eventually they sorted out their differences, as Nakisa still claims that Eddie had been trying to enter with way more people than his pass allowed, while Eddie claims that Nakisa and his guards were just trying to intimidate him and then were forced to change their decision when the situation started getting out of hand. This tiff definitely got a lot of media attention and arguably overshadowed some points of the match as well, but then again, the heated debacle also brought attention to Taylor’s match, and it gave a subtle angle of personal vendetta to the fight as well, with the promoters being represented by their own fighters. Ultimately, both the promoters and the boxers benefited from the fiasco, and Katie Taylor continues to be an important boxer in the Matchroom pool.

Did Conor Benn prove his critics wrong?

The Greatest Showmen also features the tribulations of Conor Benn, a professional boxer who is most known for the identity of his father, Nigel Benn. In a career spanning over nine years, Nigel Benn had become the two-weight world champion and is considered to have been one of the finest boxers in the history of the United Kingdom. Despite this rich heritage, Conor Benn failed to make a significant mark on the sport before he made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. In 2023, Conor was banned from participating in any amateur or professional boxing events after charges of doping had been filed against him. As the athlete opens up in the docuseries, this was the most difficult time of his career, when he had an emotional breakdown and felt that he had let his family down massively.

When he was finally cleared of all charges in 2024, Conor decided to mark his return to the world of boxing by defeating Chris Eubank Jr., whom he was supposed to fight before his ban. Incidentally, Eubank Jr.’s father, Chris Eubank Sr., had had one of the fiercest rivalries in British boxing history with Conor’s father, Nigel Benn, making the fight between the sons a true family affair. Throughout his banned phase and then his return to the sport, Conor was completely supported by his promoter, Eddie Hearn, because of which the boxer admits that he wants to be promoted by Matchroom for the entirety of his career. The series features a match between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr., from January of 2025, held at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, which Conor ultimately lost, despite putting in a thoroughly impressive performance.

Did Turki Alalshikh Buy Matchroom In The End?

From the very beginning, The Greatest Showmen presents the possibility of the sports promoter and the Minister of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, Turki Alalshikh, making a significant investment in Matchroom. Towards the end of the show, it seems like Alalshikh would buy off the majority shares of the company from the Hearn family and be the sole decision-maker in the future. Although Barry is not entirely pleased at the possibility of the company being owned by someone outside of the family, he does not turn down the chance completely either, as he has always been somewhat prepared for such a situation. 

Eddie, meanwhile, remains interested in trying to take Matchroom to great heights globally, and he seems ready to make whatever sacrifices would be required to do so. Ultimately, Turki Alalshikh reveals that he is more interested in investing partly in the business and promoting just the darts department of the company. The Hearn family members and Emily Frazer are quite happy with the proposed deal, although no details about it are mentioned in the series. 

Towards the end of Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen, one of the producers directly asks Eddie if he can speak about the emerging deal with the Saudi Arabian business, to which he says no. At present, Barry and Eddie continue to lead their family business and aim to take Matchroom to newer heights in the next sporting season, seemingly being hopeful that Netflix will also continue with their story in another fresh season of the show.

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