Professional darts: taking aim at the Olympics

At first glance, the scene at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2082 in Lemon Grove, California, looked like a friendly get together. A group of 20 like-minded people hugged as they walked into the half-bar, half-veterans post. Scattered pints of half-finished beer littered high-top tables in the dimly-lit vapor-filled atmosphere.

Sitting at a fold-up table, a man with a scruffy beard and a long white button-down shirt remained calm as he glanced at his scattered papers and grabbed a well-used microphone. His voice replaced the beat of 2000s hip-hop, signaling the daily schedule.

Paul Schauer, director of the Pat Murphy Open, has seen a recent popularity decline within San Diego darts.

However, the attendees, mostly men in their 30s and 40s, didn’t trek to suburban San Diego for a friendly reunion, but rather to play in a professional darts tournament. The event in Lemon Grove was the 21st annual Pat Murphy Open, an event sanctioned by the American Darts Organization, the overarching body of professional darts. Over two days, more than $3,000 in prizes were distributed between six events.

American professional darts are a microcosm of the worldwide darting scene. The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), a top-tier worldwide darting organization, is a household name in England. The PDC and British Darts Organization (BDO) provide worldwide rankings and frequent tournaments. Both organizations are members of the World Darts Federation, the international governing body overseeing professional darts. Between the PDC and BDO, more than £14 million in prize money will be given out by the end of 2019 in Europe.

Professional darts in England dates back to 1925 when members of brewery leagues in England formalized game rules with the creation of the National Darts Association. The association did not last beyond World War II, but the rules set in place stayed through the creation of the BDO in 1973. Darts reached a peak in the 1980s, but its popularity declined due to a cultural shift away from bars due to stricter drunk driving laws.

Modern darts tournaments stem from the creation of the PDC in 1992 when disgruntled members of the BDO created a new organization to improve the public image of the game. Today, the PDC has more prize money, sponsors, and international popularity than the BDO, but both leagues continue coexisting under the overseeing World Darts Federation.

A player looks at his score at the Pat Murphy Open in San Diego.

The $3,000 award in Lemon Grove pales in comparison to the prizes awarded overseas. Phil Gorman, a director of the Pat Murphy Open, does not want the tournament to be known as a competition. “People come out to see their friends and have fun,” Gorman said. “Darts is a game in a bar. It’s all about coming out and having fun.”

Paul Schauer, another director of the Pat Murphy Open, is not worried about the stagnant growth of San Diego darts. “At one point we were at a $15,000 payout. We're down to $3,000 now,” Schauer said. He added, “We get a good crowd here [in San Diego]. Everybody has a good time.” Schauer pointed to a recent fracture in San Diego darting organizations, when the combined San Diego Association split into the South Bay Darting Association and the Greater San Diego Darting Association, as the reason for the monetary decline.

Schauer and Gorman’s vision of darts as a fun activity is not the same vision held within the entire darts community. Over in Huntington Beach, California, Richard Wade, the cousin of professional darter James Wade, believes amateur and professional dart players have a wide skill gap. “You can be really good at home and have a great time playing with your friends, and a lot of those players will drift into a bar and see guys playing, and what they'll find out is that the league players are a lot more serious. It's a different level of competition,” Wade said.

Wade is the president of the Pacific Darts Association, another organization in a cluttered group of Southern California darting associations.

On a Tuesday night in Huntington Beach, a low-frills bar tucked into the middle of a strip mall hosts the weekly Pacific Darts League tournament. The “Battle for The Bee Hive,” titled after the bar’s name, is a round-robin weekly tournament between association members. The league match participation is small but fierce.

Most members have known one another for the greater part of thirty years. Wade got his first taste of professional darts during his time at the University of Southern California, where he would play against fraternities who hosted regular matches during the sport’s heyday in the 1970s.

Even with his years of practice, Wade said making a career out of darts in the United States is still a tough task. “The top pros were making between $20,000–$40,000, and that's with winning everything. You have to have it as a hobby or something you're pursuing and have a full-time job.” However, a recent $60,000 prize fund in a sponsored event, the William Hill US Darts Masters, is a signal for more significant investments into the sport.

