A Nostalgic Trip Down Memory Lane Can Hit the Bullseye
If you are a Darts fan, there has never been a better time to be alive! At the weekend, episode one of Sky Sports’ new documentary, ‘Game of Throws: Inside Darts’, which followed several players in the build-up to the 2023/24 World Championship, made its debut.
Luke Littler has joined an exclusive club by winning 10 titles in a single season. © Kelly Deckers/ PDC
An appetiser for the Paddy Power 2024/25 World Championship, which begins in two weeks, the three-part series will highlight Luke Littler’s progress throughout last season’s tournament and promises to tell the story of the “new kid on the block”.
Littler’s record-breaking debut fell just short as Luke Humphries beat the teenager 7-4 in the final. But the game was watched by a record 4.8 million people on Sky Sports. Outside of football, no other sport has enjoyed such viewing figures with the broadcaster.
Luke Nukes the Viewing Figures
Last year’s tournament saw the popularity of Darts soar as the public was gripped by the 16-year-old’s transformation from an unknown teenager to a major star. Resultantly, Sky Sports’ social media channels clocked up 27.6 million World Darts Championship final video views on the night of the event.
The UK’s leading betting sites currently quote Luke Littler on 2/1 odds to go one better and claim the title in 2025. Furthermore, the youngster from Warrington is just 7/2 to win the BBC’s annual Christmas treat, Sports Personality of the Year.
LITTLER LEADS!
For the first time in the match, Luke Littler takes the lead in the World Championship final!
📺 https://t.co/f3RU9WTIoD#WCDarts | Final pic.twitter.com/btzpnZKipo
— PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) January 3, 2024
A Darts player has never won the Sports Personality of the Year prize, albeit 16-time World Champion Phil Taylor did finish runner-up in 2010. Having won 214 professional tournaments, many consider Taylor to be the greatest Darts player of all time. He is undoubtedly a legend of the sport.
Darts Kings From a Golden Age
It has now been announced that Taylor will get his opportunity to become a documentary star as Sky is bringing yet another Darts series to its screens in 2025. The latest offering, ‘Dart Kings’, will explore the golden age of Darts by spotlighting some of the sport’s early stars, including Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson and Phil Taylor.
The broadcaster, with a three-part series produced by Mindhouse Productions – known for Boybands Forever, Lockerbie, Gods of Tennis, and Louis Theroux Interviews – promises to “take viewers on a nostalgic trip down memory lane through the golden age of Darts.”
“In 1972, Darts staggered out of the pub and onto British primetime television, bringing with it a cast of – by today’s standards – unlikely sporting heroes,” said Sky in a media release announcing its new show.
“Today, discipline is key to sporting success, but in those first moments when the game hit the big time, the greatest players mixed extraordinary skill at the oche with boozing, chain-smoking, and an open-door policy to fans and the media alike.”
Darts Famous Rivalries, Heartache and Triumphs
Yet this combination of skill and raw, unfiltered personality brought in television audiences of over 10 million and created some of the most memorable characters in sporting history. Against a backdrop of rising unemployment and unrest in 1980s Britain, Darts brought entertainment and energy to British audiences.
Sky says it will revisit these halcyon days of Darts by “exploring the incredible journeys of three of the greatest names in Darts, charting their rise, rivalries, heartache, and triumphs through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.”
Candid interviews with the darts stars of their day, including ‘The King of Bling’ Bobby George, John Lowe, Keith Deller, Bob Anderson, Dennis Priestley, Dave Whitcombe, Linda Duffy, and Maureen Flowers, are promised. Commentary will come from Richard Ashdown, Julie Welch, Peter Purves, sports promoter Barry Hearn and Phil’ The Power’ Taylor.
Darts: A Magnificent Sporting Subculture
Nancy Strang, Executive Producer at Mindhouse Productions, says: “Darts is now a huge television spectacle and one of the biggest sports in the UK. But the people that really put the game on the map were a cast of brilliant working-class players who emerged in the 1980s and who, with their remarkable talent and personalities, transformed the pub game into what it is today.”
She added: “This series is an opportunity to celebrate those players, to lean into this magnificent sporting subculture and the soap opera of their rivalries and lives, while reliving some of the greatest moments in the game’s history.”
#RIP Jim Bowen, host of 'Bullseye' the game show where losing contestants that lived in a council flat could see what they would have won – it was often a speedboat pic.twitter.com/SodpCOHMuH
— Sports & Betting History by BestBettingSites (@CDCHistory) March 14, 2018
Whether you are a Darts fan or not, this new series – with no more than a “2025 broadcast date” promised – should give older viewers plenty to reminisce over. The sport enchanted a nation and spawned the unforgettable Bullseye TV show, which enjoyed up to 20 million viewers at its peak and regularly gave its winners – many of which lived in blocks of flats – a new speedboat!
