All You Need To Know About Darts (Final Part)

Today we bring you the third & final part of our look at the sport of Darts.

World rankings  

Both the WDF, BDO and PDC each maintain their own rankings lists. These lists are commonly used to determine seedings for various tournaments. The WDF rankings are based on the preceding 12 months performances, the BDO resets all ranking points to zero after the seedings for their world championship have been determined, and the PDC Order of Merit is based on prize money earned over a two-year period.

Television 

Darts first appeared on British television in 1962 when Westward Television broadcast the Westward TV Invitational to the south-west of England. In 1970, ITV broadcast the News of the World Championship and from 1972 the Indoor League, which featured a darts tournament. Over the next decade darts coverage expanded with many major tournaments appearing on both ITV and BBC through the 1970s and early 1980s to such as extent about 14 tournaments were covered. In 1978 the World Championships started and were covered by the BBC, the BBC innovated with the split screen showing the throwing of the dart and where it hit the board. However the cancellation of ITV's World of Sport show in 1985 meant they had to cut back on darts coverage but despite this they still showed the World Masters until 1988. The BBC also cut back on their coverage to the extent that one major event was still broadcast on either channel by 1988—the World Championship and this contributed in the split in darts.

With the creation of the WDC/PDC in 1992/93, darts gradually returned to television with Sky Television covering the new organization's World Championship and World Matchplay events from 1994. Sky's coverage continued to increase throughout the 1990s, with more new events added. The PDC's World Championship, Premier League, UK Open, Grand Slam of Darts, World Matchplay and the World Grand Prix are all televised live on Sky. The BDO held on to the contract with the BBC to continue with the BDO World Championship and this was the only tournament shown on free to air television in the UK between 1994-2001 apart from the showdown between PDC Champion Phil Taylor and BDO Champion Raymond van Barneveld in 1999 which was shown on ITV, BBC finally began to expand their darts coverage in 2001 when they added the World Masters to their portfolio. However, it wasn't until 2005 that viewers were able to see every dart thrown live at the World Championship. This was the year that BBC introduced interactive coverage on its BBCi service. BBC continued to cover the BDO tournament exclusively until 2012-2013 when ESPN UK started covering the evening sessions while BBC had afternoon session, after the acquisition of ESPN UK by BT Sport, BT dropped the Darts in 2014 but started covering the evening sessions again in 2015. Setanta Sports also televised some BDO events in 2008-2009 and the inaugural League of Legends. Eurosport covered the BDO Finland Open, the BDO British Internationals, the BDO England Open and the BDO British Open in 2006-2007 but dropped coverage of these tournaments however they then returned to Darts in 2013 covering the Winmau World Masters, they have since expanded their coverage to cover the new BDO major the World Trophy from Blackpool and existing tournaments in the BDO such as the 6 Nations, England Open, Scottish Open and Northern Ireland Open.

ITV returned to darts coverage in November 2007, showing the inaugural Grand Slam of Darts — its first major darts tournament coverage in almost twenty years. They continued covering this until 2010 when Sky Sports took over the rights, ITV also showed the European Championship in 2008 and Players Championship since its inception. ITV then increased its coverage in 2013 by signing a deal to cover 4 PDC tournaments per year, the Players Championship, European Championship, UK Open and new tournament the Masters and it was increased to 5 tournaments in 2015 to cover the World Series Finals.

Darts has continued to grow again on television and there now several major tournaments broadcast in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. Dutch station, Sport One, DSF in Germany and several other TV stations across the globe also broadcast the PDC events. In Europe, Eurosport broadcast the Lakeside World Championships, having signed a three-year contract in 2006.

In the Netherlands, SBS6 has broadcast the Lakeside  and the Dutch Open. They also shown the International Darts League and World Darts Trophy, however they are now defunct. RTL 5 broadcast the Dutch Grand Masters in 2005. Some of these tournaments can also be watched on the internet for free using a live stream, depending on contractual restrictions.

The PDC has also tried to break into the television market in the United States by introducing the World Series of Darts in 2006. It had a $1 million prize to showcase professional darts in the United States. Unfortunately the programme was not a ratings success and was taken from its peak time broadcast slot on ESPN after just a few weeks. The tournament was replaced with a US Open event in 2007 which was screened in the UK on digital television channel Challenge TV, with Nuts TV showing the 2008 tournament.

Betting 

In places where alcoholic beverages are consumed, English law has long permitted betting only on games of skill, as opposed to games of chance, and then only for small stakes. An apocryphal tale relates that in 1908, Jim Garside, the landlord of the Adelphi Inn, Leeds, England was called before the local magistrates to answer the charge that he had allowed betting on a game of chance, darts, on his premises. Garside asked for the assistance of local champion William "Bigfoot" Annakin who attended as a witness and demonstrated that he could hit any number on the board nominated by the court. Garside was discharged as the magistrates found darts, indeed, to be a game of skill. More recently, in keeping with darts' strong association with pubs and drinking, matches between friends or pub teams are often played for pints of beer.

In the professional game, betting is prominent with many of the big bookmaking companies sponsoring events . Sky Bet, Bodog, Stan James, Blue Square   and Ladbrokes  are all title sponsors of major PDC events.

In the past when Fox Sports broadcast tournaments in the United States, the logos for betting houses such as Ladbrokes were pixelated out and digitally obscured, along with any audible references to them, because of American laws and policies against online gambling; however other US broadcasters usually carry overseas darts tournaments without any edits other than for timing and narrative purposes, and Americans usually cannot visit the sites for betting houses outside of redirection pages.

Tipster Street.