The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), the darts governing body has scheduled a new tournament for September and October this year that will be exclusively broadcast on the Internet. 

The Championship of Darts will be optimised specifically for an Internet and betting audience, with matches being broadcast online between 11am and 9pm, in an attempt to attract viewers both in their workplace and at home.

This darts tournament follows in the footsteps of the successful Championship League Snooker event which was broadcast entirely online.  Organisers also decided to show a darts event solely online because of research which shows betting on Internet-broadcast events is five times greater than on matches that aren’t streamed live.

The tournament will consist of 64 players competing in a unique group format.  A total prize fund of £200,000 is up for grabs with the winner earning £10,000 and a place in the televised PartyPoker.com Grand Slam of Darts tournament scheduled to take place in November.

The Championship of Darts will be the first darts event where the entire tournament is streamed live online.  Individual matches from the Blue Square UK Open Regional Finals from the past two years have been shown live on the Internet, but the entire tournament wasn’t covered.

The PDC have teamed up with digital sports specialists Perform, who will be broadcasting the event.  

Chairman of the PDC, Barry Hearn said, “This is an exciting new concept in darts.  The success of the live Internet streaming of Blue Square UK Open Regional Finals this year showed the appetite of darts fans to see the best players in the world in competition. 

“The players, venue, staging, cameras and production will all be of the highest quality but the distribution will be a completely new phenomenon for the sport.  We are delighted to be partners in such a forward thinking initiative that could help fund all sorts of new sports events around the world.”

Perform’s Joint CEO, Simon Denyer said, “The Championship of Darts shows that distribution via the Internet is becoming an increasingly attractive model for sports events and sports rights holders. 

“We will be distributing the Championship of Darts to a limited number of betting websites, and are in the process of concluding the final licensees to this ground breaking event for the next three years.

“We will also be offering the Championship of Darts to global audiences on a pay-per-view basis through a global live sports web-TV site we will launch in the summer.  With the growing global penetration of broadband connectivity, pay-per-view is becoming a sizeable market opportunity.”

Print version