Frank Smith, Matchroom Boxing’s CEO, is in the thick of a job and sport he describes as a “big travelling circus”. At the helm of a leading boxing promoter which puts on close to 40 global events annually, he’s in Belfast when we speak before flying on to Japan. It’s a pugilistic schedule, with Smith taking around 100 flights and sleeping in hotels 300 nights every year.
Smith began at Matchroom Sport, founded by Barry Hearn and now run by son Eddie, as a tea and errand boy on work experience aged 14. He started full-time in 2008 after leaving school at 16, later became head of boxing and was made the division’s CEO in 2018 aged 26.
During his career he’s written press releases, dressed as a mascot at Leyton Orient FC, booked travel, sold tickets in darts, snooker and golf from Barry’s office and negotiated TV rights. “I’ve done all elements of the business, some not as well as others I’ll be honest,” says Smith, “but it’s given me a good grounding of what it takes to operate and run the business that we do.”
Listening and learning on the job, he says, have been at the forefront of his rise through the ranks of the Essex-based company, which started out for the charismatic Hearn family in snooker management during the 1980s. Smith badgered Eddie for a job after selling him charity raffle tickets at a party.
“I’m lucky that I work at a business that gives people opportunity and that’s what Barry and Eddie gave me in the first instance,” adds Smith.
“Barry would bring me into things and say ‘I want you to sell TV rights’ and I thought, ‘What’s a TV right?’ The markets changed but back then it was going out to individual broadcasters in each market selling the rights. If you made mistakes, just don’t make those mistakes again.”
After sleeping in late one day after a Matchroom poker event and handed a ‘final warning’ note on his desk by Eddie, over a decade later Smith was handling massive paydays for marquee boxer Anthony Joshua, paving the way for fights in Saudi Arabia and playing a leading hand in Matchroom Boxing’s seismic, eight-year $1bn deal (£737m) with streaming service DAZN in 2018.
Sportel, the sports business gathering held every October in Monaco, was “a big learning curve” for a teenage Smith ahead of his later contract dealings.
“There was one year Barry put up a sign and said, ‘We’re sold out of all rights in every country around the world’. For most of the market around the world the driver is football, and then it was about understanding that all of these broadcasters spend 90% of their budget on something that fills 10% of their time and then they need hours to fill.