The Pacific Darts Association maintains records of all PDA matches since 2002 on its website. Now, Wade and PDA members maintain advanced darts statistics through a system called DartConnect, an all-in-one application which tracks scores, statistics, and league rankings for individual leagues. These applications, Wade says, fuels both internal and external competition for darts.

“You log on, everybody has a tablet, and it keeps all of your statistics, it charts your game. It makes keeping track of statistics really simple,” Wade said. He also creates plaques for a variety of statistics; he is the proud multi-year champion of 'most bullseyes hit' within the league.

In addition to DartConnect, darts is also going through a globalization phase with the growth of DARTSLIVE, an application allowing people around the world to play one another in a series of matches. Despite the fractured state of darts in Southern California, DARTSLIVE is a word echoed within every league.

Over in San Diego, Schauer said, “You can actually do tournaments, do matches against people in other places, even in Thailand. You can stream it online and play your matches. It's getting interesting.” Wade’s story was similar, “You can set up a port at home with a video camera and a stream, and I could call up somebody in Buffalo, New York, or Cleveland, or really any hotbed of darts in the country and play a one-on-one match. Once DARTSLIVE took off, you got new competition. It's grown the sport a lot.” The system even goes beyond individual matches, allowing leagues to host worldwide tournaments with international associations.

Darts enthusiasts aim at the 2028 Olympics

Eddie O’Flaherty, who runs the Southern California Darts Association (SCDA), has bigger aspirations for the global growth of the sport: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“Back in the day, darts used to be so associated with drinking that players, even in the televised matches, would be getting drunk right on TV,” O’Flaherty said. He added that SCDA’s events are “starting to spread out to other places that can allow for non-drinkers and for a wider customer base.”

In addition to losing its connotation as a drunken pub sport, O’Flaherty said darts is regulated now to the point where players in top-tier tournaments are tested under guidelines set forth by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). According to WADA, the organization tests participants both during and outside of competitions. WADA maintains a list of banned substances on its website.

While darts has a worldwide organization and follows strict anti-doping rules, the sport has struggled to attract a younger crowd. Sebastian Hoeger, a member of the Irish Folk Pub Dart Club in Munich, Germany, does not see the sport growing within younger generations in Germany.

“I think darts will always have the stigma of being a pub/drunk sport. Even though the level and approach of many young players have changed drastically, in the end, most people are linking it with booze,” Hoeger said in an email.

Youth darts are also not a big draw in the United States; the ADO has regular youth tournaments, but youth leagues are seldom built outside of a league hosted at a bowling alley in the Detroit suburbs.

Alan Abrahamson, a regular columnist of Olympic sports and events, sees darts behind a long line of other sports vying for Olympic inclusion. “The IOC's No. 1 mission is to be relevant. And its most important audience is young people. By young people, I mean teenagers and 20-somethings. And, unless they can hit those marks, it's not relevant,” Abrahamson said.

While Abrahamson does not see darts as an Olympic sport, Jeff Fellenzer, an expert in sports media studies at USC, says online streaming can advance any sport to an Olympic event. “The streaming world is perfect for niche sports in so many ways,” Fellenzer said, adding that the rise of poker is an analogy where a non-competitive event received extensive media coverage.

“ESPN has found that there's an audience to watch people play poker. When there's a lot of prize money at stake, it heightens the interest both from the competitors and from people watching, knowing that there's a lot on the line, that fuels interest,” Fellenzer said. With millions of dollars of prizes and more than 1.7 million streams of professional darts matches on BBC America, a market exists for darts to expand beyond once-a-week bar matches in Southern California.

New technology has pushed darts beyond its bounds in local pubs and veterans posts to a global setting. As the sport receives more corporate cash infusions into streaming and events, traditionalists in San Diego and professional darts promoters in Los Angeles will have to work together to grow the sport overall.

“Since we're the biggest league in the local area, and we're only going to grow, we definitely want to have some involvement in the 2028 Olympics,” O’Flaherty said. As the oldest and largest Southern California darting association, O’Flaherty and the SCDA have a long road ahead to coalesce with other Southern California darting associations to stimulate youth involvement in darts. Currently, the general public still ties darts to its history as a bar game. Despite its boozy past, corporate involvement and the growth of niche sports allow darts a chance to aim at professional growth.