Peter Wright in action.
Photo: Tim Williams / Action Plus / Shutterstock
Back in February, Welsh professional darts player Gerwyn Price did something amazing. In a single night of Premier League competition in Belfast, he landed two separate nine-dart finishes, meaning he twice reached the 501 points required to win a stage of a match with the least number of throws . One of these in a major event is an impressive achievement; two of them in one night are historic.
But the scene around him could have been more incredible than the performance itself – at least for those unfamiliar with modern European darts culture. When Price’s arrows hit the board, an enthusiastic reviewer informed the sold-out, 7,500-man audience about the score, as if introducing the ’96 Bulls. These fans, many of whom were wearing Halloween-like costumes, went wild, jumping and screaming and throwing drinks in the air. And when Price landed three triple-20s in a row, the place erupted as fans held up “180” signs, similar to the “Perfect 10” signs you might look for in a particularly epic jam at the NBA’s slam dunk -competition.
“The crowd went absolutely ballistic,” Price recalls, describing spectators throwing their alcoholic beverages in the air. “These beers are not cheap,” he says. “You talk seven, eight pounds a pint, and they just throw them everywhere, like nothing really matters. For me, to see from that scene and see that kind of atmosphere, it’s a tantalizing backbone.”
That a darts competition would inspire the kind of fervor more associated with noisy football fandom is largely thanks to a British-based group called the Professional Darts Corporation. Over the last three decades, the ambitious organization has taken a low-key barroom base and reinforced it, adding pyrotechnics, dancers and dramatic introductory music, among others. It calls darts – or its version of darts – “the sport’s biggest party.” That party finally hits New York for the first time Friday and Saturday when the World Series of Darts tour arrives at Madison Square Gardens Hulu Theater.
Unlike the United States, Britain has televised darts competitions for decades. Back in the days of four or fewer channels, it was not uncommon for one of them to show darts or other niche sports such as snooker. For decades, the mood at these events was sleep-depriving – a little hoarse screams, a lot of polite pats. But in 1992, a schism in the sport led many of the best players to form a new organization, which eventually became the PDC. The reasons for the split did not have much to do with dart’s boring TV aesthetic, but after the new organization signed a contract with Sky Sports to TV broadcast their events, the upstart network introduced box-style introductions and generally gave the broadcasts more “pizzazz. ” according to PDC CEO Matt Porter.
Still, the development into a heady sports show was gradual. The Sky Sports money funded bigger prizes and more events, leading to bigger, increasingly lively crowds.
“As the events grew and were seen on TV, more casual fans – rather than people who lived and breathed darts – started going to the events, and it just evolved from there,” Porter says.
As the organic interest grew, the organization leaned into showmanship. A turning point, Porter says, came in 2005 with the advent of the Premier League, a touring event that plays in venues in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and regularly attracts more than 10,000 fans per year. night. Now the PDC competitor’s inputs look like this:
Not everything has been constructed from the top down. Porter says he is not sure how the tradition of fans wearing costumes – Batman, Waldo, Ali G or anything else that could fall under British “fancy dress” – began, but it was not his organization that did. Such fan-driven traditions only add to the party atmosphere that the PDC went after.
“We’re very conscious of two things,” Porter says. “One is that we deliver the best darts players in the world and produce world-class sports. And two are that we deliver the best atmosphere in sports and we have to make sure we satisfy our fans for both.”
Be careful not to fly darts.
Photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images
Of course, the PDC encourages its players to show off their personalities, a proven way to retain the interest of the audience. Price (nickname: “the iceman”) is a former rugby player. Peter “Snakebite” Wright, the reigning world champion, is known for his colorful mohawk and loud outfits. Fallon Sherrock – who, like Price and Wright, will be competing in New York – is the first woman to reach the third round of the World Championships and still has a penchant for thrashing marks in rods when she can get away with it.
The organization also sells something that few other sports can or would: the dream that you, the tab in the stands, could compete with the professionals. Most sports are full of superhuman athletes performing impossibly hard physical feats, most of us could not imagine learning with a lifetime of practice. It’s insane to think that you could knock a homer out of Shohei Ohtani or win a point by Serena Williams. But part of the pro darts’ appeal, according to everyone from its CEO to its top players, is that anyone could really prove to have an ability for it, no matter how unlikely it may be. And with such a low entry barrier – you can literally just walk into a bar and play – anyone can try.
It helps that Wright, the reigning world champion, got his start this way.
“In 2007, I watched darts on TV and said to my partner at the time, Jo – who is my wife now and my manager and my hairdresser – ‘I can beat him. I can beat him.’ I work in a garage and they make better money, and Jo said to me, ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’
PDC’s World Series of Darts tour aims to gain followers in less developed markets, including the United States. (It has already traveled to Las Vegas three times between 2017 and 2019.) And while U.S. events are not the most lucrative on the schedule, their potential upside is huge.
Darts would not be the first sport to make inroads here after decades of relative indifference. F1 racing, for example, has a moment, not least thanks to Netflix’s reality show Run to survive. But even though Porter says there are lessons that the PDC can learn from the show’s success and how it brings people closer to the sport and its competitors, the organization knows it has a way to go. “Formula 1 is a truly global sport with truly global resources and we are still on our journey to that stage,” he says.
So while the next big darts player is unlikely to be in the stands at Gardens Theater this weekend, it’s a rare chance for New Yorkers to get a taste of the madness, even if they only know about PDC through the occasional online video.
Price says, “Unless you’re at the center of the atmosphere, I never think you’ll understand how great darts is as a sport.”
