Barry Hearn opposes new snooker minimum wage after star claimed ‘90% of players are skint’.

Former World Snooker Tour chairman Barry Hearn has disagreed with the new minimum guaranteed salary in the sport.

Several of the top snooker players had been calling for the prize money to be redistributed across the game. If a player collects more than £20,000 over the season, the payment will be deducted from their overall earnings.

The move has been praised but Hearn has admitted that he would not have made the same call if he was still in charge of the WST. The Matchroom Sport president believes that the drive to earn money in snooker can help produce incredible scenes, but they have now lost a “brutal” element that he was fond of.

“I probably would never have brought that in (£20,000 basic expenses for contracted players),” Hearn told BettingSites.co.uk. “Because I like death and glory. Get in there and win, and make a lot of money. Or you starve, and that’s brutal, but sport is brutal. And I always felt that you need to put that thought in people’s heads. Ruthlessness. This is not a world for losers. We can’t all win, but we can all try to win.”

The WST have faced repeated calls to help lower-ranked players financially. Ali Carter revealed that approximately 90 per cent of players on the tour “have got no money” and even he nearly quit once to become a pilot. “It’s been really tough. Maybe 90 per cent of players on the tour have got no money,” Carter told the BBC’s Framed Podcast earlier this year. “I think the tour should probably be cut, to give a prize that if you do get your tour card, you are guaranteed a living, a good living.

“They’re earning nothing, 20 grand a year, 30 grand a year after expenses, maybe less than that. You could go and get a job stacking a shelf in a supermarket [for that], no disrespect to anyone who does that. But these boys have put their life into playing snooker from a very young age, so it just seems a little bit unfair to me, that’s all.”