Darts Through the Decades

Professional darts as the modern world knows it begins in 1973, when Yorkshire Television's Indoor League broadcast pub sports including darts, with presenter Fred Trueman pipe in hand. It was the first time the game had been treated as serious television. In 1974 the British Darts Organisation was formed, providing a structure for professional competition. In 1978 the first BDO World Championship was held at Heart of the Midlands, Nottingham, won by Welshman Leighton Rees.

If the 1970s invented televised darts, the 1980s made it national entertainment. BBC and ITV covered the BDO World Championship. Sid Waddell's commentary turned the sport into theatre. Audiences for the 1984 final between Bristow and Dave Whitcombe were estimated around ten million UK viewers. The Embassy sponsorship became permanent from 1978, and the association of the World Championship with Lakeside Country Club started in 1986.

By 1992, after years of squeezed television coverage and dissatisfaction with the BDO's leadership, sixteen top players broke away to form what became the Professional Darts Corporation. In January 1993 the split letter was signed. Within two years the new PDC had its own World Championship at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, broadcast on Sky. The sport was in chaos for a while, but the PDC had Phil Taylor, and Taylor would proceed to win every PDC World Championship from 1995 to 2002.

By the mid-2000s the PDC was outgrowing the Circus Tavern. In December 2007 the World Championship moved to Alexandra Palace in north London, a multi-thousand-seat venue that could be themed, filled, and turned into a Christmas fixture. Sky Sports coverage expanded. The Premier League launched in 2005. Prize money and professionalism advanced at a pace the old BDO could not match.

The decade belonged to Michael van Gerwen and, in its second half, to a new generation of PDC-trained talent. Prize money grew from around £1m annually at the start of the decade to over £14m by 2019. The BDO began its slow financial decline, closing in 2020. The PDC added majors and the international profile of the sport widened sharply into the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Australia.

The BDO folded in 2020. Peter Wright won his first world title at 49, and a second at 51. The 2024 World Championship final, Humphries versus the sixteen-year-old Luke Littler, became the most-watched darts match in British television history. Twelve months later Littler won the 2025 title outright, at 17, the youngest ever. Darts is not the same sport it was in the early 2010s, and Littler's rise has pulled a younger audience in at a speed nothing in the sport's history can match.