The Darts World Championship

You may have noticed (especially if you watch Sky Sports) that around Christmas and New Year there is rather a lot of darts on television. This is due to the fact that TWO world championships are played. This is highly unusual in any sport (other than boxing) but how did we get to this?

Darts is a game which became popular among the working classes and was often played in pubs. In 1973 the British Darts Organization was formed (BDO) and this led to to the first world championships being held in 1978. Darts began to enjoy a golden age as tournaments were screened on the BBC and ITV and players such as Eric Bristow, John Lowe and Jocky Wilson became household names.

However one fateful day in 1980 a BBC comedy programme called 'Not the nine o'clock news' (starring Mel Smith and Gryth Rhys Jones) screened a sketch mocking darts players, as they famously downed pints at the oche. Although the popularity of the game did not diminish at that time, the damage this did to the image of the game was immense. A slow decline followed and by 1988 ITV had stopped showing darts altogether and the world championships was the only event left on television.

The initial boom in darts had led to an influx of players eager to ply their trade, but with the television coverage now dwindling along with the prize money as sponsors left the sport, these players become disenchanted with the BDO, who they felt could be doing more to promote the game. Even the move to ban players drinking alcohol on stage from 1989 did little to enhance the public image of darts and darts players. In 1992 a group of sixteen players formed the World Darts Council (WDC). The group included every active previous world champion such as Phil Taylor, Eric Bristow and John Lowe. Leighton Rees who had already retired was the only previous world champion not to join. The first event the WDC staged was the Lada UK Masters in the same year.

In 1993 the WDC players competed in the BDO Championships as normal while sporting their new WDC badges on their sleeves. The BDO subsequently asked them to remove the badges. The players then decided if the BDO would not recognise their organisation they would go there own way and form a separate tour. The WDC signed a deal with Sky Television to screen three tournaments a year.This in turn led to another world championships with the first being held in 1994 (although it started on Boxing Day 1993) with Dennis Priestley winning it.

The WDC has since changed its name to the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). Relations between the two darts bodies remain uneasy following a costly three year court battle which ended in 1997. The PDC has the larger tour with more events and greater prize money while the BDO has retained BBC coverage and larger viewing audiences due to being on terrestrial television. The PDC has been busy developing tournaments in USA, Australia, Netherlands, South Africa and Germany among other places. The televised PDC events in thee UK are televised on Sky. One major development for darts in 2007 was the return of ITV who screened the Grand Slam of Darts. The event was unusual as it was ran by the PDC but was open to players who won or were runners up in major PDC and BDO events over the previous two years. The only player who declined to play was the then BDO champion Martin Adams.

So with the two professional bodies both still happy to loathe each other to the detriment of the sport it looks like we will have two world darts champions for years to come. This year it was John Part (PDC) and Mark Webster (BDO). On one hand there is more darts to watch, but surely there should be only one true champion of the world.

Chris Waddington is the publisher of the Dart Masters Coaching Course Ebook. This course is not just about how to play darts, it contains serious methods of learning designed to improve your game beyond your optimum level in around six weeks. For more details on the course and the opportunity to receive free snippets from the course visit playgreatdarts.co.uk

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